Zepto's Nox A15 is quite a stylish number, with more than a little of the Apple Mac about its design.

The case is very stylish, compact and curvy at the edges, with no extraneous bulges and nothing to detract from the clean lines.

It's reasonably light, too, at 2.75kg – not as light as they get, but certainly easily portable. The model we looked at uses an Intel Pentium P8400 processor, which is in the middle of the range in power terms, and 4GB of memory. There's a 320GB hard disk and a DVD writer for further storage.

The Nvidia Geforce 9600M GT graphics card with 512MB of memory means it can hold its own for recent games, albeit with detail levels turned down a little. General performance was also very impressive – it's more than capable of dealing with office tasks and photo and video editing.

The 15.4in widescreen display is excellent, with clear, sharp text and graphics, and bright colours. Various screen options are available – it's possible to reduce the cost by going for one with a lower resolution than the 1,680x1,050 pixels on our test model.

It has an HDMI output for connection to high-definition screens (or to newer standard monitors using an adapter) as well as three USB ports, a memory card reader, and network connection (it also connects to all wireless networks).

There is a 12-month warranty, under which it will collect the computer if it breaks, and return it by courier. If you're a Linux fan, you can also choose to have it supplied without an operating system, and install Linux yourself, which cuts the cost.

The one we looked at came with Vista Home Premium – it's possible to select Home Basic as well, but we would recommend paying the £30 difference for the Premium version.

The fact is that £1,200 is a lot to pay for this computer. It's justified in the computer's looks and quality build – it's extremely well put together. But if those things aren't the most important factors in a computer, you'd be able to save a good few hundred pounds by going for a less good-looking model.