Lab

Budget laptops

Whether you're looking for a laptop to supplement your existing desktop PC, to carry around all day for work, or just as a home machine that you can easily trug from room to room, you can get a decent model now without spending more than £600. There are even quite a few serviceable Windows Vista laptops available at around the £500 mark - and yes, that's including VAT.

This is really quite a new phenomenon. Not so very long ago, wandering into your local PC store and demanding a powerful portable with a dual core processor for £500 would have resulted in two possible outcomes. One, the shop attendant raises a quizzical eyebrow and suggests kindly that you might want to set your sights a little lower. Or, two, he steers you towards a rack of suitable models and somehow, Derren Brown-style, distracts your attention from the price tag at the crucial moment. Fortunately, if you try it now you'll get a much better result.

Less than six months ago (issue 195), we tested seven affordable laptops that looked pretty good. The superb Best Buy, Gateway's MT6839b, cost a very reasonable £599 and featured a nippy dual core processor, a sensible 2GB of memory and a 160GB hard disk. But not even Gateway could manage a dedicated graphics chip, capable of playing 3D games, at that price. And if you were hankering after a big, bright 17 inch display in this price bracket, well, back to that funny look from the sales assistant.

This month's group test shows just how much things have changed in such a short period. Buying a budget laptop used to mean that you were pretty much limited to models that had 15.4 inch screens - big enough to run any application comfortably, but a good way off the size and detail of today's desktop monitors, and on the small side if you plan to use your laptop a lot as a DVD player - and weighed a hefty 3kg-plus. This time, however, we quite literally have something for everyone. Among our seven contenders we have two ultraportables, sacrificing a bit more screen space to give you a PC that really is easy to carry around; three fine 15.4 inch models at attractive prices; and two 'desktop replacement' systems sporting 17 inch widescreen TFT displays.

Horses for courses

Given the choice now available, it's worth considering exactly what you need a laptop for. If you spend a lot of time travelling to and fro with your PC, and would rather it didn't make your bag feel like a sack of potatoes, think about an ultraportable. If you need a do-it-all laptop that can satisfy all your everyday computing needs at home and also be carried about from time to time without doing your back in, 15.4 inch remains a sensible size. Alternatively, if you plan to use your 'portable' mainly in one place, but would rather have something that folds away to nothing when not in use and can be moved around effortlessly when you fancy working on the patio or watching a film in bed, a 17 incher could fit the bill.

In picking our Best Buy, we've chosen the one laptop that offers the best specification, build quality and features among those on test, regardless of form factor. What really matters, though, is which one fits your preferences. None of these laptops seriously disappointed us in any respect, so even if you don't see an award sticker next to the one you fancy, there's no need to be put off: read our comments, decide which flaws you can live with, and buy the right model for you.