I’m less enamoured of the touchpad. The pad’s palm detection works well and it has a nice smooth finish. But the device features a horrid all-in-one design where the discrete right- and left-click buttons integrate into the main pad. This makes it all too easy to have the pointer go flying off your intended target when you try to click and drag.Sensitivity for basic tasks is fine and the pad feels reactive, but its multi-touch abilities aren’t up to scratch. The touchpad struggles to recognise basic tasks like scrolling up and down using two fingers. All too often the pad wouldn’t recognise my commands, and would then inexplicably jump into action and enact every instruction I’d given it. The problem was intermittent but fairly annoying and would regularly cause chaos on spreadsheets or text files I was editing.

The Acer Switch Alpha 12’s 12-inch screen features some impressive specifications, on paper at least. The 2,160 x 1,440 resolution easily matches its key rivals, including the Surface Pro 4, and ensures text and icons are uniformly sharp.To the naked eye colours are also solid and, thanks to the use of IPS screen tech, whites are nice and clean. I didn’t notice severe backlight bleed either. If all you want to do is watch Netflx, browse the web or doodle a few quick notes in OneNote, the screen is more than up to scratch.However, more in-depth testing with a colorimeter revealed a few issues with the display that will put off some buyers. The 456.7nits max brightness is very bright, but the 0.56 black level gives it a distinctly average 795:1 contrast ratio. The 8,712k colour temperature is also well above the 6,500k ideal.

The screen’s 81.3% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut is OK for regular use, but its 57.8% coverage of the Adobe RGB is disappointing.For regular folks who just want a tablet to watch Netflix, or a laptop to web browse, these figures won’t be a problem. The Adobe RGB coverage will, however, be a serious negative for professional artists and designers looking to take advantage of the Aspire’s stylus.The inaccurate colours make the tablet a poor choice for editing photos or digital painting. A few years ago this would've been fine, but since the arrival of stellar tablets like the Galaxy TabPro S, there are better convertibles available for artists.

Hybrid devices generally offer pretty poor audio quality. The thin dimensions and focus on portability mean they always come loaded with tiny, generally underpowered speakers. This remains true on the Switch Alpha 12. The tablet section’s speakers are good enough for Netflix watching in bed, but it's underpowered for pretty much everything else.Maximum volume levels aren’t as high as the Surface Pro 4’s and rapidly become tinny when you try to play music on them. Being fair to Acer, though, they’re no worse than on most other Windows tablets and this is an issue I’ve encountered on close to all of the hybrids I’ve tested.

The front microphone is similarly weak, which is a shame as the front camera can shoot at 1080p. During video chats the person on the other end of the line struggled to hear me with even moderate background noise. The camera also didn’t perform as well as I expected. Even though it can shoot at 1080p, it struggles in even moderately dim lighting conditions. Recording on an overcast London morning the camera made me look like a member of the Walking Dead.
The latest version of Dell’s Inspiron 13 5000 line is an intriguing product. It’s a laptop/tablet hybrid device with a touchscreen that’s attached via a 360-degree hinge that allows for it to be completely flipped around into a tablet-like form.That in itself is nothing new, but what Dell has also done is to keep costs impressively low, with this machine available from just £499. Add a smart design and a wide range of spec options and you have a machine that should be ideal for an array of different buyers.

• ASUS A32-N55 Battery
• Asus A32-NX90 Battery
• Asus A32-UL20 Battery
• ASUS A42-U46 Battery
• Asus A32-F80A Battery
• ASUS 90-NQY1B1000Y Battery
• ASUS A32-N50 Battery
• ASUS A33-N50 Battery
• Asus A32-F5 Battery
• ASUS A32-F3 Battery
• Asus A32-K53 Battery
• ASUS C22-UX31 Battery

Dell's long had an eye for making great-looking products, even at the budget end of the market, and the 5368 is no exception. The company’s favoured gun-metal grey adorns most of the machine, and although it’s just a paint finish on a plastic chassis, it looks great.Helping complete the look are lots of nice little touches, such as the fact that the back of the screen and the keyboard surround are both single pieces of plastic, so there are no seams to break up the clean lines. Similarly, the screen surround uses a contrasting black plastic that blends in that much better with the darkness of the screen itself.It’s just a shame Dell felt the need to add little screen-protecting rubber bumps to either side of the keyboard.

One thing this machine can’t claim, though, is to be all that thin and light. While it’s still relatively so, dimensions of 325 x 224 x 20.4mm and a weight of 1.62kg make it noticeably heftier than non-touchscreen ultrabooks such as the Lenovo Ideapad 710S or Dell’s own XPS 13.This has allowed Dell to squeeze in better connectivity options than you’ll get on those machines, though. Here you get not two but three USB 3.0 ports and a full-size HDMI, which is far more convenient than the micro/mini video outputs on slimmer machines.You also get a headphone jack, SD card reader and a Kensington lock slot for keeping this laptop affixed to a desk. There’s not room for a wired network connection, but you do of course get 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.Continuing the great first impressions is the keyboard. The layout is good and the key action is nicely defined, making it easy to tell you’ve pressed a key properly. It’s also backlit and there are two brightness levels as well as the option to turn it off completely. Although the review sample we have here uses a US layout, a UK version is available too.

