The Pegasus' price, performance and battery life are average for this group of laptops, and even its two-year warranty falls between the one and three-year warranties provided by its competitors.

However there are some aspects of the Pegasus that make it attractive enough to stand out from its rivals. The first thing we noticed was the Pegasus’ solid construction.

Some of these lightweight laptops are a little flimsy, with the panelling around the flat-screen display causing particular concern on a couple of models.

In contrast the Pegasus is solidly built and its screen panel looks to have been reinforced to prevent it from bending too much, thereby reducing the risk of damage to the screen.

We also liked the 12in screen itself, which was bright and colourful. It’ll be good for watching DVD films when you’re on a train or plane – though the highly reflective coating on the screen might be distracting if you’re typing numbers into a spreadsheet.

The other unusual feature of the Pegasus is the fact that it contains an AMD processor. Intel’s Core and Core 2 processors have hogged the limelight recently and this is the only laptop in our group test to have opted for AMD instead.

Its 1.6GHz Turion 64 X2 processor isn’t the fastest in this group, but is backed up by 1GB of memory and an ATI Radeon Express 1120 graphics chip. The combination is more than powerful enough for running office software and even a bit of multimedia editing work.

The Pegasus was also the clear winner in our 3D graphics tests, so it might be up to a bit of games-playing if you get bored watching DVDs on your travels.

See also Fujitsu-Siemens
HP Compaq
Packard Bell
Samsung NP
Sony Vaio
Evesham Lightbook
Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.