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March 19, 2008

Philips 11NB5800 ultraportable laptop review

The Philips 11NB5800 has a tiny footprint, making it a great machine to carry with you wherever you go, but the trade-off is a lack of space that makes the keyboard a little cramped.

Laptops bearing the Philips badge are sold exclusively through PC World and the rest of the Dixons Store Group.

The ultraportable Philips 11NB5800 differs in name from its stablemate, the 12NB5800, by only a single digit, but in all other respects is a different beast from its bigger sibling.

Put the Philips 11NB5800 and the 12NB5800 side by side and the two laptops don't even look as though they were produced by the same manufacturer. Their performance scores were also markedly different.

The Philips 11NB5800 managed only to achieve a WorldBench 6 score of 51 while its big brother all but led the pack. However, while the Philips 11NB5800 has an ample 2GB allocation of RAM, it's only equipped with a 1.2GHz Intel Core Duo U2500 and this limits its performance.

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Games are a non-starter as the Philips 11NB5800's Intel 945GM chip managed only to achieve a lowly 2 frames per second (fps) running the difficult FEAR framerate test.

Battery life is better, though, with the Philips 11NB5800 almost topping three hours of intensive use, running for 176 minutes before the battery finally gave up.

Unlike 99 percent of the laptops industry, Philips has chosen to equip the Philips 11NB5800 with a 1,366x768 resolution screen rather than the 1,280x800 normally seen. In use, there's little difference between the two, however. The glossy display produces great colours and contrast, although like all screens of this type it is a little reflective.

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Independent customer reviews from

Philips 11NB5800 scored:
8.0 out of 10 100% real reviews

The 2 most helpful reviews based on 2 reviews:

16 Jan 2008 Geraldo, Oxford

7

Good Points

Fast, responsive, light. Decent hard disk and memory. Processor fast enough without being power hungry. Windows Vista Ultimate works fine, despite initial misgivings. Almost all software works (sometimes needs running as Administrator or in compatibility mode). Feels like a fast computer and very portable. Support from Techguys very rapid and to the point. Essential to make a syetem disc early on. Windows Media Centre is a good addition, but perhaps a TV tuner should also be included?

Bad Points

Not for the fashion conscious although not ugly either. No info on buying spares - eg battery - obviouysly important later on, or do they expect you to have this computer for only the life of the battery? Worries about continuing support. No Windows Vista disc. No option to downgrade to XP. Issues with Vista and some hardware eg USB TV tuner. Graphics card is not supported by most 3D games - it would be great if a proper 3D card (even low powered) could be squeezed into this as this would then give Sony, Acer et al a good run for their money, especially at this price.

24 Jan 2008 Steve, Dartford

9

Good Points

This is the first laptop I have owned, but so far I have found it to be easy to set up and use. Its size and weight make it extremely easy to carry around.

Bad Points

I haven't found any bad points so far!

See more Philips 11NB5800 reviews on Reevoo.com

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User Reviews

Thursday, 25 September 2008

Reviewed by speculatrix

Star Rating: rating of 4

Duration of ownership: 5 days

Strengths:
lovely screen, fairly well made, very compact, quite cheap for the performance and quality, everything built-in, no need to carry cables, docks etc, probably runs linux quite well

Weaknesses:
keyboard a little cramped, a little bit chunky (but don't let that put you off)

Overall Evaluation:
I was initially skeptical when a friend bought one, but after using it I think it's excellent, whilst it may not be as slim and light as my Sony TX2, its very similar in features and performance - the keyboard and screen are *identical*, and probably more solid. I'm surprised Sony's TX and TZ series get so much more attention!

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Philips 11NB5800

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