Compared to the sleek lines of the Dells and Sony, Asus’ A7S seems a little dated. But look past aesthetics and the A7S gives its rivals a lot to worry about. Just glance through the specifications (page 70), and you’ll see it’s a real bargain.

It may cost $2150 when Toshiba’s P200 is only $1525, but the A7S offers a far superior combination of power and features, which makes it an excellent desktop replacement.

The 17in LCD doesn’t have an HD resolution like the Dell XPS, but its 1440 x 900 pixels are more sensible on a panel of this size and it’s just as bright as the Dells’. Plus, Asus thoughtfully provides an HDMI output so you can connect the A7S to a larger HD screen, and there’s an optical S/PDIF output for surround sound.

The entertainment theme continues with a hybrid TV tuner, plus buttons on the front edge of the A7S for launching Media Center and controlling playback. It’s a shame there’s no remote control, but you do get a breakout cable that has S-Video and composite inputs for capturing video from analogue sources.

Power-wise, the 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 (our test unit had a slightly-faster 2.2GHz T7500) offers plenty of grunt and 2GB of DDR2 memory is included. With a 200GB hard disk running at 4200rpm, overall 2D application performance was a little slower at 0.98, but the A7S still feels responsive. Likewise, the GeForce 8400M G graphics card with 128MB of RAM isn’t a storming performer, but does offer some gaming potential – we recorded 19fps in Call of Duty 2 at 1024 x 768.

Many will appreciate the five USB ports, one of which cleverly doubles as an eSATA port, so you can easily connect the latest external hard disks. There’s also a media card reader, an ExpressCard/54 slot, mini-FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet. Battery life is a slight weakness; under light use it lasted 2hrs 18mins, but only 1hr 4mins with heavy use.

Asus finishes the package with a 1.3-megapixel webcam, a two-year collect-and-return warranty, a carry case and an optical mouse. If you can live with the looks and don’t need spectacular battery life, the A7S is great value.