As laptops take an ever increasing chunk of the home user PC market, it comes as no real surprise to find that most of the major players have at least one gaming notebook on their books, one of the latest of which is the Voyager C720 from Evesham. Not only is it faster in overall performance as well as gaming performance than some of its nearest rivals, it adds insult to injury by being priced significantly lower than many of them.

The Voyager C720 is built around Nvidia's latest and most powerful mobile graphics GPU to date, the GeForce Go 7800GTX. This is a slightly down-tuned version of its mighty desktop sibling, the GeForce 7800GTX. In fact the memory and core speeds are more akin to the reference desktop 7800GT; 400MHz core and 550MHz DDR (effective 1,100MHz) memory clock speeds. Just for comparison, the desktop 7800GTX runs 430MHz and 1,200MHz core and memory speeds respectively. The mobile chipset also keeps the 256MB of GDDR3 memory, 24 pixel pipelines and eight vertex shaders of the desktop architecture.

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So what does all this mean? Well, when tested at 1,024 by 768 resolution the Voyager C720 gave a 3Dmark05 score of 6,830, only dropping to 6,020 when tested at the screen's native 1,440 by 900 resolution. If this means nothing to you then how about an fps (frames per second) score of 70.15 at 1,024 x 768 when benched using Far Cry, dropping to 67.5fps at the native resolution. And remember, we're talking about a laptop here.

The rest of the system is equally impressive. Our review machine came with an Intel Pentium M 770 processor clocked at 2.13GHz (although the basic C720 option is for a 2GHz Pentium M 760 which will save you £110 + VAT), Intel's i915 chipset and a gigabyte of PC4200 DDR2 memory, so you have plenty of muscle to do other jobs as well as playing games.

If any thing lets the Voyager C720 down, it's the way it looks. Compared to Dell's Inspiron XPS Gen 2 for example, the Clevo chassis makes it look a bit of a Plain Jane, but on the other hand it's a lot thinner and sleeker than most of the opposition. Still, weighing in at 3.8kg, its not one you'll want to carry around with you.

The 17-inch WXGA (1,440 x 900 pixel) X-Bright screen is a joy to look at, but if that's not good enough for you, Evesham offers a 17-inch WSXGA (1,680 x 1,050 pixel) screen with built-in camera and Bluetooth for an extra £126.80 (+ VAT) and if your budget can stretch to it, it's a worthwhile investment. A real plus point is the inclusion of a DVI output port so you can connect to an external TFT for dual display or, as many gamers will do, to a larger monitor.

For storage the Voyager C720 comes with an 80GB, 5,400 rpm SATA hard drive, but again other options are available. You also get a Dual Layer DVD-RW drive, built-in Flash card reader supporting MS, MS Pro, SD and MMC cards, and a PC Card slot. To connect to the outside world you have the choice between Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN or a V.90 modem, and four USB 2.0 ports are also provided.

The Voyager C720 comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home edition pre-installed, with the software bundle made up of Microsoft Works 8 and Roxio Easy Media Creator 7. Evesham backs the notebook with its Silver 3-year Warranty; first year In-Home service, second and third years Return-to-Base.

This is a stunningly fast desktop replacement notebook which has graphics performance on par with the best desktop PCs. The price is equally stunning. This machine is only really let down by its appearance, and that's a minor issue.