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.

The Satellite M30 Special Edition comes with a chemically coated TFT display making it a pleasure to work or watch DVDs on - and that's exactly what this notebook was designed to do. Out of interest we tested the unit outdoors in direct and indirect sunlight to see how the coating fared, it did remarkably well, adding a green tint, but still very viewable where others were not. The 'book comes with a fast booting media mode. Simply press one of the keyboard shortcut buttons and pop in your disc, DVD or CD of choice and the standalone player will take care of the rest. Front mounted audio controls, Harman Kardon speakers, and thoughtfully placed 3.5mm headphone jacks and a volume dial mean you'll be fumble free while doing what this machine does best.

Fifth last in PCMark04 testing and bringing up the rear in 3Dmark01SE, it's clear the real bottleneck here comes with the graphics and for the cost, we'd expect a little more than NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. Whilst competent for regular desktop usage, it sent this unit's scores dropping a further two places in the default resolution and into last place once we added four samples of full-scene anti-aliasing. As its Doom3 score shows, this isn't exactly the best equipped candidate for the users after a portable gaming device. But if your focus is DVD, audio playback or regular productivity (heaven forbid), then this notebook does have plenty of aces up its sleeve.

For DVD watching and everyday widescreen usage, you'd be hard pressed to find a better quality unit; a remote control would be a nice addition for distant movie watching. The cost is a bit of a hurdle for us, but if you're willing to spend this sort of cash, this is well worth your attention.