Group test: £499 laptops

Low-cost laptops are almost a contradiction in terms. The cost of miniaturising motherboards, hard disks and other components has always meant that laptop computers have been much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.

However, laptop sales have been growing rapidly for several years now – to the point where they’ve overtaken sales of desktop PCs in several countries. As a result, competition and increased economies of scale in manufacturing have helped to drive prices down quite dramatically. Components such as flat-screen displays have also fallen in price, making laptops much more economical to produce than they have been in the past.

So we decided to see what sort of laptop you could expect for a maximum budget of just £500. The results were pretty impressive – most of the laptops we found provided pretty good processor performance, and they all had very good 15.4in widescreen displays (which a couple of years ago would have cost the best part of £400 on their own), making them ideal for watching DVDs when you’re on the road or stuck in a hotel room.

Inevitably, though, there were occasional signs of cost cutting. Decent 3D graphics capabilities are thin on the ground, so none of these laptops will be much of a games machine. Battery life varies a lot across the group, as do multimedia features such as built-in webcam or Firewire ports. So it’s worth taking time to figure out your own needs, then taking a look at whether there’s one here that can fit the bill. We’re pretty sure there is, and at these prices there’s little excuse to resist the temptation.

This article is part of a group test of laptops.
See also:
Introduction
Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi
Asus A6Rp-AP026H
Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505
Hi-grade Notino W5600
MSI Megabook M670
Toshiba Satellite Pro A120
Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downlaods above.
Editor's Choice is on the next page.

Group test: Hi-grade Notino W5600

The Hi-grade is a good all-round performer but the processor lets it down  22 Dec 2006

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