Labs

Samsung's Q45 is the only laptop in the group that doesn't feel compromised in some way, yet it's by no means the most expensive. HP's nc2400 is too slow, Rock's Pegasus is very fast but has rubbish battery life, and Lenovo's ThinkPad has no DVD drive. The Q45, on the other hand, is compact, light and fast.

PCs can get away with being ugly, as they're usually hidden under a desk. Laptops need to look good. The Q45 looks lovely. Its glossy black lid oozes class, and the understated interior works well. The keyboard surround and touchpad have a matt finish that feels good, and the laptop generally gives the impression of being more expensive than it is.

Bright outlook

The Q45 is also great to use. The touch pad makes navigating Windows a cinch, as it's highly accurate with just the right amount of acceleration. The keyboard's keys have a fair amount of travel and plenty of feedback, and the shift, enter and backspace keys are all full-size. There's also plenty of room to rest your wrists in front of the keyboard. There's a useful card reader on the front, which can read SD, XD or Memory Stick cards. There's a webcam in the top of the Q45's lid, which has a higher-than-average 1.3-megapixel resolution.

The Q45 has a cracking screen. It's very bright with a glossy high-contrast finish, which makes colours more vibrant, blacks deeper and whites whiter than a normal matt display. The high contrast makes it perfect for watching DVDs, but the glossy finish is more prone to reflections than a matt display. Glossy screens are often more tiring on

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the eyes than matt displays in buildings with soft diffused lighting such as offices and airports.

Charming Vista

Windows Vista is a pretty demanding operating system, and some small notebooks such as HP's nc2400 aren't really powerful enough to run it without stuttering. The Q45's generous specification is up to the task. The integrated graphics aren't powerful enough for modern games, but fine for Vista's Aero interface, which looks great on the Q45's screen and runs smoothly.

The Q45 uses the 1.8GHz version of Intel's popular Core 2 Duo processor, and with 2GB of RAM has more than enough capacity for everyday tasks. Its score of 146 in our 2D benchmarks puts it halfway down the group, and shows it can cope with more demanding tasks such as video encoding and image editing. A 160GB hard disk provides a useful amount of storage, and you can back up your files to 8.5GB dual-layer DVDs.

The Q45 isn't as powerful as the Rock and Acer laptops, both of which use faster versions of the Core 2 Duo processor, but it has far better battery life. If you're buying an ultra-portable, you'll want to take it on the road, so it's significant that the Q45 will last for ages away from a power socket. It kept going for just three minutes shy of five hours in our light use battery life test, putting it firmly at the top of the group. You'll also get a couple of normal films, or one made by Peter Jackson, out of a charge, as the Q45 managed three hours and 51 minutes of DVD playback. The excellent battery life is due to the Q45's large six-cell battery, which pokes out of the back of the case slightly but isn't particularly intrusive. The Q45 isn't as light as the HP or Lenovo, but 1.9kg still isn't going to make too much of a dent in your luggage allowance.

The only thing we could find to criticise about the Q45 is that it only has two USB2.0 ports, which should show you what a fantastic little laptop it is. It's got it all: portability, power, a great screen and keyboard, and good looks. It's also, remarkably, the second cheapest laptop in the group, so you don't even have to pay a premiumfor this month's Best Buy ultra-portable.