AMD Llano A-Series APU Sabine Notebook Platform Review

Image Quality, Keyboard and Speakers

The 14.0″ Compal laptop has a screen resolution of 1366×768 that looks sharp, but nothing more than what we would consider average when it comes to laptop screen quality in 2011. The notebook has a built-in webcam that
features a 1.3MP lens just above the display.

Compal uses a full-sized keyboard on the
notebook and the bad news is that is does flex pretty badly. If
you push down on it with one finger and mash on it you can see if flex a good deal.

This Compal notebook does uses an interesting touchpad that deserves a mention. For starters it doesn’t feature independent left and right
mouse buttons or have a lock button to turn the touchpad off, which is something that we prefer on notebooks. The touchpad is fairly good sized and is lined up with the space bar and nearly the same width, which is nice. One thing that we found interesting is that the palm rest area
has a textured surface on it and so does the touchpad area, but to a lesser degree. Most touchpads we encounter are smooth, so this was a bit strange. This touchpad does support multi-touch
gestures, which allows you to easily scroll
through web pages and rotate or pinch-zoom in and out of images.

This notebook has the power button under the display and just above the keyboard. Compal tried to give this notebook a touch of class by using a metal bezel above the keyboard, but as you can see the right corner of the bezel was already starting to come off as the adhesive used wasn’t good enough.

Audio quality on this notebook is okay, but don’t expect it to fill even a small room. The two speakers are under the metal bezel and the holes in this bezel are so tiny it can’t help the speakers by any means. You have the typical tinny sound that one has grown accustomed to on mainstream notebooks.

When it comes to audio, image and keyboard quality there isn’t much to write home on with this model.