Reviews - Zepto Nox A15 laptop - a grand's worth of cool

[HEXUS]

Zepto may be a name you've not heard of, but the company has some cool laptops. We take a look at one that costs a grand.

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[Salazaar]

Ahem.

/pendant
It's 'toe the line' not 'tow the line'.

[trashcanmonkey]

what? what on earth are you talking about its u.g.l.y
a plastic black brick.

I can see the build quality from here.. just look at that the ports.. esp the network port. the crappy metal surround that's attached to the main board.. a gaping hole in the chassis around the port

i'm sorry, its really not that bad.. its just the fact that it has been labeled as a grands worth of cool that has gotten my goat. (Hexus now taking little xmas bonuses under the table humm?)

go out and buy a Sony or Macbook+Vista,

there's a grands worth of cool..

[evil1337]

I can see the build quality from here.. just look at that the ports.. esp the network port. the crappy metal surround that's attached to the main board.. a gaping hole in the chassis around the port

I was delighed to read this review...

I bought a NoxA15 about 3 weeks ago, and i opted for the 9650M-GT gpu and a copy of Vista HP64bit. To give you a quick rundown, the entire chassis SCREAMS IBM. The entire chassis is rubberised like the lid of my old Thinkpad, including the touchpad (which is a million times better than it sounds, trust me).

The gaping hole (using the ethernet and the usb ports as examples) are better than they look, as you end up a) being able to easily grab the cable out after use and b) have usb cables mount securely etc.

Its not the prettyist laptop ever, but its functional, not garish, and just so well built im amazed (for the record, my company is a Lenovo/IBM partner and our work 'tops are thinkpads, so using a thinkpad for comparison is one hell of a compliment IMHO.)

2 Issues....the machine was pre-installed with a 90 day trial of office, which included EVERY FRIKKIN LANGUAGE PACK on the planet, so took a couple of hours to uninstall. Secondly, the gpu driver 174.90 is dated and has some issues in some modern games (but using a hacked 180 driver has some weird power side effects).

But i aggree, one hell of a piece of kit for the money.

Mine is the same base spec (2.26mhz, 4gb ram, 1680x1050 panel) but a 320gb 7200rpm hdd, both the 6 AND 9 cell battery, fingerprint reader, and a second charger. And i got mine for 1030 with a 3 year RTB warranty.

[this_is_gav]

Good to hear that, as when I was reading through the review it was just screaming "THINKPAD RIVAL" at me. On the surface not much happening, but get up close and personal and it looks to oose some conservative class and functionality. The Lian-Li of notebooks if you will. Much better than the garish selection of Acers and Toshibas out there at the moment.

Only downsides from what I saw are the lack of firewire and only the 3 USB ports. Other than that it's something I'd consider if I were to replace my XPS M1530 (which won't happen too quickly either, as the keyboard is simply sublime).

[GavinS]

Seems overpriced.

You can get the HP DV5 (9600GT DDR2) or Samsung R560 (9600GS DDR2) with the same / similar spec for £300 less....

Until the end of November 2008, HP were doing £100 cashback deals and free 3 year warranty, both with online redemption. Unfortunately, both have now expired due to the advent of the Christmas period!

[miniyazz]

Slightly off-topic, what's going on with the Toshiba Satellite A300D-15B, listed in the comparisons as having 4GB RAM but only a 32-bit OS? A bit of a waste, no?

[Tarinder]

Seems overpriced.

You can get the HP DV5 or Samsung R560 with the same / similar spec for £300 less....

Yup, I agree. Knock a couple of hundred quid off and it would make for a decent high-end laptop.

[Tarinder]

Ahem.

/pendant
It's 'toe the line' not 'tow the line'.

Well spotted, sir, the 'e' and 'w' are just too close together.

[GavinS]

The Acer 5930G which comes with a 512mb 9600GT DDR3 would also be a good alternative and substantially cheaper too at £599.

Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4 GHz
4 GB DDR2 MB, Samsung PC-5300 (333 Mhz)
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - 512 GDDR3 Core: 500 MHz, Memory: 800 MHz
300 GB - 5400 rpm

[Breezey]

Abit dissaponted as nothing was mentioned about heat and noise.

[evil1337]

Abit dissaponted as nothing was mentioned about heat and noise.

I've not measured or anything scientific...but....

Yeah when you start hammering the gpu and cpu (i.e. Trying to run GTA4....bad idea i know...) you get a fairly audible noise. What i will say is this...when gaming, i used a headset therefore don't hear it.

If JUST the cpu is being worked, i.e. hammering VMWare, the fan spins up, but nowhere near as hard. These 45nm Penryn's are seriously good bits of kit!

Heat wise, again non-issue when cpu loaded, but can get toasty-ish when gaming hard.

Pity the speakers are so pants tho!

[Breezey]

I've not measured or anything scientific...but....

Yeah when you start hammering the gpu and cpu (i.e. Trying to run GTA4....bad idea i know...) you get a fairly audible noise. What i will say is this...when gaming, i used a headset therefore don't hear it.

If JUST the cpu is being worked, i.e. hammering VMWare, the fan spins up, but nowhere near as hard. These 45nm Penryn's are seriously good bits of kit!

Heat wise, again non-issue when cpu loaded, but can get toasty-ish when gaming hard.

Pity the speakers are so pants tho!

Yeah thats one thing that annoys me about my XPS M1530 the cooling system is absolout pants 1 tiny little hteapipe fan comes on all the time surfing the net, and when gaming well............good job i use a headset.