These days, when people think laptops and notebooks, they want something they can literally put on their laps without causing any actual stress on their thigh bones. But of course there also exist users who are much more particular about the performance of their machine. When we talk about performance however, it usually isn’t [...]
This 13in screen Vaio Is very much the money-no-object suggestion in our round up of portables to which you might consider treating yourself this Yule, Far from a run-of-the-mill model, the Z is thinner and tighter than a MacBook Air. It’s also the first laptop to have its own dedicated multimedia dock that contains [...]
If you’re after an inexpensive laptop and are more interested in performance than a fancy name, the Packard Bell EasyNote TS1IHR039 is well worth a look. It ran away with the crown in our most recent group test of budget laptops, outshining every other contender in terms of speed. It achieves this by packing [...]
Toshiba’s Satellite L755D is the only laptop here powered by one of AMD’s Llano processors. In some respects, the Toshiba lags behind the Intel-powered opposition. A result of 0.45 in our Real World Benchmarks is a little off the pace, and battery life leaves the Toshiba bringing up the rear. When it comes to [...]
The Toshiba Portege Z835-P330 is the newest member of the Portege line, and it’s Toshiba’s first ultrabook. Available exclusively through Best Buy, the Portege Z835-P330 is currently the cheapest of the new slim-laptop category of ultrabooks, selling for just under $800. It also has a featherweight chassis, an unusually full feature set, and a [...]
Lenovo’s staggeringly powerful and well-equipped B570 easily asserts itself as one of the best laptops in this group test. The plain black chassis design puts function firmly before form. The tough, ridged plastics easily withstand scuffs and scratches and the firm lid capably protects the screen from damage. Although this is not the heaviest [...]
Toshiba’s Satellite Pro range is designed for business use, but solid build quality, strong usability and decent specifications make the C660-1UX suitable for home use. Its sturdy plastic chassis has all the resilience you’d expect from a business machine. The textured, matt finish feels great and protects well against scuffs and scratches. Build quality [...]
The X53E is a seriously smart laptop. Brushed metal surrounds the keyboard with a striking red finish, and even the red lid looks the part. The Core i3 CPU is sufficient, and the 640GB hard disk provides ample storage. It gets off to a great start: build quality is good and sturdy, and the [...]
You wouldn’t know to look at it, bill Dell’s diminutive Latitude E6220 is this month’s second-priciest machine. It will set you back £1,751, only £50 less than Sony’s VAIO Z. It lacks the looks and lightness of the Sony, but the Dell gets straight down to business. The build quality is superb, with no [...]
Dell’s XPS logo has adorned sonic fine laptops over the years, and its XPS 15 is no exception. Visually, it isn’t the most stunning addition to the range. A sea of silver and grey stretches around its portly, thick-set curves, and a huge nine-cell hatter; juts out of the underside, propping up the laptop’s rear. [...]
Acer describes its Aspire Ethos range as designed for “discriminating” users – and with a quad-tore Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray drive as standard Part of the Acer’s considerable weight is due to the battery. It’s a sealed unit that Acer claims will manage three times as many recharge cycles [...]
Easily the most gorgeous machine on test, with a curved chassis that weighs in at just 1.3kg and measures just 19mm at its thickest. The Series 9 is made of the same material – duralumin – used in tighter jets, but while the frame is impressively strong, the lid bends far too easily for [...]
The Asus U36J is built for travel slender and light enough to slip into your carry-on, but tough enough to survive a battering from airport baggage handlers and regular forays on to public transport. The bright and vibrant 13.3-inch display is easy to view from most angles, meaning more than one person can watch [...]
The Lenovo G770 packs fantastic power and good graphical performance into a solid big-screen laptop which is great for the home. We’d recommend it to anyone looking for a desktop replacement, but movie buffs will be disappointed about the lack of a 1080p screen. The first think that strikes yon when opening the G770 [...]
If you crave a MacBook Air for the design, but don’t want to stop using Windows and your favorite programs, then the Samsung 900X3A (£1100 inc. VAT) is the best alternative you can find. The 9 Series is only 12mm thick at its widest point and the brushed-metal exterior gives the build quality a [...]
Toshiba has a good record when it comes to laptops you can peak into a hag and take away with yon. The high-end Portege range has been finding favor with business users for a while now. But Toshiba is offering a more affordable alternative with the 13.3-inch Satellite LV30-10V (£479 inc. VAT). Although the [...]
The latest release from Dell-owned Alienware, the M18X (£1699 inc. VAT), is a behemoth with enough power to run any game under the sun without as much as a flicker. But you’ll have to have deep pockets to get your hands on one. Even getting the M18X out of the box is a challenge, [...]
