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For those who were seeking a perfect VFM (Value for Money) laptop, a read through this may just end your search. The Compaq Presario V3228au is priced around what most people seek to buy a laptop. Some may remember another laptop model from Compaq called V3155au that seemed like a perfect marriage of price, performance, features and looks. But inexplicably it went out of production a few weeks back (or so everyone was told). For those who were looking to buy that but couldn’t, we have some good news for you. The V3228au is nothing but a reincarnation of the V3155au. Read on to assure yourselves.
Bundle
Compaq Presario V3228au (Laptop)
Power Cable & Adaptor
Manual, Driver CD, Warranty Card
Carry Bag
Specifications
AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology MK-36 2.0 GHz, (512 KB Level 2 cache)
512 MB DDR2 RAM (667 MHz)
14.1″ WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen Display
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150
80 GB Hard drive (5400 rpm)
8X DVD-RW (Dual Layer Support)
AC97 High Definition Audio
Altec Lansing Speakers
WLAN: 802.11 b/g WLAN
IO Ports
External display (VGA) port VGA
5-in-1 card reader (MS/MS PRO/MMC/SD/xD)
USB 2.0 ports (3)
IEEE-1394 (1)
Headphones/speaker/line-out jack with S/PDIF support
Microphone-jack
Line-in jack
Expansion port for xb3000 expansion base
LAN: Integrated 10/100 LAN Network Card
Modem: High speed 56K modem
Kensington lock
Dimensions
Length: 33.4 cm
Width: 23.7 cm
Height/Thickness: 2.6 cm - 3.9 cm
Weight: 2.46 kg
LayOuts
Layout
The Compaq Presario V3228au is a great looking laptop. Simple yet elegant, it packs quite a bit of style and at the same time keeps with the business portfolio. The laptop has a glossy finish and entire laptop is brushed grey metal in color. It’s sleek and by the looks of it you won’t feel that it has a 14.1-inch display. Let’s now proceed to the layout of the various ports, expansions the laptop has to offer.
There is a front panel for the laptop. The front panel consists of the audio ports and a switch. The alignment of the audio ports is a little to the right of the touchpad. There are two jacks, one for MIC/Line-in and the other for Headphones/Line-Out. On the left side of the front panel there is the switch for turning ON/OFF the Wireless Network. There is a LED to indicate if the Wireless Network is turned ON (blue) or OFF (Orange).
On the left side there is an S-Video port followed by a VGA port. There is an expansion port which serves as an expansion base to expand and offer more functionality. Then there is a LAN slot to connect a LAN cable and a USB slot for the left side. There is a mini-FireWire port beside the USB port. The card reader is also placed on the left side above which is the PC Card slot. The PC Card slot has a flip cover to prevent collection of dust particles.
To right further most is the Kensington lock beside which is the Power port. The power port has a circular blue LED which lights up when the power cable is connected. There is a modem port and 2 USB ports followed by the DVD-RW. No ports or connection are placed behind so all that you have to access is either in the front or left/right of the laptop.
> Input/ Output option
On opening the lid of the laptop you will see the 14.1-inch screen above which there are two inbuilt MICs on either side. The Altec Lansing speakers of the laptop are placed above the keypad. The laptop has the most minimal music hotkeys; the rest of the controls are accessible through the combination of the Function keys. Simply just use Volume UP/Down controller and Mute. There is also another button called QuickPlay. It is a trademark playback feature on high end Presarios. The best part is that all of these buttons are actually touch-sensitive. So for the volume UP/Down you just drag your finger over and increase or decrease the volume lazily. The power switch for the laptop is placed towards the left above the keypad.
The keypad is a standard sized keypad with 85 keys. The keypad is well spaced and I didn’t face any difficulty while typing. The keys are soft touch and you don’t need to apply a lot of pressure to type. Below the keypad is the touchpad. The touchpad has two buttons which are also soft touch and it has scroll zones as well. There is a button above the touchpad to enable or disable the touchpad; used mostly when you attach a mouse to the laptop. Towards the left on the edge there are 3 LEDs; the first indicates if the laptop is ON/OFF, the second if the laptop is charging, and the third denotes HDD activity.
Performance
The V3228au is a good performer. It isn’t a powerhouse but at the same time it won’t disappoint anyone. The AMD Turion MK-36 processor and the nVidia platform form a formidable combination. The performance cannot be compared to that of its Core2Duo and Turion X2 counterparts but it comfortably outperforms the Intel Pentium M based laptops in almost all the benchmarks. The laptop has the nVidia 6150 chipset which is way better than the onboard GMA900 based chip than you get on Intel platforms. You can share up to 256 MB of RAM for graphics provided you have enough system memory. So you can even play most of the games which aren’t too system demanding. Don’t expect miracles though. It supports DirectX 9.0c and hence is Vista compliant too. There were just a few instances when the laptop response time increased but an addition of 512 MB will boost performance significantly and is highly recommended.
On the power backup front, the laptop lasted for about 75 minute on full load in Battery Eater Pro. That translates to about 2.5 to 3 hours of standard usage and about 2 hours if you plan to play games on it. That is pretty decent but nothing spectacular.
On the flip side, there isn’t much to talk about other than a couple of minor points. Firstly, the laptop’s gloss finish is prone to finger prints as is evident in some the pictures in this review. Secondly, addition of Bluetooth would have made the feature set complete. The cons are too insignifant to offset the pros.
Conclusion
The Compaq V3228au is available for Rs. 31,990 plus taxes which comes to roughly around Rs. 34,000 all inclusive which is a damn sweet deal for the features and performance alone. Its polished looks is the icing on a cake. All said and done, yes, this laptop is a near perfect marriage of price, performance, features and looks. And a weight of just under 2.5 Kgs is not something I would overly complain about. Add another 512 MB of RAM and the price will go up by around 3K but it’s worth the performance boost you will get.
Go pick one up if you are looking for a laptop under 35K. It is arguably the best all-round laptop you can get for that price.