It’s not the most powerful, but its games performance and features help the Toshiba A350 stand out in the price bracket for mid-price laptops

Despite some odd feature choices, this is an affordable powerhouse of a laptop. A great value mid-range Centrino 2 laptop, as long as you're not worried about battery life.

Asus's model may not look like the bee's knees, but if you're after features, it's worth a look

For such a high specification machine with a large display, we didn’t have high expectations of battery life. We were wrong. Not only is this one of the best looking and functional notebooks we’ve played with in some time, but this notebook managed to stay operating at full load with a looping productivity test for well over three and a half hours – enough for students, road warriors and home users.

Designed to sit between the low-end Inspiron and high-end XPS families, it comes in 15in and 17in flavours and its target audience could be pretty much anyone: few laptops are as customisable as this.

An HD screen, Blu-ray drive, TV tuner and competitive price result in an excellent-value entertainment laptop.

In a world filled with gorgeous Sony, Apple and even Dell laptops, a sober, matte black machine aimed at consumers has to be truly special to turn heads. The IdeaPad Y430 is a well-built Centrino 2 machine that lacks nothing in the way of features, speed or value

ACER TravelMate 630

Stylish and packed with features, it is not the cheapest 12 inch notebook available. This said, if you simply must have the features on offer inside this 'book, then this notebook does it all with style.

A blisteringly fast processor, strong build and stylish design make this an extremely attractive laptop