Widescreen notebooks are the way of the future, really they are. With entertainment now proficiently done on the go, why would we go back to limited 4:3 aspect ratio? It's far easier to work on two spreadsheets concurrently in widescreen without needing to alt tab like a madman. Toshiba, like many manufacturers, has seen this need and provided such a product.

19in widescreen LCD TV which shows much promise and is Dell’s first consumer offering in Australia. Spec-wise it looks quite good on paper, with 450cd/m2 brightness, 600:1 contrast ratio and 1280 x 768 widescreen resolution, and it doesn’t disappoint when fired up.

A good display that’s fine for office use and any work that needs the resolution, but it isn’t a contender for the A-List.

Impressive widescreen quality for an attractive price.

A 21" widescreen LCD that hits the sweet spot for gaming.

Flawless. Behold, the crème de la crème by Dell.

The Acer AL1751W may have had the distinction of being the only widescreen 17in TFT in this roundup, but this wasn’t the only thing that contributed to its high rankings. Instead it was a combination of the unit’s specifications, its functions and its features that helped it score highly across our strenuous testing regime, plus a little nudge from value for money at the end to get it across the line.

On receiving this unit, we were impressed by the mammoth 15.4in widescreen display. Although sceptical of its ability to perform given its monster display size, we were proven wrong at every turn, with the 8600 performing similarly to the more expensive Toshiba Tecra S1 Notebook (July 2003 page 40). Absolutely bursting at the gills with features, this Notebook boasts an array of connectivity options including side mounted FireWire and IrDA, while on the rear of the unit we find two USB and legacy serial, parallel and S-Video ports.

I've predicted 2003 will be the year of the TFT, with massive price cuts on the way that will give CRTs a run for their money. The year is already looking good with these three models entering our testing Labs.

Widescreen is still one of the flavours of the month for notebooks and plenty of users are opting to banish boring old 4:3 aspect ratio LCD panels to the land of wind and ghosts.

A high-quality panel, but it lacks the finishing touches to make it a winner.

Another notebook to embrace the entertainment market and sell units with widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio displays, this PowerNote packs some serious hardware under the hood, pushing not only AMD's Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ processor, but also ATI's Mobility RADEON 9700 a 60GB, 7200rpm hard disk drive and a multiformat 4-speed DVD burner for disc creation on the go.

Solid performance at an incredible price makes this the best-value 20in widescreen LCD you can buy.

HITACHI PD32-A2100

A good-looking, ergonomically excellent laptop with a wealth of multimedia capabilities for home users.

While large formed notebooks are great for the users with a static location, ultra portables are still the easiest and best way of conducting business for students, business people and the road warriors.

A fantastic specification notebook with all the trimmings you'd expect to find on more expensive notebooks, the Joybook 8100-V13 has a 15.4in widescreen WXGA with native 1280 x 800 resolution. With ATI's Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics, boasting 64MB dedicated video memory, it's great for DVD playback or gaming -- the unit returned 9,502 marks under 3DMark01SE Pro, more than enough to provide comfortable gameplay with a decent number of fps even in recent games. BenQ has gone as far as to include not just a DVD-ROM for DVD movie playback, but an optical DVD writer, capable of 2-speed DVD+R media writing, ideal for both business archiving or for personal backup.

Finishing third in PCMark04, fifth in 3DMark01SE and around middle of the pack for battery life, the Z7W from Astone is an attractive and functional widescreen notebook with plenty of goodies.

Powered by a 1.6GHz mobile Pentium processor, featuring dual-band 802.11a/g wireless capability and sporting a 15.4in wide-screen display, the Dell D800 represents the best of the Latitude series of notebooks. At around 3.3kg, it is not light, nor is it thin – but is complemented by an exceptional finish and a solid set of technology.

The wide range of features and a degree of HD-readiness are welcome, but the DLP rainbow effect can spoil things.