Micro Express JHL9050

Micro Express has done it again. Following speed demons such as the JFL9226 and the IFL9025, the JHL9050 provides power and performance in spades. If only the company could iron out the lingering design faux pas, there'd be little to stop this unassuming $1199 all-purpose laptop from climbing to the top of the budget-notebook hill.

The JHL9050 comes equipped with Windows Vista Business; it's built for productivity, too, with 3GB of RAM and Intel's Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz T9550 processor. Impressive hardware begets impressive WorldBench 6 scores: It earned a mark of 110 during our litany of tests. In battery-life tests, it lasted 3 hours, 23 minutes--about the average for all-purpose laptops we've played with in the labs.

Powered by a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650, this portable will help you achieve some of your gaming aspirations. Unreal Tournament 3, for instance, posted a respectable 65 frames per second when running at a resolution of 1024 by 768 in our tests. Compare that with the marks of the MSI GT627, another 15-inch, game-ready laptop. That $1150 portable scored within the same range (it nailed 62 fps in Unreal Tournament 3 and snagged a respectable 101 in WorldBench 6).

Micro Express's laptop pulls ahead of the MSI, however, thanks to a slightly higher screen resolution. The JHL9050's 15-inch screen runs at a movie-buff-friendly 1366 by 768 resolution. (MSI, did you really think a gaming rig with a 1280-by-800-pixel resolution was a good idea?) The screen of the JHL9050 remains bright and crisp whether you're in a low-light environment or in a typical fluorescent-lit office; it's even usable outdoors, though direct sunlight can produce a bit of glare.