Notebook Hunter

For $1,199 the Toshiba Satellite P750/02T is a powerful allrounder that has even more versatility than usual thanks to the addition of a TV tuner. That might not be important for some people, but if recording and watching TV on your notebook is appealing then this is a good way to get that functionality without sacrifices in other specs. However, for the RRP there are more recent P750 variants that offer vastly improved value for money as they have Core i7s. Still, for a low enough price this hard-hitting all-rounder is definitely worth considering.

Powering the P750 is a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5-2410M (2.3GHz) that will easily run productivity applications and most intensive programs. Games are also mostly well within reach thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics card, which is powerful enough to run new games like StarCraft 2 at high settings. Finally there’s 4GB of RAM that allows for good multi-tasking functionality.

One atypical inclusion is the TV tuner, which makes it possible to watch TV on the P750 or record it to the spacious 750GB hard drive. A 15.6in (1,366x768 resolution) screen is fairly standard, but anything better is very unusual below about $1,400. Portability is about average given the screen size, because the P750 weighs 2.6kg.