ViewSonic ViewBook Pro

We've already seen the HP Envy 15 take inspiration from Apple, but it seems there's always room for more at the Cupertino school of design. Now, it's the turn of the ViewSonic ViewBook Pro (part code: VNB131) to doff its cap to the MacBook blueprint we all know so well.

The photographs of the ViewBook Pro on the box, for instance, are near-identical to those of Apple's laptops. The internal packaging is a tribute too. And, once you've extracted it from that packaging, you'll find familiar touches abound around the sturdy chassis: the logo is in the same place and printed in a similar font; the wristrest is free of stickers; and even the underside of the machine is smooth and uncluttered.
Spend more time with the ViewBook, though, and its own strengths come to the fore. It's a handsome machine for starters: its matte-black finish, tapered front edge and minimal design make it look more attractive than many laptops at twice the price. And that uncluttered look is offset by the chrome hinges and power button, which are small enough to look understated rather than garish.

The ViewBook is a svelte machine, too, with a 28mm-thick body and 1.6kg weight, but critically it doesn't feel flimsy. The base feels firm, the wristrest sturdy, and there's plenty of protection for the ViewBook's 13.3in screen. Despite a worryingly thin 5mm profile, the lid is stiff and solid: the desktop didn't distort when we flexed and prodded it. The marriage of strong frame and that light weight means we'd have few qualms about slinging the ViewBook in a bag on a day-to-day basis.

You can reduce that weight even further by pulling out the optical drive and replacing it with a plastic blanker, which is supplied in the box. This drops the machine's weight by 136g - not much you may think, but every little helps if you're going to be lugging a laptop around all day.

The keyboard is good, and matches the rest of the unit for quality, with a solid base, wide and responsive keys, and a sensible layout. Battery life is fair too, with the ViewBook's 4,400mAh power pack lasting for five hours in our light-use test and just over half that length of time in our heavy-use benchmark.

And you can boost that life by 50% by slipping the optional extra battery into the optical drive bay. It's a decent result that's 30 minutes better than the best-in-class Samsung Q320, but bear in mind that the Samsung is a far quicker (albeit heavier) machine.
While the screen isn't perfect, it remains worthy of praise. With a 13.3in diagonal, it's the right size for a resolution of 1,280 x 800 (although, as ever, we'd like a higher resolution still), and it's also bright.

Our criticisms mainly focus on its colour reproduction: it has a cold feel, giving whites a slight blue cast, and because the viewing angle is narrow you have to be in the perfect position to see colours as they're meant to be seen.

But the trackpad is the main item on our hitlist: we had to press hard to get the cursor to move at all, and found the pad to be sluggish, imprecise and inconsistent in operation.

Even doubling the sensitivity settings failed to help,
and to make matters worse, the accompanying pair of buttons were far too stiff to be comfortable. The result is a trackpad that's among the worst we've had the displeasure to use.

Also bear in mind that this machine isn't built for speed. There's nothing inherently wrong with the low voltage 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7300 processor - a score of 0.64 in our application benchmarks means it's significantly faster than a netbook. But that speed boost means it's still far better suited to light duties, and makes the ViewBook Pro feel more like a second machine than a main PC.

This leaves us in a quandary. There are many things we like about this laptop: its pleasing design, the inclusion of a DVD writer, its solid battery life, and its light weight. But then you have a truly dreadful trackpad, and a price that pushes it some distance away from the netbooks that ViewSonic surely has in its sights.

If you need a second machine to take on your travels and it must include an optical drive, then the ViewBook won't disappoint. But we're still more tempted by the 2.18kg Samsung Q320, which has substantially more grunt when you need it.
 
Price when reviewed: £590 (£679 inc VAT)