This mainstream laptop has a boatload of features, sports a thin, attractive chassis, and breezes through any task. The eight hours of battery life only add to the allure. Aside from some minor annoyances—the stiff-clicking mouse and irksome port covers—it should be at the top of your list of laptops to consider and is [...]
TOSHIBA docs a wide range of Satellite laptops from no-frills budget models to high-powered multimedia machines. The Satellite C670D-108 (£349 inc. VAT) is one of its entry-level models, a machine that provides basic home entertainment. Featuring a large 17.3֊inch display this is the biggest laptop in the group test. That extra bulk means it’s [...]
For some of us, a paltry 13-inch or 15.6-inch laptop just isn’t good enough. We need at least an 18-inch our games are more immersive and more than one person can sit and look at our photos. In short, bigger is better. If you decide to buy the Acer Aspire Ethos 8951G (£1500 inc. [...]
Dell reckons the Alienware M18x is the most powerful gaming laptop on the planet. This 5.4kg beast runs Windows 7 Home Premium and has an I8.4in screen, 8GB of DDR3 RAM (although you get only 4GB with the base £1,699 model), an Intel Core i7-2630M processor, either a terabyte (TB) or 1.5TB of storage and an nVidia GeForce GTX 460M with 1.5GB of video RAM. The M18x’s huge screen supports a top resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, while an HDMI port makes this laptop ideal for general... (more...)
Dell has created a following for its ultraportable Inspiron Z laptops. The 14z has a 1366×768-pixel screen, a choice of Core i3 and i5 processors and focuses on connectedness on the go. In a home Wi-Fi environment, Dell Stage kicks in to automatically synchronize music, photos and messages. Content can be called up on any Dell Stage-supported device. Bluetooth, USB 3.0, a webcam and a multiformat card reader mark out the Dell as a high-quality home laptop. (more…) Read More →
Most of the time, a Fujitsu laptop means a no-nonsense portable computer that gets the job done no matter what. The glossy black Fujitsu SH761 is no different. It looks professional and its build is extremely solid, with no creaking parts whatsoever. It’s small and lightweight at a respectable 1.6Kg, and even then, has space for an optical drive. This slinky little machine also features an Nvidia 520M discrete graphics card for a slight improvement in gaming performance. Another feature... (more...)
We’re not surprised to see the Lenovo IdeaPad G570 here – only a few issues ago; it earned a thoroughly deserved Best Value award. But whereas last time we reviewed a basic, no-frills model, this time Lenovo has sent us something tastier. The familiar Core i3-2310M processor takes center-stage, but Lenovo has pushed up the price and added a few extras. There’s now a generous 6GB of memory, and the 640GB hard disk is a welcome sight for the more download-hungry user. Even more impressive,... (more...)
Given its specification, it’s a surprise that the Acer Aspire Ethos 5943G is so affordable. With a Core i5 processor, Blu-ray drive and dedicated graphics, it easily looks the best on paper of all the laptops here. The reason it’s so cheap is simple: unlike the competition, this one’s from Acer’s last-season range. The first giveaway is the Core i5-460M, one of the first-generation Intel Core processors. Still, that’s no bad thing. While the latest Core i3 chips have come on leaps... (more...)
The black-brushed, 1.35Kg-light, Duralumin-clad Samsung Series 9 definitely strikes us as thin, light and sexy from the moment we laid eyes on it. Duralumin is an alloy used primarily on fighter jets to keep them light and tough, just like on the Series 9. Out of all the Windows-powered notebooks tested, its trackpad is also the biggest and the most comfortable to use. Like the MacBook Air it is competing with, it also sports an SSD that supercharges performance. However it’s a pity... (more...)
Binalone’s HomeSurf 705 costs only £99, but comers have been cut: the 7in, 800 x 480 resistive screen is unresponsive and pallid, and underneath is a processor that finished the SunSpider benchmark in 41,045ms-twiceas slow as the £160 Storage Options Scroll. Basics such as web browsing are this tablet’s limit, and there’s no sign of the Android Market – its replacement is void of recognizable names – and it’s also lumbered with the outdated Android 2.1. Given... (more...)
The very professional-looking HP Elitebook 2560p has everything you need (including DVD-drive) built into a relatively small body. Its metallic exterior and interior doesn’t just look pretty, but makes the machine feel extremely solid and rugged. Like previous generations of HP business notebooks, the Elitebook 2560p is built like a tank, both inside and out. Solid metal lines the palm rest, which also helps with dispersing heat. Our favorite part of the machine is the keyboard. The... (more...)
While Intel’s Sandy Bridge technology faced some obstacles right out of the blocks with faulty hardware that necessitated a recall, the problem’s now fixed, with numerous laptop makers all jumping in with offerings of their own. In this review, we take on Fujitsu’s S-series 13.3-inch LifeBook SH561. Aesthetically, the SH561 is clad in “Urban White” for the most part, save for its base unit that’s adorned in black. The lid sports pin-striped etchings with... (more...)
