Lab

Mid-range laptops

Pop out for a coffee on the way to work, and you can't help noticing we Brits have become addicted - not just to caffeine, but to choice. Tall, grande or bucket? Skinny, semi or fully loaded? Cappuccino, frappuccino, mocha choca ya-ya-ya? As the capitalists behind your cuppa have no doubt figured, the only way to find your favourite is to try them all.

It's not so easy to play the field with a major purchase like a laptop. Whatever you plan to do with it, you need to choose appropriately. If you want a capable PC - perhaps as your main or only machine - that's powerful enough to handle video playback, creative applications and even 3D games, you'll want as much processing power as your money will buy. On the other hand, if you're after a business tool that's easy to carry between meetings, you don't want to be weighed down by a beast designed for hardcore gamers.

These days you can get a great laptop without spending a fortune, so we set ourselves a modest budget of £500 to £700 and looked for a variety of laptops that would demonstrate what's on offer to different types of user. In this price range, you can't have everything, but you can almost certainly get what you need. You just need to make a few key decisions. Most obviously, what do you want to use your laptop for? If the answer is office work - or, at least, balancing your bank account, typing up letters and surfing the web - then a business model with basic integrated graphics will suffice. Within this category, you can choose between a lightweight 12 inch machine, like Samsung's NP-Q45 Red, or a bulkier model with a bigger screen.

15.4 inches (measured, as always, diagonally) is now the norm, but you can also get 17 inch laptops that are ideal if you want to do everything you would on a desktop PC without feeling cramped. Since the whole machine has to be bigger to accommodate this screen size, you can also expect to find a keyboard that's much closer to a standard desktop layout, complete with numeric keypad for data entry.

Work and play

Wireless networking has become a common standard feature, and while it can be handy on the road if you can find a WiFi hotspot, it's even better in your home or office, where you can wander around freely, accessing the Internet via your wireless router. These bigger screens are also great for watching DVDs and downloaded movies, but it pays to check the quality of the display, and decent built-in speakers will be useful. You'll also want a big enough hard disk to accommodate all your MP3s, videos and other media files.

If your tastes stretch to a spot of 3D gaming, you'll need to choose more carefully. Unlike with a desktop PC, you can't just whip out a laptop's graphics card and replace it with something better when it's no longer keeping up with the latest power-hungry titles. Whichever laptop you buy, you'll need to ensure its existing 3D performance is enough to stand you and your plasma cannon in good stead for the near future. Only four of the seven machines in this group had graphics chipsets capable of running our 3D games test, with the Dell Inspiron 1520s and MSI's GX610 giving the best results. It's worth pointing out that only a few months ago it was practically impossible to find a laptop in this price range with anything like this 3D performance, so this is progress.

What every laptop buyer will agree on is that they want the best value. And while we found a lot to like in several of the tested systems, our top pick certainly delivered on that score. Not only did it come in below our £700 maximum, it left more than enough change from £600 for a round at Starbucks. Who says you can't have it all?