Buying Guide: Best 13-inch laptops: which one is right for you?

The 13-inch laptop is a bit of an oddity - not small enough to be considered a netbook, not big enough to be a proper laptop.

But, in many ways, it's the perfect size for a portable PC; they're not as fiddly and squint-inducing as netbooks, but not as heavy and awkward as a full-on notebook.

The price of these machines is higher than netbooks though, so if your wallet's feeling the strain we recommend you take a look at our guide to the 15 best netbooks in the world today.

Or for a broader view, look at our 20 best laptops in the world today. But whatever you do, read on to find our favourite 13-inchers of the past few months - all in price order.

1. Lenovo Thinkpad Edge - £373

If you can live with Lenovo's Thinkpad Edge's 80s-tastic looks, you'll find a relatively cheap but powerful little lappy. It's never going to perform as well as a £1,000 machine, but the integrated ATI GPU means it can handle complex multimedia presentations, as well as basic photo and video editing. Best of all is that it's as hard as nails, with a spill-resistant keyboard and high-quality plastics used throughout. Perfect for clumsy students who can't handle their drink.

2. Dell Vostro V13 - £409

The polar opposite to Lenovo's industrial looks, Dell's Vostro V13 is sleek and shiny, but not much more expensive. It's got a wonderful screen, a built-in webcam and an SD card reader. At the base specs the power doesn't quite match its incredible looks, and the battery life could be better. But get Dell to slap in 4GB of RAM and a dual-core processor and you'll have quite the machine, for less than £500, too.

3. Samsung Q330 - £555

Samsung's entry into the 13-inch market - the Q330 - is a powerful workhorse of a machine packed into a super-slim chassis. It includes Intel's latest Core i3 processor for decent performance plus 3GB of DDR3 memory. The integrated graphics chip could even handle some older games - such as Modern Warfare - albeit with the settings turned down. It's a class act of a laptop, and although battery life isn't quite up there with other ultraportables its high-performance features and low price more than make up for it.

4. Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX - £687

Almost everything comes with a touchscreen these days - including this Toshiba Satellite laptop. The touch-sensitive nature of the display lets you play basic games and cruise through Windows 7 programs with a swipe of your fingers. It's all backed up with some fairly meaty specs, too, such as a Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM. It's let down slightly by the poor integrated graphics and dodgy keyboard, but if you're really keen on the touchscreen you can simply use that instead.

5. Apple MacBook - £779

It says a lot that the cheapest Apple 13-inch laptop is almost twice the price of the cheapest Windows laptop. But you're getting a well-specced little machine, packing a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM and - most importantly - an Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics chip. With Steam coming to the Mac, this makes games of Team Fortress 2 an actual possibility. And, of course, it's all wrapped up in Apple's lovely unibody chassis.

6. HP Envy 13 - £966

HP's Envy cost a whopping £1499 when we reviewed it, and we rightly criticised it for being far too expensive. Now that price has dropped to under £1000, making it a worthy competitor to Apple's 13-inch MacBook. Like the MacBook, it sports a quality build, lozenge-type keys, a lovely screen and a dedicated graphics card. Unfortunately, battery life isn't that great, but if you fancy buying something of Apple's inscrutable quality without the Apple branding, look no further.

7. Fujitsu LifeBook S760 - £999

The first notebook on our list to include Intel's Core i5 processor - and it's a belter as a result, with stunning results in our benchmarking tests. Fujitsu hasn't stopped there, though, and has included some handy innovations such as a circular trackpad that actually works, a fingerprint scanner and a really lovely keyboard. It's also incredibly slim and light, but let down slightly by a suspect build quality and a distinct lack of dedicated graphics.

8. Toshiba Portege R700 - £1,387

Spongy keyboard aside, the sample Toshiba Portege machine we received was absolutely stunning. Toshiba has reinvented the laptop with its Airflow Cooling Technology, which places core components near the edge of the machine to ensure optimum airflow over its most sensitive bits. Add to this the stunning transflective panel - which allows for use in bright sunlight - and an 128GB SSD and it's a machine as fast as it is innovative. Our sample came with a Core i7 processor, hence the high price, but you can pick up similar models with Core i3 processors from just £669.

9. Sony VAIO VGN-Z11WN/B - £1,478

It's here that we get into the ridiculous levels of money for 13-inch laptops, but you get what you pay for. Sony's VAIO series is generally stunning, and this model includes a luscious screen capable of near-HD quality; a rarity on such a small laptop. It's all backed up by some almightily impressive specs, too: a high end 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia 9300M graphics card. The build quality is astonishing, battery life amazing and it's a marvel of modern micro-engineering.

10. Sony VAIO VPC-Z12V9E/X - £1,931

Just under £2,000 is a lot to spend on a laptop, especially one so small. But this Sony VAIO is basically a desktop in a tiny laptops' clothing, and it includes a proper desktop Core i7, 6GB of DDR3 RAM and an Nvidia GT 330M graphics chip. You needn't worry about this beefy setup draining the battery, either: we got a decent 285 minutes out of it. It's all wrapped up in VAIO's exquisite style and rugged build quality, and the screen is a sight to behold. As we said in our review, "this is easily one of the best laptops you can currently buy."