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A swish new design, great battery life and it plays HD video, but the touchpad is still truly appalling

The cherry-red finish on our sample contrasted nicely with the white base and the black interior, and the 10.1in screen surround is thick and glossy, like the screen itself. We're delighted to see a 1366 x 768 resolution on this top-end model, as it ...

Some notable features, but battery life undermines the MSI Wind U135

The U135 does have its merits. The screen resolution may be only the expected 1024 x 600, but the panel is bright, and - once we'd tweaked the gamma with Windows 7's monitor calibration tool - the contrast was excellent, with solid blacks and vivid ...

Great value coupled with superb ergonomics; but battery life lags behind the best

The X100e does have one weakness, however: battery life. In our tests, it returned a maximum six and a half hours in the light use test, which places it a long way behind the best netbooks and Intel CULV-powered machines. More serious-minded buyers ...

A solid, dependable netbook at a keen price, but very nearly hobbled by some pointless design changes

However, that's not quite enough to swing things in the 1005PE's favour, with arch rivals the Samsung N210 and Toshiba NB305 putting in more balanced performances. But, while it's easy to bemoan the 1005PE's faults, at this price we're inclined to be ...

Toshiba's daintily proportioned Satellite T110 is lacking in power, but it's got it where it counts

The presence of 802.11n wireless networking is a welcome sight too, with 3 USB ports and a useful card reader ranged around the T110's edges

An affordable laptop whose appeal is ruined by its odious trackpad

This wouldn't be such a problem if the buttons were responsive, but that's far from the case here: they're stiff and awkward to click without making the cursor jump all over the screen, and mar what's an otherwise perfectly competent laptop

With netbook portability and Lenovo's ThinkPad quality, the X100e is an absolute steal

HP has taken a winning formula for netbooks and then removed the winning elements

Having said that, the keyboard is sturdy enough, if a little hard under the fingers, without sufficient travel to make for an entirely comfortable experience for long stretches of typing

Intel's Pine Trail massively improves battery life, but some unwise design changes drag the Asus back down

There's no performance improvement: a score of 0.29 in our application benchmarks is in the same bracket as the Atom N270. And the GMA 3150 graphics are just a netbook version of the sluggish GMA X3100 chipset. There's still no DirectX acceleration ...

With the N210, Samsung takes its excellent netbook range, and improves the looks and usability

Even so, it's streets ahead of the current Pine Trail-based competition, and its fantastic battery life and solid ergonomics make it worth the money. It doesn't hurt that it'll look good on the go, either