eMachines M5310

Reviewed on 10/7/03    Release date: 7/28/03    If the eMachines M5310's stylish case and movie-friendly, wide-screen display don't catch your eye, its surprisingly low $1,199 price tag will. The notebook also has cutting-edge features such as FireWire, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, and 802.11g wireless networking. But a power system it's not: running on an AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ processor, it posted middling speed and battery-life scores, and its UMA graphics subsystem, which shares system memory, makes it unfit for serious gaming. If you want a budget-price wide-screen notebook for mainstream apps and movie watching, however, the M5310 deserves a closer look.

Design of eMachines M5310

The eMachines M5310 measures 14 by 10 by 1.4 inches (W, D, H) and weighs a reasonable 6.7 pounds; add nearly a pound if you tote the AC adapter. Despite its wide-screen dimensions, the notebook's charcoal-gray-and-silver color scheme makes it look sleek. Our only design gripe: the thermal port on the bottom of the notebook becomes uncomfortably hot after a while.

The wide-screen, 15.4-inch display comes with a native resolution of 1,280x800 pixels. It looks crisp, but we have one concern: when we put any sort of pressure on the screen casing or we moved the display, a ripple effect appeared in the area slightly to the left of the screen latch--a bad sign for the longevity of the display.

The responsive keyboard offers full-size editing keys but undersize Ctrl and Alt keys.

The embedded scroll bar makes it easy to surf Web pages.

The keyboard offers nice, tight, tactile response and full-size editing keys but undersize Ctrl and Alt keys. The touchpad feels responsive, and it has a convenient scrolling area for moving quickly up and down documents or Web pages. Two speakers on the front edge of the notebook produce decent volume, including just enough bass to watch a DVD without headphones, although a pair is included. Above the keyboard, there are four quick-launch application buttons and volume controls.

The usual assortment of ports lines the M5310's sides. Look on the left side, and you'll find Ethernet, 56Kbps modem, headphone and mike jacks, and a Type II PC Card slot; on the back, three USB 2.0, one mini FireWire, an S-Video-out, a VGA-out, and parallel ports. The left side also holds the fixed DVD/CD-RW combo drive.

Features of eMachines M5310

The eMachines M5310's sole configuration includes an AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. An ATI IGP 320M graphics chip shares 64MB of main memory and powers the display. The M5310 also comes with a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and integrated 802.11g wireless networking--two features usually found only in pricier notebooks.

A decent bundle of software for home users accompanies the eMachines M5310. In addition to Windows XP Home Edition (with a real license and an installation disc), you get Microsoft Works Suite 2003, Microsoft Money 2003, and Encarta Online, plus 90-day trials of AOL 8.0 and Norton AntiVirus 2003.

Performance of eMachines M5310

Several factors contributed to the M5310's mediocre scores in our mobile-performance tests. Notebooks using the AMD Athlon XP-M tend to perform poorly in our tests; all three similarly configured Athlon machines in our small test group lagged far behind most Pentium-based notebooks. Their slower, 4,200rpm hard drives and UMA graphics subsystems, which share the notebook's main memory, also created significant drag. This level of performance is sufficient for mainstream applications, but the M5310 will struggle with gaming and other heavy-hitting applications.

Mobile application performance  (Longer bars indicate better performance) BAPCo MobileMark2002 performance rating

Sharp PC-AV18P 101  eMachines M5310 97  Fujitsu LifeBook S series 94

To measure mobile application performance and battery life, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's MobileMark2002. MobileMark measures both application performance and battery life concurrently using a number of popular applications (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5.0).

Performance analysis written by CNET Labs assistant lab manager Eric Franklin.

Find out more about how we test notebooks.

System configurations:

eMachines M5310
Windows XP Home; 2GHz Athlon XP-M 2400+; 448MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Radeon IGP 320M 64MB (shared); Toshiba MK4021GAS 40GB 4,200rpm

Fujitsu LifeBook S series
Windows XP Pro; 1.5GHz Athlon XP-M 1700+; 496MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Radeon IGP 320M 16MB (shared); Toshiba MK6021GAS 60GB 4,200rpm

Sharp PC-AV18P
Windows XP Professional; 1.53GHz Athlon XP-M 1800+; 224MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; S3 Graphics Pro Savage DDR 32MB (shared); Fujitsu MHT2040AT SP 40GB 4,200rpm

Battery life of eMachines M5310

The eMachines M5310's three-hour battery life from its 14.8V, 4,400mAh battery is satisfactory--and it's also the longest of the Athlon notebooks in this roundup. But it was a narrow margin of victory: its closest competitor, the Fujitsu LifeBook S series, with its 10.8V, 4,000mAh battery, lasted only seven minutes less. The Sharp PC-AV18P, which had the highest mobile-performance score in this roundup, paid for that achievement by having the shortest battery life of the bunch.

Battery life  (Longer bars indicate better performance) BAPCo MobileMark2002 battery life minutes

eMachines M5310 177  Fujitsu LifeBook S series 170  Sharp PC-AV18P 164

To measure mobile application performance and battery life, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's MobileMark2002. MobileMark measures both application performance and battery life concurrently using a number of popular applications (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5.0).

Performance analysis written by CNET assistant labs manager Eric Franklin.

Find out more about how we test notebooks.

System configurations:

eMachines M5310
Windows XP Home; 2GHz Athlon XP-M 2400+; 448MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Radeon IGP 320M 64MB (shared); Toshiba MK4021GAS 40GB 4,200rpm

Fujitsu LifeBook S series
Windows XP Pro; 1.5GHz Athlon XP-M 1700+; 496MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Radeon IGP 320M 16MB (shared); Toshiba MK6021GAS 60GB 4,200rpm

Sharp PC-AV18P
Windows XP Professional; 1.53GHz Athlon XP-M 1800+; 224MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; S3 Graphics Pro Savage DDR 32MB (shared); Fujitsu MHT2040AT SP 40GB 4,200rpm

Service and support of eMachines M5310

The M5310 comes with a one-year warranty and a promised five-day turnaround time on depot repairs. Two- and three-year extended warranty plans are available for $99 and $139, respectively. Phone support is free during the length of the warranty and costs $20 per incident thereafter. Technicians are available daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. PT, but it's a toll call. The nicely illustrated setup sheet and user guide cover all the basics, as well as some of the software bundled with the machine. The support Web site offers live chat support, e-mail to tech support, FAQs, and driver downloads.

To find out more about how this product's warranty really stacks up and what you should look for in terms of service and support, take a look at CNET's hardware warranty explainer.