Five of the coolest laptops

By Claudine Beaumont, Technology

Medion Erazer X6811 (£949, medion.co.uk)

This gaming laptop boasts a 15in full high-definition screen, Intel Core i5 processor and Nvidia GeForce graphics card, which provides an excellent playing experience. Racing games and shooters run smoothly with little buffering or lag, and the nine-cell lithium ion battery provides plenty of mobile gaming time.

Samsung Galaxy Tab (from £400 depending on network and tariff, samsung.com/uk)

Apple MacBook Air (from £849, apple.com/uk)

Apple’s already impossibly-thin MacBook Air has just got skinnier – it’s now a mere 3mm at its thinnest point. Opt for the cute, compact 11in model, which is tiny enough to squeeze in to any handbag or briefcase. It boasts Flash storage, a multi-touch trackpad, an SD card slot, two USB ports and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Best of all, its long-life battery promises around six hours of use on a single charge.

Rock Xtreme 795 (from £2,199, rockdirect.com)

A powerhouse laptop for people who need top-notch graphics, bags of storage, a crystal clear screen and plenty of processing grunt. Rock machines appeal to gamers and photo, music and video editors. The entry-level 795 model uses Intel Core i7 processors, up to 12GB of 1.3GHz memory, an Nvidia GeForce 480M 2GB graphics card, and a choice of solid-state storage or a conventional hard drive, boasting up to 750GB and 2.25TB storage respectively.

Sony Vaio Z Series (from £1,525, sonystyle.co.uk)

Hewn from lightweigh carbon fibre, Sony’s Z Series laptops are the classiest netbooks money can buy. Boasting dynamic hybrid graphics and a super-fast solid-state drive, boot-up times are minimal, and it’s easy to save and retrieve documents on the go. The entry-level model uses a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, up to 8GB of memory and runs Windows 7. The slightly better model even gives users the choice of a DVD or Blu-ray writer.