Buyer's Guide: The Best Netbooks & Ultra-Portable Notebooks

Laptops contain all kinds of components that can affect performances. Here are a few things to look for when shopping for a new laptop:

- The processor is a bit like the computer's brain. It processes information and allows the computer to complete tasks. For power-hungry jobs like running AI features in games and photo editing, you'll need to make sure the processor is powerful enough to keep up. Intel Atom and AMD Fusion CPUs are entry-level processors that are fine for basic office computing. For faster computing and more demanding tasks, we'd recommend Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 processors.

- The hard drive is where the laptop stores files, from software and games to photos and documents. While 160 to 250 GB is fine for office docs and pictures, anything upwards of 320 GB will give you more room for manoeuvre. Some laptops now come with SSDs (flash memory) which are generally much faster than the HDDs used as standard. However, the price per GB of an SSD is much higher. In fact, it's rare to find built-in SSDs over 128 GB as anything bigger would push the laptop's price sky high.

- The memory (RAM) is like a go-between for the hard drive and the processor. For Windows 7, don't go under 2 GB—in fact, we'd recommend 3 GB or more. Laptops currently average 3 GB to 4 GB, which means it's worthwhile looking for a 64-bit version of the OS (faster operation, improved memory management).
 

- The graphics card determines how smooth and detailed game graphics look. It also takes care of decoding HD video and sometimes video encoding too. The main two manufacturers of high-performance graphics cards are NVIDIA and ATI.

- A laptop screen can be 7" to 20" in size. Smaller, more compact models have smaller screens, while notebooks with larger screens will be bulkier but more comfortable for office work, games, watching films or editing photos. Large-screened laptops can make suitable replacements for desktop computers these days. Note, however, that performance in games can be affected by the large number of pixels the computer has to handle.

With these factors in mind, here's our pick of the best netbooks and ultra-portable laptops out there right now.

Editor's Choice

With its stylish matte black casing the U36SD has all the same great features as the U30SD it's designed to replace, including a powerful processor, good performance in games and a decent battery life. Ditching the DVD drive has pushed down the price too, making this a great-value ultra-portable laptop.

Two Alternatives

Best of the Rest

Here are a few more of our favourites.