Gigabyte's G-MAX N512 notebook features a 15" SXGA+ TFT LCD with an unusual native resolution of 1400x1050 pixels. Viewing Windows XP at this resolution made us wonder why other laptop manufacturers don't adopt it. For us, it provided an ideal balance between sharpness, desktop area and text legibility.

The screen itself is good, with viewing angles of 40 degrees horizontal left and right, and contrast ratio of 250 nits. It provided a clear, sharp image with no sign of ghosting on fast moving images, as you would expect from a modern LCD screen. However, at times (and especially on the Windows XP desktop) the colours seemed slightly washed out. The display specs include a luminosity uniformity of 1.25 (5pts) / 1.65 (13pts).

Sound System

When it comes to notebooks, manufactures still invariably try to integrate sound into a frame which is too thin for the task. The Gigabyte N512 notebook features the SOUNDMAX 16-bit integrated audio chipset, but even this can only go so far when speakers measure less than an inch.

The sound quality was good through headphones or attached speakers. Bass was decent, as was the clarity of music or movies. The built-in speakers are fairly hopeless, as you would expect from a laptop. Gigabyte makes no special claims about the speakers' abilities, and they performed as we had expected they would - tiny, bassless, and well, like you would expect from something so small.

One nifty feature of the notebook's sound system is that the headset jack double as a S/PDIF out for external powered speakers. It can even support 5.1 speaker combinations for DVD and gaming, provided there is an external encoder present.