It’s been an illuminating test for many reasons – not least the chance to test a dozen of the world’s most extravagant notebooks – but one of the most interesting themes to come out of this particular Labs is that the march of progress is, indeed, inevitable.

This is plain to see by comparing the line-ups from issue 169’s Luxury Laptops Labs and the dozen machines that we’ve got lined up for our Ultimate Laptop face-off.

Last year, for instance, there were no quad-core processors in sight: the fastest was a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 crammed into the Sony VAIO VGN-FW11ZU. Almost everything else in the Labs was a T-series Core 2 Duo. Contrast that with the parts inside the Ultimate Laptops: alongside plenty of powerful dual-core parts there are quad core processors and even an Extreme-Edition quad core CPU that delivered the best benchmark score we’ve ever seen from a notebook.

Portable graphics hardware has seen a healthy upgrade over the last twelve months, too. Most systems last year had Nvidia GeForce 8000-series parts, with one – the Dell XPS M1730 – including two in SLI configuration. This year, the sea-change in the desktop graphics market is also evident in notebooks: most machines this month sport ATI chips, with a couple including explosive CrossFireX.

Consequently, year-on-year performance has seen a huge leap: last year, the highest 2D benchmark score was 1.4, but this year, it’s 1.59 – and, with quad core processors in tow, multi-threaded applications don’t pose a threat like they used to, either.

Gamers will be pleased by progress, too: one year ago, five systems in the Labs couldn’t cope with our medium-quality Crysis benchmark, but now one system has ploughed through the very high-quality test – which most desktop PCs struggle with – at 30fps.

Components aside, the features included with these expensive machines have improved dramatically. The last time we tested £1,000+ laptops, HDMI ports and eSATA sockets were rarely seen luxuries, but now they’re so common that we’re disappointed when they aren’t included.

A year ago, standard hard disks with capacities of 250GB or 320GB were deemed excessive – but, this month, 500GB is more common, and several machines have SSD drives as a main system drive alongside a normal disk for storage. One even has a pair of smaller SSD drives in RAID 0 for lightning-quick access.

Plenty of other features used to be exotic but are now par for the course. Blu-ray drives are popping up on any laptop with a screen large enough to handle HD resolutions, and DisplayPort outputs were featured on four systems on test – with the Apple MacBook Air and Pro including Mini DisplayPort instead of Mini DVI, which featured a year ago.

Such obvious progress in every area makes for interesting contrasts, but it also begs the obvious question – what will be in the world’s best laptops in another twelve months?

Let me know which features you’d like to see – or what developments and innovations you think will be next year’s breakthrough mobile technology – in the comments section below.

Take a look at the pictures above and you can play a thrilling game of spot the difference. Is it the integrated Wacom graphics tablet lurking to the right of the trackpad? No, sorry, they both have one of those, try again. Is it the integrated X-Rite Pantone colour calibration sensor for discerning design professionals? No, you’re getting a teeny bit warmer though.

Ok, so the eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted that one of the laptops is at a slightly different angle, but there’s something more, something novel and mysterious hidden in the lid of the W700DS. 

The W700DS actually sports a secondary display which shimmies out from its right-hand side. Measuring 10.6 inches across, we presume it’ll be furnished with a netbook-alike native resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels or thereabouts – just enough for stowing away your Outlook inbox and all those pesky menus and palettes which would otherwise clog up the lovely full-HD 17 inch display to its left. It’s a pretty zany addition to a laptop, we’ll grant you that, but we think it might just catch on. After all, while you might be able to cart around a hefty desktop replacement – Lenovo claim that the non-DS W700 weighs a relatively modest 3.83kg – we doubt many professionals could be bothered to, or even capable of slinging a 17in TFT in their bag.

And, whether you think that secondary display is a stroke of genius or a sheer flight of fancy, the W700DS’ allure certainly isn’t damaged by any qualms about its core specification. With the top of the range model boasting an Intel Core 2 Quad processor barrelling along at 2.53GHz, up to 4GB of DDR3 memory and the latest Nvidia Quadro FX graphics chipset, there’s little for which the W700DS will be found wanting. Except, that is, its price. With the range-topping W700 coming in at a breathtaking £2,649, and that’s excluding the VAT, we dread to think how extravagantly priced its twin-headed cousin will be. Rest assured, though, we’ll be badgering Lenovo mercilessly until they give us our very own W700DS to play with.