Sadly the Inspiron 13 5000 is brought crashing back to earth by the quality of its screen. From the moment you fire this laptop up, it’s clear the screen has some serious issues.Viewed absolutely straight on, it’s OK. Colours seem accurate, there are plenty enough pixels thanks to an ample 1920 x 1080 resolution and there’s a decent level of contrast, so it doesn’t look dull or washed out.However, move even slightly off axis in any direction and an annoying graininess is introduced. This isn’t just annoying from a technical image quality point of view, but it's also physically uncomfortable to view, as it has a shimmering quality to it that makes it slightly difficult to focus properly on the image. It’s quite a common effect on cheap screens, and while some devices can sort of get away with it, for a 2-in-1 like this it just feels unforgivable.

Add in the inevitable reflections of the glass touchscreen and it just can’t hold a candle to more conventional ultrabook screens, while plenty of high-quality tablets do far better for the same money.Putting it to the test with a colorimeter, there’s little to redeem this display. Its maximum brightness is just 257nits – some way behind the 300-350nits of most ultrabooks – making use in bright conditions less than ideal.Coverage of the sRGB colour space is also just 59.8%. I suspect this may be the crucial figure that provides a clue to that shimmering effect. The screen will be using dithering – where pixels alternate between two colours to mimic another colour – to make up for its lack of inherent colour depth. Just the slightest change in contrast when viewed off-centre highlights the difference in the two colours.

The only saving grace is that colour temperature (6,101K) is reasonably close to the ideal of 6,500K. Contrast is an impressive 1,285:1, so at least in colour accuracy terms it doesn’t immediately look wrong – there’s no obvious blue tint, for instance.However, these scores fail to really drag this display up to being anything more than just about adequate for general computing. If you like to sit back and watch video on your laptop or you need accurate colours for editing pictures and the like, then it’s simply not up to snuff.All of which is a massive misstep for a machine that’s so screen-centric. After all, what’s the point of having a 360-degree hinge that can allow you to position your screen in a multitude of different ways if it still looks a bit rubbish from any angle.

• Acer Aspire 5742 Battery
• Acer Aspire 5742G Battery
• Acer Aspire 5542 Battery
• Acer Aspire 5542G Battery
• Acer Aspire 5738Z Battery
• Acer Aspire 5738ZG Battery
• Acer Aspire 5740G Battery
• Acer Aspire 7730ZG Battery
• Acer Aspire 7736ZG Battery
• Acer Aspire 1410 Battery
• ACER Aspire S7 Battery
• Apple A1281 Battery
• Apple MacBook Pro 17inch Battery

Nonetheless, the hinge itself is very well engineered and makes it easy to securely position the screen at any angle. Once past 180 degrees it will also automatically turn off the keyboard and trackpad and prompt Windows to shift into tablet mode.Meanwhile, the touchscreen element is OK, with it largely feeling accurate and responsive. However, there were a few two many occasions where, when just browsing the web, it would incorrectly think I’d tapped a link or double-tapped to zoom into a section when all I was trying to do was swipe up or down to scroll.As for audio, it’s actually pretty good for such a slim machine. The stereo speakers on the underside get reasonably loud and there’s a little more mid-range power than you might expect. It’s not class-leading, but it's better than many a laptop I’ve used.
The Raspberry Pi is the beloved mascot of makers and tinkerers all across the world and has sold more than eight million units. While the sales figures are impressive, the Pi hasn’t yet made the jump to being an everyday device for the masses. To most people, it remains a circuit board that they don’t understand.

Pi-top is hoping to change that, with an eponymous build-it-yourself laptop kit that turns the Pi into something a little more familiar. Granted, the idea may sound ludicrous at first – but it actually has plenty going for it.Weighing a meagre 1.5kg, it’s light for a 13.3-inch laptop and has a long 12-hour battery life. Combine that with the low $299 price point and the Pi-top is capable of giving Chromebooks a run for their money.Yet for all these benefits the Pi-top isn’t trying to replace budget laptops for adults. Instead, it’s set itself up as a laptop for kids between the ages of nine and 16. Pi-top has even developed a suite of workshops and games to teach kids how to code and build their own hardware.

The Pi-top’s lurid green shell arrives in four pieces, which, along with the internal components, have to be assembled before you can do anything else. If you’ve ever played with Airfix planes then this won’t be particularly taxing; the assembly process is illustrated with Lego-like diagrams that kids can easily follow.Parental guidance is still recommended, but the Pi-top isn’t something you’ll have to assemble the night before just to make sure it works. It took me around 20 minutes, and I was amazed that it was mostly a tool-free experience. The chassis simply slots together with a few bolts to reinforce it.

Initially, I was a little concerned about this simplified design. The hardware is protected by a single, easily removed piece of black plastic. But after two weeks of testing, the Pi-top proved as resilient as any other laptop – and the fact that you can easily reveal the innards made it fascinating, even for supposed adults like me.The design isn’t without compromises, however. The biggest is that the are no speakers, which makes it impossible to play music or enjoy many games to their fullest. It does have a 3.5mm jack, so headphones of external speakers are supported.Pi-top is also an expandable platform and speaker modules are available. If you’re approaching Pi-top as an adult’s laptop then the need to wire in your own speakers would be awful, but for kids, this is a great weekend project.

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