Introduction and design
At the bottom end of the laptop market, manufacturers can sometimes find it challenging to change the status quo and innovate. Sometimes it takes courage to move away from boring blueprints and try something new, especially when you have much, much bigger competitors to face.
But this is exactly what the Zoostorm 7270-9013, priced at a couple of pence under £200 (via eBuyer), is trying to do. And while the UK-based vendor could certainly have chosen a more memorable name, that doesn't diminish the appeal of what's on offer here.
Design
The Zoostorm 7270 is one of the smallest laptops we've reviewed recently. At 207 x 287mm it sits comfortably on a sheet of A4, but its thickness – just under 28mm – betrays its heft. At 1.4kg it's a relatively heavy piece of electronics; heavier than, say, the Dell XPS 13.
We liked the pseudo-brushed metal look of the laptop cover, which bears the Zoostorm logo.
Open the laptop and the first thing that strikes you is how small the touchpad is – it's barely larger than a business card, and it's certainly the weakest link of this laptop's design.
It's split between the larger tracking area and a bar that combines both right and left buttons. Using the trackpad proved to be a pain, not just because of the size but because of its lack of precision – when it worked.
Yes, there were even instances where the pointer just froze and was unresponsive, or would record double-taps or no taps at all when we tapped once.
This proved to be frustrating, with the keyboard being an equally poor input peripheral. The keys suffered from the dreaded 'scrabble' syndrome – in other words, they protrude far too much from the keyboard surface.
Add the fact that the keys aren't solidly attached to the keyboard base and you get the perfect combination for a wobbly, uninspiring and mushy typing experience.
This is made worse by the fact that the layout of the keys is just all over the place: one function key is placed above the arrow keys, and the shift key is barely bigger than any letter keys.
But it's not all bad. The power button on the Zoostorm 7270 is elongated and stands out with a bright blue light. Though some might find it distracting, it's certainly a preferable option compared to the recessed power button on the XPS 13.
Also, thumbs up for activity/status lights (battery, hard drive), and keeping the function keys as the default option – this means you'll have to use combo keys to access multimedia functionality (brightness, volume and so forth), but those using F2 in Excel will appreciate it greatly.
On the left of the laptop you'll find a Kensington lock, the power connector, the Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI connectors and two USB ports.
The right edge of the laptop contains a single USB port and two audio connectors. Note that these are only USB 2.0 ports; there's no USB 3.0 here. Overall, though, there's an excellent array of connectors on offer, better than most compact laptops on the market.
The display, with its 11.6-inch diagonal and a 1366 x 768 resolution, is quite reflective as one would expect, because of its touchscreen capabilities. This feature also adds a few extra millimeters to the screen's thickness, which makes it less prone to wobbling.
However, it does shift the centre of gravity of the machine, which makes it easier for the laptop to topple over, especially when you use it on your lap.
Specification and performance
Specification
The configuration of the laptop that was provided to techradar is as follows:
- Processor: Intel Celeron 1037U 1.8GHz
- Memory: 4GB of RAM
- Hard disk drive: 500GB HDD
- Display: 11.6-inch HD+ multi-touch
- Connectors: 3 x USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet, Card reader
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi
The first surprise was the processor used. We were expecting an Intel Celeron or an Atom CPU at this price – and yes, we did get a Celeron, but it's the 1037U, which is based on the old-but-still-very-capable Ivy Bridge architecture.
Compared to the Z3735x or the ubiquitous N2840, it should be much faster despite sporting only two cores. Clocked at 1.8GHz, it has 2MB cache and dissipates up to 17W.
Its integrated graphics subsystem (HD Graphics clocked at 350MHz) however is likely to be its Achilles' heel in the benchmarks – more on that later.
The second surprise is the 4GB RAM bundled, rather than 2GB usually found on laptops of this price. There's only one DIMM socket, one which supports up to 8GB modules – so you will have to swap the memory modules to upgrade.
Then there's the hard disk drive, a 500GB, 2.5-inch hard drive spinning at 5400RPM, again, far bigger than what is usually presented to us at the low-end of the market.
But that's not all: the Zoostorm's Ethernet port is a GbE affair, instead of the usual 10/100Mbps found on most entry-level models.
Users will notice the large air vent at the back of the laptop; it's there for a good reason. The laptop is fairly noisy when under load – that is partly because the CPU powering it is built on an older, "thicker" manufacturing process (22nm rather than 14nm) and doesn't have the same advanced power management techniques as Broadwell-based processors.
The laptop comes with Windows 8.1 but we upgraded it to Windows 10 for the purpose of the review.
Performance
Here are the benchmarks this machine achieved:
- 3DMark: Ice Storm: 23290; Skydiver: 802; Cloudgate: 2013; Fire Strike: 253
- PCMark 8 Home: 1704
- PCMark 8 Work: 2029
- PCMark 8 Creative: 1238
- PCMark 8 Battery: 3 hours 21 minutes
- Cinebench 15: CPU: 121; GPU: 9.09 fps
- Geekbench 3 64-bit: Single-core: 1597; Multi-core: 2786
The Zoostorm 7270 turned out to be a pretty capable laptop and one that produced some of the best benchmark figures we've seen at this price (remember, it costs £200).
The Core M that powers the PC Specialist laptop we reviewed a few weeks ago managed to outclass it by about 32% on average, which is actually pretty good given the price difference.
The battery life is average at best in our test, but you need to bear in mind that it is an extreme case scenario and you will likely get more than that in real life.
Graphics was another bright spot for the Zoostorm 7270 compared to similarly priced laptops, with far higher numbers compared to say, the Lenovo B40 or the Ideapad S20.
All in all, a pretty decent performance.
Verdict
The Zoostorm is not a new laptop and we don't know how much longer it will be available on the market for. The fact that it doesn't come with the latest CPU (the 1037U is almost three-years-old) or OS (it runs on Windows 8.1) means that it is probably on borrowed time.
We liked
It is one of the fastest laptops in its price bracket thanks to an old but still capable processor. We liked the very portable form factor as well as the amount of connectors on board (which also includes a GbE Ethernet port).
We disliked
The input peripherals were well below average. The touchpad sensitivity ranges from being non-responsive to over-responsive while the keyboard has too many flaws to make it a long-term travelling companion.
Final verdict
If you are craving portability and have a limited budget, then the Zoostorm 7270 deserves a place on your shortlist. Its relatively powerful processor, generous system memory and ample hard disk storage mean that you won't be left short-changed. Shame about the keyboard and the touchpad though.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1nkLlz2
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