Zepto Znote 3214W

It might look passable from the outside, but when you flip the lid on the Zepto Znote 3214W it soon becomes apparent that it won't be winning any beauty contests. Next to the Toshiba and Compaq, it's just too boxy. Still, style isn't the be-all and end-all of a notebook; the Zepto's main strength lies out of sight.

Thanks to a 7,200mAh battery - the highest capacity this month - it clocked up almost six hours under light use. That's half an hour longer than anything else here, and the closest you'll get to a full working day. The trade-off is that the battery protrudes an inch from the back of the notebook, which could make it a little awkward to fit in some bags, plus you get a 14.1in screen rather than the 15.4in of most others. This does mean that the Zepto is relatively light, however, at 2.5kg.

That screen also loses nothing in resolution over the 15.4in models, and very little is lost in terms of keyboard space. Everything is where it should be and none of the keys have been chopped to fit, although the key action is a little clicky. Zepto compensates by adding plenty of shortcut buttons above the keyboard, including a useful USB power switch, allowing you to charge USB devices from the battery without the laptop switched on.

The combination of a 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo T5250 and 1GB of RAM means the 3214W isn't hugely powerful, scoring 0.72 in our benchmarks. But there's a spare DIMM socket and, as it uses the Intel 965GM chipset, Zepto adds a wireless module compatible with 802.11 draft-n. This nod to the future is, however, tempered by the inclusion of an 80GB hard disk - other models managed twice that capacity - and the lack of Gigabit Ethernet.

It's the basics that let down the Zepto, from the functional styling to the mediocre components. The Zepto's major strength is its six-hour battery life, but even this isn't enough to depose the award-winning Hi-Grade with its nearly-as-good five-hour battery life and superior components.

Author: David Bayon