Labs

As you might expect from an Apple product, the MacBook is a thing of beauty. Its glossy white finish looks fantastic, and it feels sturdy and well made. While the other laptops in the group have ports and slots scattered around their bases, the MacBook has a simple array of ports on the left hand side and a neat slot-loading CD drive on the right. This minimalist

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design may look good, but it leaves the MacBook with a big shortage of standard features. There are only two USB2.0 ports, no modem and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive instead of a DVD writer, which is almost unheard-of in a modern laptop. DVD films look great on the high-contrast glossy screen, which is bright with good colour saturation and contrast.

The MacBook is a joy to use. The keyboard's keys are spaced far apart, which makes it hard to hit the wrong key when typing. The touchpad is enormous, although it's not the most accurate in the group. The MacBook has a dual-core processor but didn't do too well in our 2D tests, coming near the bottom of the group. Battery life is excellent, with the MacBook lasting over four hours in our light use test.

Apple's MacBook is a gorgeous laptop, but it's fairly heavy and has a stingy specification. On the other hand, it's the cheapest model on test - perhaps not what you'd have expected of a Mac.