5 Smallest Laptops

Toshiba NB200

The NB200 is a solid looking, if a little unexciting netbook available in any colour, as long as it’s black. Clearly aimed at the business market, this PC feels serious, has a reasonable battery life, estimated at around 7 hours. Available with a built-in 3G modem for around £300+, or less without the modem.

Samsung N510

One of the first sub-laptop PCs to use an NVIDIA graphics chip, the Samsung is a very capable, almost perfect-sized computer. The keyboard is fractionally smaller than a regular keyboard, and is a pleasure to use. The screen is crisp and sharp, and has, if anything, a few too many pixels; the resolution is 1366x768 – quite a lot for a small screen.

Dell Inspiron M101z

One of the smallest in the group, the cool blue Dell is an absolute joy, with smooth curves, sturdy frame and reasonably high specification. The built-in speakers pack a punch for their small size, but sadly, it’s let down by the poor battery performance.

Lenovo ThingPad X100e

Formerly the IBM ThinkPad, this range utilised the strange, rubber “trackpoint”, an accelerating navigation tool (used instead of a mouse). This little laptop has the same annoying feature, but apart from that, it’s a serious machine. Not a netbook in the conventional sense – it has a slightly larger screen than most – the X100e has an exceptionally nice-to-use keyboard.

Samsung NB30

The cheapest on offer in this group is the Samsung NB30 – a true 10.1 inch netbook – and the only one. We included this model because it has a little more to offer than similarly prices models. This baby feels and looks more rugged and tough that its contemporaries, and this is supported be the inclusion of a built-in accelerometer – a little piece of wizardry which tells the computer when it’s being dropped (the same sort of thing is built into your iPhone ).

One more to look out for, last year’s HP Mini 210 is available at clearance prices from various outlets. It has a choice of processor and memory configurations, from the pretty much standard N455 1.66GHz single core and 1GB RAM, right up to a N550 Dual core and 2GB RAM. You can also choose between a 250GB or 320GB hard disk and either the Starter or Premium versions of Windows 7. This highly configurable netbook weighs just under 1.5 kg, so it’s one of the lighter models, and is available in 5 cool colours.