Top 12 laptops for less than £599

Asus X82Q

Comfortable usability, but its lack of key features makes it poor value for money

The Asus X82Q (£549 inc. VAT) is a smart, usable laptop built primarily for the business market. While not bursting with features, it gets the basics right, but compared to other laptops in this group, it's expensive for what's on offer.

The 14.1-inch 1280 x 800-pixel screen isn't the most impressive in this group, but it is bright and sharp enough to be used for reading word documents or analysing spreadsheets. There is a Super-TFT covering, which means reflections could prove distracting in bright lighting conditions – when on a train, for example.

The inclusion of an Intel GMA 4500M GPU means the laptop is not suited to either gaming or multimedia operations, although it does help to offer a reasonable battery life of over 200 minutes

Read more: Asus X82Q review

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James Rivington

James was part of the TechRadar editorial team for eight years up until 2015 and now works in a senior position for TR's parent company Future. An experienced Content Director with a demonstrated history of working in the media production industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-commerce Optimization, Journalism, Digital Marketing, and Social Media. James can do it all.