The Medion Akoya E7212, on sale on Sunday 24 January from Aldi shops around the country, is a large notebook computer that’s ideally suited to being a replacement for a desktop PC.

That is to say, it’s not particularly portable given its size and weight, so it’s best off left in one place in the home, where it’s going to be more practical than a larger desktop computer, particularly if space is already tight.

The computer has an Intel Pentium Dual Core T4500 processor, which is not a particularly high-end model – the Dual Core series is not as powerful as the similarly named but quite different Core 2 series. It does come with 4GB of memory, which is as large an amount as we would expect to find on this kind of computer. There’s also a 300GB hard disk, which is large enough for most people’s music and picture collections, but storing a lot of video files might push this a bit.

Although the computer’s body is large, accommodating the 17in widescreen display, the keyboard was surprisingly small, with plenty of space at either side, although the touchpad below it was large enough to be comfortable in use. The keyboard took a bit more getting used to before we were able to type without regularly bashing other letters than the ones we had meant to hit.

Battery life was not impressive at only one hour and 40 minutes but that’s in keeping with the laptop’s profile – it’s too heavy to be used for very long away from a mains power socket.

As for computing power, it’s certainly no slouch when it comes to office and internet tasks, and playing music and video won’t present a problem. More taxing things such as editing video, or playing recent games, will be more of a problem – we would recommend something more powerful if that’s what you’ll be doing.

There’s a DVD drive for watching films and installing programs, and the computer has three USB ports, an eSata socket, HDMI connection, memory card reader and Expresscard slot. There’s also a Displayport connector, which is a new connector used to attach new monitors – as yet there aren’t many models that use it apart from Apple’s latest screens, but more will come along.

In all, the E7212 is a good computer with a large screen that’s great as a budget family machine. These Aldi deals tend to sell out quickly, though, so if you’re interested it’s worth making arrangements to get to your local store and take a look at the product as soon as you can.