These days, when people think laptops and notebooks, they want something they can literally put on their laps without causing any actual stress on their thigh bones. But of course there also exist users who are much more particular about the performance of their machine. When we talk about performance however, it usually isn’t about having multiple spreadsheets open at the same time, but rather, the ability of that machine to play games. Traveling gamer, introducing your new best friend,... (more...)
Wonderfully light and the least bulky of the 10-inchers, the Tab 750 has a clean, spartan design. It is fast and furious where row speed goes. Though purists will disagree, once you get used to it, Samsung’s proprietary TouchWIZ ser interface skin over Android can be quite agreeable and useful. The preinstalled apps—especially the office suite and the photo editor—propelled by TouchWIZ get you off the ground right away without shopping around. The 1,280×800 display is capable... (more...)
With rivals sporting Blu-ray drives, dedicated graphics and other novelties, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T seems rather ordinary. Spend some time actually using this Min laptop, however, and it’s clearly anything hut. It’s very good-looking. The blue lid is infused with a hint of turquoise, and crisp lines are complimented by a smattering of silver and black on the inside. For a budget laptop, it’s gorgeous; by any other standards, it’s still smart. It isn’t quite as light as... (more...)
This 13in screen Vaio Is very much the money-no-object suggestion in our round up of portables to which you might consider treating yourself this Yule, Far from a run-of-the-mill model, the Z is thinner and tighter than a MacBook Air. It’s also the first laptop to have its own dedicated multimedia dock that contains a dedicated graphics card. DVD drive and LightPeak optical connector. The Sony’s carbon-fiber frame is both incredibly strong and very light – a fact helped... (more...)
Finished in black and brown, Lenovo’s IdeaPad S205 is unlikely to set anyone’s heart aflutter. It has the same AMD E-350 processor as its 11,6in rivals, backed up by 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard disk. At 1.42kg, it’s the lightest model in this month’s Labs, but that’s reflected in the build quality. The slender base flexes to and fro when tugged upon, and it lacks the more substantial feel of the others here. Given the excellent stamina – it boasts 6hrs 50mins of light-use... (more...)
If you’re after an inexpensive laptop and are more interested in performance than a fancy name, the Packard Bell EasyNote TS1IHR039 is well worth a look. It ran away with the crown in our most recent group test of budget laptops, outshining every other contender in terms of speed. It achieves this by packing in an Intel Core i5 processor; although this is twinned with a modest 3GB of RAM, music and video plays well, although gaming isn’t great. Connections include 802.l1b/g/n Wi-Fi,... (more...)
Toshiba’s Satellite L755D is the only laptop here powered by one of AMD’s Llano processors. In some respects, the Toshiba lags behind the Intel-powered opposition. A result of 0.45 in our Real World Benchmarks is a little off the pace, and battery life leaves the Toshiba bringing up the rear. When it comes to gaming, however, AMD’s Llano takes on models with dedicated graphics. It wasn’t until we pushed up our Crysis test to Medium detail that the Toshiba slowed to an average of 25fps.... (more...)
As the largest laptop on test, Samsung’s RV720 cuts an imposing figure. But despite its huge 17.3in display and generous specification, it comes with a much more compact price: a very reasonable £464 inc VAT. With exactly the same design as the smaller RV520, the RV720 is a lovely looking laptop. The textured black and silver lid is as sleek as ever, and the strip of glossy black pooling around the keyboard adds a flourish on the inside. There’s no getting away from the all-plastic construction,... (more...)
The Toshiba Portege Z835-P330 is the newest member of the Portege line, and it’s Toshiba’s first ultrabook. Available exclusively through Best Buy, the Portege Z835-P330 is currently the cheapest of the new slim-laptop category of ultrabooks, selling for just under $800. It also has a featherweight chassis, an unusually full feature set, and a long-lasting battery that will take you through an entire workday. Whether or not those highlights are enough to make you overlook its middling... (more...)
Netbooks are now available in a range of bright colors that don’t perhaps suit the boardroom. Although the ‘Matte Luminous Rose’ HP Mini lives up to type, it also comes in more sensible hues. We tested the Midnight Greyh version. The HP is slightly faster than the average netbook, although a WorldBench 6 score of 38 is still well short of even the slowest ultraportable, if you require something only for checking email and browsing the web on the move, it ought to be adequate. The... (more...)
Lenovo bills the X1 as the thinnest ThinkPad yet. At around 23mm, it’s still a little chunky compared to other ultraportable. It’s built for speed and durability, and the Windows 7 Professional operating system reveals Lenovo’s intended business audience. Two processor options are on the table, with the XI available with either a 2.1GHz Intel Core 13-2310M or 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M. We tested the latter, with 4GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive. Using the built-in battery, the... (more...)
