Sharp WideNote M4000 Review

It's a shame to dim the WideNote's 13.3-inch-diagonal display, because it's one of the best laptop screens we've seen. Sharp boasts that the LCD offers a CRT-class 300 nits of brightness, as well as the glossy black finish and high-contrast colors that are all the rage now (see Sony's XBrite, Fujitsu's Crystal View, et al).

Its 1,280 by 800 resolution strikes us as just right for panoramic DVD viewing and multiwindow productivity without making pixels so tiny it's hard to read Windows menus and icon names. (We saw no bad pixels in our test system's screen.)

About the only users who wouldn't be satisfied with the Sharp's graphics are avid gamers, thanks to the 915GM chipset's predictably all-work-and-no-play 3D performance: Running on AC power, the M4000 managed 56 frames per second in Quake III Arena, but skidded to an unplayable 16 fps in the more demanding Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, 4 fps in AquaMark3, and a humble 114 in Futuremark's 3DMark05 benchmark.

The WideNote did better in productivity-oriented benchmarks, with a BAPCo SysMark 2004 score of 131 (Internet Content Creation 150, Office Productivity 114) and PCMark05 score of 1,337 (CPU 2,083; memory 1,798; hard disk 2,993; graphics 519).

The Right Type

You'll find a Secure Digital memory-card slot on the front edge of the 9.0 by 12.3 by 1.4-inch WideNote, with a V.92 modem port at the rear. The left side has a VGA port, headphone and microphone jacks, and one PC Card slot. On the right, along with the skinny DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, are two USB 2.0 ports and a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port. We feel that only two USB ports and no FireWire port is a bit on the skimpy side, but we admit the lightweight laptop isn't likely to be used for heavy-duty, FireWire-linked video editing.

We've already commented on the keyboard's desktop-worthy keyboard, but it has a quietly firm typing feel as well as a full 19mm pitch and 2.5mm stroke. There isn't room for dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys (Sharp uses the customary Fn-key-plus-cursor-arrows alternative), but we were glad to find the Delete key in the ideal place at the top right corner -- and grumbled as we always do when the Fn key usurps the Ctrl key's proper position at the bottom left corner. The Synaptics touchpad worked smoothly and surely.

Our only other nit-picks may have been due to our test system's status as a practically pre-production unit (the owner's manual was in Japanese, though it was lovely to see the brushed-aluminum palm rest without Intel and Microsoft stickers all over it).

The battery latches were slightly loose; we heard and felt the battery shift a few millimeters whenever we put the Sharp into or took it out of our lap, and once we grabbed the PC off a desk and the battery stayed behind. The system's audio was quite loud, noisy enough to irritate seatmates with Windows' startup song even when set to just one notch above silence. And it occasionally took an interminable two minutes to boot when powered on.

Along with the starter edition of Norton AntiVirus 2005, Sharp preinstalls a CD mastering program and InterVideo's WinDVD, supplementing the last with a proprietary automatic contrast enhancer -- well, maybe slight enhancer -- that it calls SharpFX. The operating system is Windows XP Professional SP2.

Sharp doesn't have as familiar a retail-store presence as Sony or Toshiba, and some of the company's previous portables -- a magazine-thin but underpowered subnotebook; a pricey, heavy laptop with gimmicky 3D screen -- have struck us as out of the mainstream. By contrast, the WideNote deserves wide attention: We waffled a bit because of the CD instead of DVD burner, but this lightweight, long-lasting performer deserves our rare five-star review stamp.

Pros:

• Under 4 pounds, but with a good-sized, gorgeous widescreen display and desktop-caliber keyboard
• Very good battery life, even without relying on its pushbutton power-settings-switcher

Cons:

• DVD-ROM/CD-RW instead of DVD±RW drive
• Display is dim at all but its brightest backlight settings