ENTRY-LEVEL LAPTOPS £1000-£1300

With laptop prices falling and performance rising, there is no better time to buy an affordable portable for you or your business than right now

The rise in the popularity of the laptop is due in part to the continuing reduction in unit prices. It is now possible to buy a fully-featured laptop at half the price a similar specification would have cost 12 months ago. In this group test you will not find the latest cutting edge technologies. Rather, you will find a range of machines that offer usability and performance at an affordable price. In this price range you can expect to find a laptop with good all-round usability in a two-spindle form factor. With large displays and dedicated graphic adapters, entry-level laptops offer desktop replacement power at a cost-effective price.

REVIEW CO-ORDINATORS:
Michael Browne
Alex Bentley

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Adrian Lyon

CONTENTS:
ASUS A3527N
BENQ JOYBOOK 5100U
DELL INSPIRON 510M
HP COMPAQ NX9030
ROCKDIRECT QUADDRA DTS
SYSTEMAX TOURBOOK 5207

BENCHMARKING:
The WL performance benchmarks are designed to offer the reader a chance to compare laptops on an even plain, simulating real-world experiences to test the components in battery life mode. Obviously, if your system will be plugged in to mains power for a large portion of the time, you will see an improvement over the benchmarks registered in our tests. The 3DMark 2001 SE test is carried out with the system running on mains power, as it is unlikely that users will wish to test their system's 3D accelerator to the max when running on battery power.