Toshiba Satellite A100-163

Toshiba's Satellite A100-163 is, along with the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi 1536, the cheapest on test at £850, yet it's also one of the most stylish. The two-tone finish and Harman Kardon speakers set above the keyboard give it an attractive and refined appearance.

Despite the price, there's 1GB of DDR2 RAM to go with the 1.66GHz Core Duo T2300 processor. Along with a Toshiba hard disk spinning at 5,400rpm, these took the A100-163 to 0.90 in our 2D application benchmarks.

Plus, you can play games on it. The ATi Mobility Radeon X1400 doesn't exactly set the world alight, managing around 20fps in Far Cry and Half-Life 2. This means AA and AF are out of the question, but provided you don't choose the highest-quality settings, you should be able to play the latest titles.

You also get a DVD writer with support for DVD-RAM as well as dual-layer discs. The 80GB hard disk isn't the biggest here, but the Sony's is no bigger and it costs £170 more. No corners are cut elsewhere - there's 802.11a/b/g, a good card reader, PC Card and ExpressCard slots, mini-FireWire and four USB 2 ports. Only Bluetooth and DVI are absent, but we're not complaining.

The 15.4in widescreen TFT offers 1,280 x 800 pixels. It's a decent glossy screen, with a clear and evenly lit image. Unfortunately, it's not very well protected from behind, leaving the panel vulnerable to knocks on the lid. But tipping the scales at 2.9kg and a battery life of only two hours, 26 minutes under light use, you'll likely think twice before slinging it over your shoulder.

With good-quality speakers, it's much more at home as an entertainment machine that spends its life on a desk. But apart from the media playback controls to the left of the keyboard, there's no 10ft interface or remote control as with the Samsung or Asus. And because of the media buttons, the keyboard feels cramped. It's still usable, but Toshiba could easily have placed the buttons elsewhere and used the full width for the keyboard.

At least the Satellite isn't a noisy machine. In our tests, under heavy use, it still remained quieter than the background noise in our test room, so produces less than 29dBA.

Considering the price, the Toshiba's performance and features are respectable, but the one-year warranty, flimsy lid and average battery life mean it can't quite make it into awards territory here. Don't get us wrong, the A100-163 is a decent notebook, but it's outclassed in this company.