Picking the Acer TM6292 up you’ll notice that it weighs 2kg. As such it isn’t quite ultraportable, but it doesn’t feel too big. In fact, it weighs that much because it’s robustly built, with a strong lid and a well-designed keyboard, and the speakers are by far the highest quality here.

It’s also a stylish notebook, and it deservedly came top in our judges’ overall assessment of ergonomics.

With a 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 inside, along with 2GB of RAM, performance isn’t a problem. A score of 1.05 is up with the far dearer Asus and Sony laptops, possibly helped by XP being slightly less demanding than Vista. And this speed is coupled with a strong battery life of more than 4hrs 30mins under light-use conditions – again, not quite as long as the best, but certainly long enough to make it a viable portable choice.

The hard disk holds 160GB, plus there’s a DVD writer and a card reader that supports the SD/MMC, MS and xD-Picture formats. Communication is handled by the draft-n wireless adapter and gigabit ethernet, and there’s also Bluetooth and infrared. A webcam sits above the screen and there’s a seven-pin S-Video out port to go with the usual D-SUB output. A fingerprint reader adds to the level of security and rounds off a good feature set.

The Acer TravelMate 6292 may not top the chart in any one area, but its combination of features, speed and decent battery life looks extremely appealing when the price is taken into consideration. Some may prefer the long battery of the Sony, but for under $1500 there’s simply no better all-round laptop this month than the little 12.1in Acer.