It looks great and has fast specifications for an ultraportable laptop. It's a good thing it comes with a second, larger battery though, because its small battery produced a very low run-time in our tests. Nevertheless, if it's a lightweight powerhouse that you want, this one is ideal.

The VAIO is an excellent option for anyone after an ultraportable with good performance, solid battery life and an excellent design.

This notebook is ideal for business users who want a big screen, good connectivity options and above all, a solidly built unit for the road. There's not much wrong with it at all.

With an 18.4in high-definition screen, a 5.1 speaker configuration, a digital TV tuner and a Blu-ray player built-in, the Gemstone Blue is almost like a complete home theatre setup. It's fairly easy to use and it's a good performer, so it's a good choice for anyone after a desktop replacement.

If you consider battery life and light weight the most important laptop criteria, give the LifeBook P7010 a close look. You could probably live with this 1.5-kilogram unit's less-than-perfect keyboard and screen.

The Toshiba Satellite A100 is a solid notebook for the casual home user. It doesn't top the charts with its performance, but it offers just a little more than the core components.

A decent, but not particularly inspiring machine, the Tecra A6 will suit those who need an affordable business notebook.

Lenovo thrills us with many useful features on this IdeaPad Y710-200, but it fumbles the ball a little in its implementation of the 'Game Zone'. It's also let down by a lack of Gigabit networking and a digital TV tuner.

This notebook is suitable for anyone who wants an inexpensive dual-core machine for home, school or office use.

As a stand alone machine, the Acer Aspire 5920G is a great machine with plenty of power for the average user, and enough for power users to get by. By comparison to Acer's previous models it's an excellent unit with plenty of good improvements.

Although there's a notable premium on the solid-state hard drive and ultra-portables don't often come cheap anyway, this is a good little buy. It's got enough power to handle the most basic tasks and its implementation of flash memory should please those wanting to be on the cutting edge.

Acer's Aspire 4920G is a good all purpose notebook. It doesn't excel at any one thing, but for users wanting a little gaming, movie watching and general desktop PC activities, crammed into a stylish package, it is a strong contender.