The Zepto Znote ever had a simple, but, user-friendly design, a good choice of materials and a good workmanship. These kept unchanged when it was upgraded with Intel's Penryn processorsl. The solid case feels due to the used plastics nice to the touch and the overall impression was good.

However, once again, alike the previously reviewed Zepto Znote 6625WD, there is the same flaw that the parts to not exactly fit together. Further details about the case of the Zepto notebook can be found in the Review Zepto Znote 6625WD notebook with T7300-CPU.

Also the interface equipment was not changed in the course of the CPU upgrade. Besides interfaces typical for this notebook category, e.g., four USB-2.0 ports and a card reader, the 6625WD is also equipped with a built-in webcam and a docking port, which is not usually available on multimedia notebooks.

Wired data communication is possible via  Gigabit-LAN. Bluetooth makes up-to-date wireless communication with peripherals possible. Furthermore, the Znote 6625WD supports the following wireless network connections: WLAN with 54-MBit/s and a 4965AGN module by Intel, which supports Draft-N data transfer rates of up to 300 MBit/s.

Shortcoming: Unfortunately a digital video out, like DVI and/or HDMI port, are neither available at the notebook itself nor at the optional docking station. Further details are available in  Review Zepto Znote 6625WD notebook with T7300-CPU.

Also the deviation of the brightness differs from the first 6625WD review. Due to our measurements, where we measure  the luminance in 9 areas of the display, we found out, that the brightness between the brightest area in the middle of the screen (168,4 cd/m²) and the darkest area in the left bottom corner (132.5 cd/m²) differ by 21.3 percent in mains operation. The evenness of luminance of the Zepto Znote 6625WD is 78.7 percent, which is average considering the notebook category. Compare: The Znote 6625WD with T7300-CPU reached 86.3 percent.

However, this unevenness does not really get obvious, if one displays bright backgrounds on the screen of the Znote 6625WD. If you look at the bright desktop for a longer time, the brightness seems to be rather balanced. Only the two bottom corners seem to be a little darker, if you look very carefully. In practice this should not really disturb, if you run multimedia applications or play computer games.

Compared to other reflecting displays, the horizontal viewing angle does not have a big impact on the picture quality - brilliant! Vertically, the viewing angles are average. Overall, the viewing angles of the 6625WD are alright. The display also scores points if it is directly compared to our reference TFT, a Viewsonic VP2030b. Besides that the colours are slightly cold and hard, the colour representation is rather neutral.

The Znote 6625WD is equipped with a fast middle-class video chip, a Geforce 8600M GT by Nvidia, which is equipped with 512 MB dedicated GDDR2 memory. Standard picture editing, multimedia, and video editing  are, therefore, no problem for 6625WD.

We used the Nvidia driver provided by Zepto (ForceWare 101.08) throughout the following graphic performance tests. It is already rather old (May 2007) and, therefore, not the best choice for current games. However, Zepto also provides an up-to-date video driver on the download page of the 6625WD – brilliant! At the time of writing you could download the ForceWare-156.54 and the -167.59 driver there. If you like to use even more up-to-date drivers, you can download such from well-known sites, e.g., LaptopVideo2Go.

The frames rates of Doom 3 time demo of the current Znote 6625WD with ForceWare-101.08 driver is about 5 to 30 percent higher than those of the Znote 6625WD with T7300 CPU.

However, the results of the  ego shooters Crysis are not consistent. Whilst the frames rates of the current 6625WD are about 10 to 14 lower, when running the CPU test with 'medium' details, 0xAA, 0xAF, and a resolution of 1,280 x 800 or 1,680 x 1,050 pixels, it is by about 2.4 to 4.4 percent better with low picture quality settings. In the GPU test the frame rate of the current Znote 6625WD is about 3 to 14.5 percent higher.

Alike the Znote 6625WD with T7300-CPU also the 6625WD with T9500 is not powerful enough for more than 'medium' details and reduced resolution of Crysis. If your main field of operation is computer games, it is noticeably that the performance is due to a high native resolution of the screen and the moderately clocked GDDR2 video memory not ideal anyway. This is of course also true for other notebooks with WSXGA+ screen and a middle-class video card, like a Geforce 8600M GT with GDDR2 memory, by different manufacturers.

Loudness

The current 6625WD was slightly louder in daily use than the predecessor Znote-6625WD notebook with T7300 CPU. Even in idle mode the small fan always runs, whereas the noise level ranges from 34.3 to 36.8 dB(A), which is a little louder than its predecessor (33.4 to 34.2 dB(A)). When the hard disk is accessed, you can sometimes hear a noise of 35,9 dB(A), which is hardly audible.

If the demands raise or under full load, the small fan speeds up and gets clearly louder. Under full load we measured a maximum noise level of moderate 43.1 dB(A). The uniform, monotonous noise is tolerable. Watching DVDs we measured an average noise level of low 36.8 dB(A) for the optical slot-in drive TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SN-T082L. When loading CDs or DVDs the slot-in burner gets really loud for a short time, whereas a noise level of nearly 60 (!) dB(A) is reached.

Temperature

The surface temperatures on the top side are alright. Even when run under load for a longer time, the maximum temperature is only 34.0° Celsius. The temperature increases much more at the bottom side and reaches a maximum of 45.7° Celsius. An average temperature of 37.8°Celsius measured at the bottom side exceeds thereby the average of the notebook category of this multi purpose multimedia notebook.