A visual examination
The aesthetically-pleasing Nox A15 ships with a soft-touch, matte chassis that feels a little suede-like on first contact. We're impressed by it insofar as it's different from the rest, and it gives the notebook an ostentatious feel befitting a £1,000 machine. What's also cool is that the top-mounted Zepto logo is highlighted when powered on - a nice touch.
However it feels heavier than its 2.83kg weight would infer, meaning that it's not particular adept as a carry-all-day machine.
The downside of the velvety finish is that it smudges easily, as shown by the picture below. The front is an exercise in minimalism, with six blue LEDs - status indicators, on the left-hand side, puncturing the dark-grey finish.
Turn it around one-quarter and you see the ExpressCard slot and 5-in-1 card-reader, volume-adjustment wheel, audio ports (including a red light-emitting S/PDIF), two USB2.0 and an HDMI port. The ventilation grille spews out pretty hot air when the laptop is placed under prolonged load, so watch out for that.
Zepto will be releasing a docking station this month that adds in extra multimedia goodness such as extra USB2.0 ports and HDMI and digital-out. Not much use here as the laptop ships with these anyway, but practical for lighter notebooks in the range.
Minimalism is taken to a new level when looking at the back, there's simply nothing there. Zepto could have included ports here because the screen-pivoting doesn't interfere with lower portion of the notebook. The battery, however, does take a chunk of the space up, and an optional 9-cell model would protrude out of the back.
