Laptops buying guide

03.Laptop families

Laptops can be broadly grouped as follows:

• Netbooks  – small, cheap and low-powered
• Ultraportables  – also lightweight but more powerful
• Budget laptops  – larger screen and keyboard at a reasonable price
• Family all-rounders  – larger, more powerful and full featured but more expensive
• Multimedia powerhouse  – large, powerful, portable desktop replacement.

All of them come with the basics: wireless networking (Wi-Fi), connection for an external screen, an Ethernet port, sockets for a microphone and speakers or headphones, and USB ports for adding external devices. Size typically dictates the type of hardware and performance you can expect from a laptop computer. The table (right) provides a general guide for the type of hardware you can expect to find in each category of laptop.

See Technical considerations to learn how hardware can affect the performance of a laptop.