HP 2710p

Launch price £1,200.00

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Stuff says

The Audi A3 of tablet PCs: built to last and nicely designed, but pricey and inclined to wear Boss suits

* * * *

It's also built. Nothing on the 2710p feels even remotely hewn from plastic. Panels fit perfectly, and there's almost zero flex in the chassis. The full-sized keyboard is a pleasure to thump, with keys that are Bentley-suspension damped. And it feels like it will last an age (which you should have every right to expect from a £1,200 toy, we suppose).

One note for HP's design team: the notebook opens by sliding a latch on the leading edge of the base, and as much we tried over the period of a week we could never flick it open with the ease of, say, a MacBook. It was always a two-handed, one-palm operation.

But let's not end on a moan. Battery life is good – arrive fully charged in the morning, carry it around during the day, and there'll still be at least 40% left by lights out.

Blinded by the screen
The 12.1in screen is a beauty. It's bright (blinding, actually, if you turn it up to 10), sharp, accurate, and suffers from none of the viewing angle issues you'll find in lesser screens.

Handwriting recognition is good, and gets better with time (especially if you have a spare night to run through the 'train me' program). But that's a fundamental flaw with tablets: the simple, immovable fact is that it's faster and easier to type.

Ah, you say, but you can draw stuff and show people – you can't do that with a conventional notebook. Yep, fine, but most of the "let's sketch something out!" meetings in Stuff-world are around big boards using old-fashioned markers.

We'd worry for your sanity if you splashed the cash on the 2710p without first checking out the Toshiba R500. But neither would you be damned as a lunatic in you then went with the HP – it's beautiful enough in a kind of austere way, and is just cool enough to live with.