Christmas Laptop Buying Guide

Which type of laptop should you choose this Christmas?

Christmas is now less than a month away, and for many this is the perfect excuse to indulge in a nice new piece of tech either for yourself or, if you’re feeling charitable, as a gift for someone special. Laptops are a popular Christmas purchase, these portable PCs always proving themselves endlessly useful in the modern world whether it be for work or play. However, gone are the days when a laptop was just a laptop: today you can get anything from a high performance gaming laptop that runs better than a good proportion of its desktop brethren to a compact netbook, perfectly optimised for long spells of browsing.

So what are your options, and how do you select the right laptop for Santa to nonchalantly place among the other presents under the Christmas tree?

Netbooks

Small and lightweight, netbooks are, as their name suggests, perfect if you primarily want a portable PC to browse the internet, send emails and generally perform a variety of desktop tasks with ease. While they often sacrifice such features as a longer battery life, legacy ports and a CD drive, the trade off in terms of price and portability is more than worth it.

Ultrabooks

Ultrabooks are a high-end type of subnotebook, the main aim of their design being to reduce bulk without a loss in performance and battery life. The latter is usually achieved by using low power Intel Core processors, solid-state drives and unibody chassis, often also foregoing disc drives and extraneous ports. While they do cost more than netbooks, the slight increase in price is definitely worth it if you want a laptop capable of keeping up with the slightly more demanding user.

High performance models

If you need a laptop that can be used for gaming, high-end graphics software and other resource-heavy applications, you’re going to want to pick an appropriate model. As mentioned previously, some of the beefier laptops can easily beat desktops in performance, while the added bonus of them being small enough to carry around makes them perfect for working – or playing – wherever the mood takes you.

Tablets

Tablets are another option to consider if you’re looking to get a portable PC this Christmas. Sleek, easy to transport and a breeze to operate thanks to their touch screens (this is especially important if you’re getting one for someone less tech savvy than yourself), they’re certainly worth at least considering. If you’re not a fan of soft keyboards then don’t worry: you can easily get hard keyboard-compatible tablets as well.

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