JVC Mini Note MP-XP731

JVC's latest Mini Note adds Centrino wireless technology, but battery life has fallen

JVC's Mini Note MP-XP731 updates the firm's ultra portable laptop range to use Intel's Centrino mobile platform, while keeping the compact size and low weight of the previous two models.

The system is designed to appeal to mobile professionals who want portability, but still need the features of a full-blown Windows XP laptop rather than a PDA.

The new Mini Note, available this week, is described by JVC as the smallest Centrino laptop in the world. It has a footprint barely larger than an A5 page, but its battery life still permits only a couple of hours of use. However, the Mini Note MP-XP731 offers ample performance for productivity applications, and sports a broader set of ports than many full-size laptops we have seen.

Like the MP-XP7230 that shipped earlier this year, JVC's new MP-XP731 has built-in 802.11b wireless LAN support as well as 10/100 Ethernet capability. However, the new Centrino-based model has a 1GHz Pentium M chip instead of a 933MHz Mobile Pentium III-M. Standard memory remains at 256MB, but this can now be expanded to 512MB.

In IT Week tests, the Mini Note MP-XP731 achieved a score of 23.8 under our Winstone 2002 benchmark suite. This is better than the 18.4 of JVC's previous model, and brings the Mini Note closer to the performance of full-size systems such as IBM's ThinkPad T40p, which scored 30.6 in tests published earlier this year.

The Mini Note ships with an internal battery and an external battery pack that clips onto the rear of the case. Under our BatteryMark 4.01 benchmark test, the system ran for just one hour and 21 minutes with the internal battery, and two hours and 29 minutes using both. Setting the display to half its maximum brightness extends these figures by about 10 and 20 minutes, respectively. The results are worse than for JVC's earlier non-Centrino Mini Note. An optional long-life battery is claimed to offer up to seven hours.

The Mini Note also has a USB port replicator bar and an external DVD/CD-RW drive unit. The port replicator reproduces all of the Mini Note's ports except for display-out, so users can leave it connected to a desktop keyboard, mouse and LAN cable for quick docking. The DVD/CD-RW drive is compact and connects via a USB port. However, both the port replicator and drive need their own power adapters.

The device has a 1,024x600 screen, but it supports resolutions up to 2,048x1,536 on an external display.

Completing the port tally are an IEEE 1394 FireWire port, two USB 2.0 ports, a modem and a single Type II PC Card slot. A small USB SD card reader is supplied instead of a built-in SD card slot, due to lack of space on the motherboard.

Price: £1,399 + VAT

Contact: JVC 0870 330 5000