At the height of the Blu-ray and HD DVD format war, if you wanted to go high-definition the most logical way was to buy a laptop.

This was because manufacturers included them in high-end models before releasing dedicated players.

At first, this meant there was something of a price premium to be paid.

But now the format war is over we're starting to see the drives roll out across all ranges.

And prices are falling fast. We've brought together the best of the latest crop of Blu-ray laptops, all of them offering great power at an unbelievable price.

 

1. Acer Aspire 8920G

 


When it comes to the Full HD multimedia experience, there is only one laptop at the moment that truly fits the bill and that is the Acer Aspire 8920.

This is the first laptop to be released to sport a true Full HD display.

Widescreen laptops have traditionally had a 16:10 aspect ratio but with 18.4-inch of the Aspire 8920 delivers 16:9 aspect ratio and native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixel, making it fully optimise for HD playback.

Six integrated speakers backed by Dolby Home Theater technology and a built-in TV tuner round out the main multimedia hardware and Acer has added its own CineDash control panel to the front of the laptop that gives you touch-sensitive control of your movies and music.

A Blu-ray drive is built in as standard across the high-end range and the laptop even comes with a host of Acer applications to make the most of the high-def drive.

When it comes to performance, this is as powerful a machine as you'll ever need for editing and copying high-def footage to disc.

That's because the dual-core processor is Intel's fastest to date and with 4GB of memory you won't need to wait for applications to load.

 

PROCESSOR: Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz)
MEMORY: 4096MB
HARD DRIVE: 2 x 320GB
SCREEN: 18.4-inch Super-TFT (1920 x 1080 pixels)
SIZE/WEIGHT: 441 x 300 x 44mm / 4.1kg

TYPICAL Price: £1400 (inc. VAT)
URL: www.acer.co.uk

 

2. ASUS M50

 


If you're looking for something a little more portable, this semi-portable laptop from Asus weighs a reasonable 2.8kg.

That's impressive considering it sports a 15.4-inch display.

It's not quite designed for Full HD, as it only delivers an image output of 1680 x 1050 pixels but it's great for localised HD footage.

Along with the built-in Blu-ray drive, multimedia is high on the hit list for this machine.