Lab

Budget laptops

With blue skies outside and Britain's annual glimpse of sun in the offing, who wants a computer that keeps you stuck indoors? Laptops are already outstripping desktops as the most commonly purchased kind of PC, and over the summer they'll be an even more attractive prospect. Not just because of the weather, either: looking at the models currently available for under £500, there's never been a better time to buy a portable, even if the state of the economy dictates a prudent budget.

If you've been paying attention to the computer market, you may be aware that choosing a laptop usually means some kind of compromise, and at the lower end of the price scale those compromises can be pretty severe. But these days there's no need to resign yourself to a machine that's severely hampered in some regard. True, if you're into the latest 3D games or want to play HD movies, you'll need to shell out more - though not all that much more: last month we tested models with these capabilities and more from under £800. Meanwhile, however, the technology that powered last year's top-end portables is slowly but surely trickling down even into the sub-£500 bracket.

As a bare minimum, you can now expect a fast dual core processor, at least a gigabyte of memory (RAM) and usually two, and a spacious 120GB hard disk. That's more than enough to surf the web and cope with everyday office tasks, organise and tweak your digital photos, and even edit video footage using suitable software. Tighten that budget to £300-odd and you'll find specifications dropping to far more frugal levels, but even then, it's no longer the norm to find systems struggling with basic Windows Vista tasks. In short, you can get a very usable computer for very little cash.

Of course, there's more to a good laptop, at any price, than technical specs. It's easy to find models that tick every box, but are disappointing in use. Crippled by poor design, uncomfortable keyboards or dodgy displays, they're just not pleasant to work with. And even purely cosmetic issues, which might be of little or no concern in a desktop system that'll be pushed under a table, are worthy of consideration in a machine that'll be your constant travelling companion.

There's one sure way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and that's to let us do it for you. We've selected seven of the latest budget laptops and put each one through our usual stringent set of tests. Keyboards and trackpads have been poked and prodded, displays run through a gamut of test photos and DVDs, and performance tested with our benchmark suite. Read on and you're sure to find a laptop that'll put a smile on your face - even while you're paying for it.