Those looking for a bargain may wish to turn their attentions to the Toshiba Satellite Pro A120, which comes in at £30 cheaper than its rivals. Other than the price, the first thing you’ll notice about the Satellite Pro is that it looks a lot more like a business computer than a home PC. Its grey and black chassis is not unpleasant to look at, but the overall design feels a little austere.

The A120 appears to be aimed more at serious use rather than fun. It’s the only notebook in our round-up not to feature a DVD writer of any sort, which drastically diminishes its multimedia potential.

A combined CD writer and DVD-Rom drive is featured instead, so it is at least possible to watch DVD movies. You may not want to bother, however, once you see the A120’s screen. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it during standard computer operation but the contrast levels are weak, which makes movies look bleached out.

Inside, a reasonably fast processor is let down by a tiny (by today’s standards) amount of memory. In our tests, the Satellite Pro didn’t exactly flunk, but it didn’t particularly shine, either. Where this PC really excels is in its security provisions and its battery life.

With a much more enduring power pack than the other PCs (we squeezed nearly four hours out of it in one sitting), shock protection, advanced password management and anti-theft systems, this is definitely a PC for the business traveller, rather than a family.

This article is part of a group test of budget notebooks.
The table can be read via our Pdf download.
Others are:
Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi
Asus A6Rp-AP026H
Fujitsu Siemens Amilio Pi 1505
Hi-grade Notino W5600
MSI Megabook M670