Packard Bell EasyNote NX69 – Review

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The Packard Bell NX69 features a 14″ screen situated in a 13.3″ case, with an ultra-narrow bezel. The NX69 sells for $679.99, and despite its mid-range entry price, it packs some impressive spec with first-rate performance to match.

The NX69′s appearance is elegant, with matte silver surfaces, which attracts only minimal fingerprints. It measures 342 x 245 x 22mm. At 2kg, the Packard Bell NX69 is quite heavy for a 13-incher. Partly to blame for that is the long-lasting 6000mAh battery.

On the 14″ 1366 x 768 resolution glossy screen, brightness was average, but contrast was low, and the color spectrum was narrow. This notebook is not ideal for high-level graphical work, where Sony’s Vaio F22 FHD would be a better alternative. Viewing angles are acceptable.

The 2.3GHz Sandy Bridge Intel i5-2410M is the typical processor in current middle-range laptops, and it boosts to 2.6GHz across both cores when needed. The Intel HD 3000 graphics processor on the same chip provides integrated graphics equating to about 800MHz, but fortunately NVidia’s Optimus technology kicks in when graphical demands are higher, utilizing the NVidia GeForce GT 540M card. Our test unit featured a Western Digital 500GB 5400rpm hard drive.

The underside of the chassis has no openings, even for RAM upgrades, which is supposed to help durability and stability.

The fact that depressed keys sit level with the keyboard bed makes cleaning easy. There’s plenty of keyboard room, too, because the NX69 has no number pad, so Packard Bell have enlarged the Entry and Backspace keys and the cursor keys are well-spaced. However the soft travel point gives strange feedback, and makes typing awkward at first.

The Synaptics trackpad has integrated buttons, the front of the pad serves as its ‘buttons’. The mousepad’s smooth surface is both large and sensitive, and vertical and horizontal one-finger scroll bars are well-placed and responsive, as are multi-touch gestures. All in all a superlative mousepad experience.

Connectivity consists of three USB ports, one is USB-3, VGA and HDMI sockets, mic and headphone/SPDIF ports, and WiFi-n and Bluetooth 3.0. No eSATA port, no ExpressCard slot, not even a docking socket – are all missing on the NX69.

The HDMI and VGA ports but they are unfortunately situated on the front half of the sides. We’d prefer to have cables confined to the rear, keeping them out of the way when typing or adjusting the position of the laptop. Happily, Packard Bell have included restore disks for the Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium OS.

Like all Packard Bell notebooks, the NX69 includes a full licensed version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, and Nero 9 for burning DVDs. There’s also a Social Networks app, enabling simultaneous access to FaceBook, YouTube and Flickr, with a dedicated button to launch the app. Smartphones can be charged via the USB3 port.

It’s worth mentioning that the manufacturer’s standard 24 month warranty can ance upgraded to 3 years for only $100.

In benchmarks the performance of the NX69 matched that of many more expensive Core i7-powered machines, and it’s easily capable of running the latest games. All of which means this notebook can handle office tasks such as spreadsheets or presentations with aplomb. In short, the Packard Bell NX69 is one of the best mid-range notebooks we have tested. Very well thought-out indeed.

Here is a nice eye candy video of Packard Bell EasyNote NX69 notebook:

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