A buyer’s guide to the top 10 laptops

HP EliteBook 8730w Price: 1,878 ex. VAT

The EliteBook range is well named, as it's designed to offer as much power as physically possible while still being portable.

The 8730w is a fully fledged mobile workstation, aimed at designers, creatives and other power users. The 1,920 x 1,200 display is from HP's Dreamcolour range, and the Nvidia Quadro FX graphics with 512MB of DDR3 memory is fully ISV certified.

Battery life isn't strong, but this is a workstation you can move from place to place - not a netbook. It's certainly not meant to be used on a train, but perfect if you want to design one.

Lenovo ThinkPad T500 Price: 989 ex. VAT

Need. More. Power. The Lenovo ThinkPad T500 may be too regimented and boxy to be the Jeremy Clarkson of laptops, but the 2.4GHz of Intel Core 2 Duo is surely fast and brash enough to meet with his approval.

The T500 is not particularly thin, not particularly pleasing on the eye, but it's solid and seems to have a sense of purpose.

And at less than a grand before VAT, this is a relatively affordable no nonsense machine.

Samsung Q320 Price: 561 ex. VAT

Balance. It's a difficult thing to get right in any walk of life, but that's something the Samsung Q320 does well.

It's not quite the best looking, the fastest, or the lightest laptop around but it isn't too far off in any category. Combine decent battery life nearly 4.5 hours in a light use test with a relatively affordable price tag, and the Q320 looks like a sensible way to spend your hard earned cash.