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Mesh’s Edge 15 is the only laptop here to have a built-in Blu-ray drive for watching high-definition movies on disc. The 15.6in display has only a 720p (1,366×768) resolution, but that’s good enough for movies to look stunning on a screen of this size. The display is bright, with vibrant colours and wide viewing angles. Alternatively, if you have a 1080p TV, there’s an HDMI output, so you can watch movies at their full resolution. The speakers are loud and clear, but lack bass. Either headphones or external speakers would be preferable for watching movies. If you’d rather play games, the 512MB Mobility Radeon HD 4650 graphics chip can handle demanding titles. It managed 30fps in our Call of Duty 4 test, which is smooth and playable. For more serious tasks, the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P8700 processor and 4GB of RAM made it one of the fastest laptops we’ve tested. Its overall score of 78 made it the fastest laptop on test by a good margin. The Edge lasted just over three hours in our light-usage battery test, which isn’t bad. Playing a Blu-ray movie, which is a more power-hungry task, the battery lasted for one hour and 48 minutes. The curvy, ribbed black plastic case is a matter of taste, but feels sturdy enough. The touchpad is large and accurate, but its buttons feel spongy, as does the keyboard, which can make long periods of typing uncomfortable. The cursor keys are narrower than the others, while the Control and Fn keys have swapped places. These are easy to get used to, though. There aren’t any FireWire or eSATA ports for connecting external storage, but there are four USB ports. If you still need a dial-up modem, the Edge is one of the few laptops to come with one built in. More useful for most people is the large 500GB hard disk.
Considering its top all-round performance and built-in Blu-ray drive, the Edge 15 is a great-value entertainment laptop. It wins our Best Buy award.
