Syntax AP7600 Pentium 4 Notebook

Company: Syntax
Product: AP7600 Notebook
Date Reviewed: April 13, 2004
Reviewed By: Jason Rabel

First Looks At The AP7600:

I would classify the AP7600 into the "desktop replacement" category of notebooks. The weight comes in at a hefty 7.3lb (almost a full pound lighter than my Inspiron 8200), which is about average for such a feature-rich notebook. Because the AP7600 uses a desktop processor, cooling is a high priority, as can bee seen by the CPU fan, vents, and raised feet on the bottom of the notebook.

On the front of the AP7600 is the "Audio DJ" controls. The Audio DJ allows you to play music CDs without having to turn on and boot up the computer, the obvious advantage being less power consumption. The controls are very simple, Play/Pause, Stop/Eject, Back/Forward, Vol Up/Down, and Power.

The display is a 15" SXGA (1400x1050 max resolution). I was unable to find any exact specs on the display (being mostly curious about response time), but after testing several FPS & fast action games, I was extremely pleased with the quality. The video GPU is a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 w/128MB RAM.

The keyboard is 88 keys with 12 function and 2 Windows keys (pretty much the basic notebook configuration). Also there is the TouchPad with 4-way scroll button. In the upper left corner is the top vent for the CPU fan. The top middle has the primary power button, along with hotkeys for launching an internet browser and email program. Lastly just to the left of the TouchPad is a built-in microphone.

The rear of the notebook has connections for headphones (with an optional adapter you can get 5.1 channel SPDIF support), an external mic port, IR port, parallel port, VGA port, SVideo Out, Modem, and AC adapter. Also there are additional air vents for cooling the internals and CPU.

There wasn't a lot of included items with the notebook, just a basic quick start guide, driver / manual CD, Roxio EZ CD Creator & Direct CD software, phone cord, and AC Adapter (not pictured).

The battery is a beefy 6600mAh (in comparison my Insprion 8200 uses a 4460mAh) monster. Battery life varies greatly depending on which processor is installed, however while testing the notebook with a 3.2C and running Sysmark to stress the system we were able to achieve about two hours of battery time (wasn't officially timed). However under "normal" usage such as surfing the web, or typing a document, expected battery life should be noticeably greater.

The right side of the notebook contains the combo drive (24x CD-RW / DVD-ROM), 4 High-Speed USB 2.0 ports, and the security port. Having 4 USB ports accessible is extremely nice, especially when you are using a notebook as a "desktop replacement". I would regularly have a mouse, CompactFlash reader, and Pen-Drive hooked up at once, also with the USB ports located on the side access is much easier than traditional rear-mounted USB ports.

The left side of the notebook contains a 10/100Mb Ethernet port, firewire port, and a single PCMCIA slot. Also, not visible is an internal 802.11b wireless network support.