Voyager

Graphics handling has always been a traditional stumbling ground for portables. While Photoshop or Illustrator may run effortlessly on a laptop, whether you can actually see the results clearly and unaffected is down to the graphics card within.

To this end, Evesham’s Voyager is the first laptop we’ve seen with an NVIDIA GeForce Go7900 GTX. The desktop version of this card is perfect for gamers, offering high resolution and frame support with ample power. The slimline version is no less disappointing, bolstered here with 512MB of onboard RAM.

But what makes this a good designers’ laptop is the combined strengths of its parts. The Go7900 GTX is a good card, but when linked with an Intel Pentium M T2500 processor you have two 2GHz cores powering the system. In benchmarking, the Voyager ripped through the general system tests, while the 1GB of RAM barely broke sweat under heavy rendering in Photoshop and lengthy batch conversion tests.

Evesham has ensured the 17-inch WUXGA display is matched to the card and processor’s standard. The 1,920x1,200 resolution provides acres of desktop space and, in our tests, working with DTP packages was, for once, almost painless, especially for a laptop.

Elsewhere the Voyager comes equipped with the standards you’d expect at this price. The 100GB SATA hard drive spins at 72,000rpm and the Sony dual-layer DVD drive and memory card reader are both fine touches.

While the Voyager may suffer for its boxy design, weak plastic trim and sticky latches, it is a well-specified, albeit expensive, laptop.