Chillblast Prestige i5-4200SH review

The Prestige i5-4200SH has great staying power away from the mains and it lasted 9h 5m in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness. This is superb for such a power hungry laptop, although using more demanding programs will drain it faster.

The only thing holding the Prestige i5-4200SH back from true greatness is its 15.6in screen. On the whole, colours looked largely accurate thanks to its high sRGB colour gamut score of 78.8 per cent, but its contrast levels were very low. We normally expect to see a contrast ratio of at least 400:1 on a laptop of this price, but we measured a ratio of just 263:1. This meant we struggled to pick out the fine shadow detail in our high contrast test photos, but the amount of detail on show did improve slightly when we tilted the screen forwards slightly. You’ll need to keep the screen angled just right for watching films, though, as tilting it too far back caused a huge shift in contrast that completely obscured everything onscreen.

The laptop’s black levels were also much higher than normal, as we recorded a black level of 1.03cd/m2. This meant blacks appeared almost grey in our solid colour tests, and our solid blacks also revealed that the lower half of the screen was lighter than the top half. This means the Prestige i5-4200SH isn’t best suited for fine photo editing, but we barely noticed it when browsing the web or writing text documents.

Screen issues aside, the Chillblast Prestige i5-4200SH is excellent value. With enough power to beat a Core i7 Ultrabook and even rival the Macbook Pro, this is a seriously capable laptop that can handle almost anything you throw at it. The display could be better, but you’ll struggle to find a faster laptop for less. It wins a Best Buy award.