The ET2203’s display is quite glorious once you have made the right adjustments, and both computer use and media playback is excellent. Unfortunately, the touchscreen functions require firm presses rather than light strokes, which becomes all the more noticeable when dragging and scrolling. Although you can calibrate touch accuracy, there does not seem to be any way of adjusting touch sensitivity.

Despite being small, the wireless keyboard and mouse are top-quality items

Our benchmark test results are also rather disappointing, not helped by the limitations of the computer running 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium and the system’s inability to address more than 3GB of the installed 4GB of memory. This is a shame since some of the benchmarks, such as for Gaming, hint at the PC’s potential to perform better than this if the Windows 7 installation had been appropriately optimised.

The bundled software includes an entertaining collection of touchscreen utilities for playing with photos, media files, online games, sticky notes and so on. I freely admit that Eee Cam gave me more minutes of mirth than I ever expected from a webcam application, although Eee Vibe’s themed web radio stations were less interesting than anticipated.

Verdict

A street price of £819 is fair value for this well-built PC, despite my reservations about performance. The quality keyboard and mouse, as well as stylish case design and clever hardware features such as the touch-LED display controls, reveal Asus’ attention to detail. However, the heavy-handed touch sensitivity detracts from the ET2203’s otherwise luxurious feel. ®

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