Too 4K-ing expensive? Five full HD laptops for work and play

High-def desirables for a decent price

HP Beats Special Edition

Printing dark red characters on a black keyboard isn’t the smartest idea anyone’s ever had, and I found that I needed to keep the backlight turned on most of the time just to type quickly and locate function keys. However, I can forgive that minor lunacy as the Beats SE costs just £479 and is probably the cheapest full-HD laptop currently available.

You’re not going to get an eye-popping IPS display for that price, and the colours on the 15.6-inch screen do look at bit dull at times. The vertical viewing angle is limited too, which means that you might need to give the screen a little nudge to every now and then. Fortunately, the horizontal viewing angle is a lot better, so you can sit back and browse the web or watch some streaming video in comfort. The Beats speakers are nothing special either, although they’re loud enough to let you listen to a few tunes without needing headphones or external speakers.

Performance is pretty modest, with the 1.7GHz AMD A8 processor only managing entry-level scores of 1681 and 1971 points when running the PCMark 8 Home and Work suites. However, it does include 8GB of memory and 1TB hard drive, so you can pile on plenty of music and videos to keep you entertained and there's a DVD drive too.

Battery life only just nudges past the three-hour mark. But, to be fair, the Beat’s performance and battery life are still comparable to many other budget laptops that don’t have the benefit of a full-HD screen. It’s certainly no graphics workstation, but if you just want an affordable full-HD screen for watching video or browsing your photo library then the Beats SE is probably the best you’ll get for less than £500.

Price £479
More info HP