Pick your laptop for under $1,000

Gone are the days when a cheap laptop meant a bad laptop.

These days computer makers are tripping over each other to provide great laptops at competitive prices.

What this means for the modern consumer is a great variety of laptops from a wide variety of manufacturers, many of them very different, many very similar too.

To help you make sense of it all, here is our choice picks for mainstream laptops going for under $1,000.

LENOVO IDEAPAD 300

$899

The Lenovo Ideapad 300 is the quintessential wallet-friendly notebook.

It is priced well, has respectable power and, like the Dell, has an onboard graphics card for a bit of gaming now and then.

While it won't turn heads, the Lenovo Ideapad 300's solid construction is a highlight, with the device feeling sturdy and premium even at such a budget-friendly price. Of particular note should be its keyboard, which is very good for long typing sessions.

However, the biggest plus for the Lenovo Ideapad 300 is that it has a full HD 1920x1080 pixel display, giving it good picture quality for watching videos, gaming or just doing basic stuff.

Specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, 14-inch 1920x1080 display, 1TB HDD, AMD Radeon R5 M330 graphics card

DELL INSPIRON 15 5000

$998

If you mentioned Dell to anyone a few years ago, chances are that people would picture dreary grey boxes that looked terrible, worked badly and fell apart after a week.

Fortunately, the Dell of today is a different beast, producing some of the best PCs out there. Case in point is the 15.6-inch Inspiron 15 5000, a piece of hardware that not only looks good, but comes packed with great features.

It combines solid specs including a Core i5 processor, plenty of RAM and even a dedicated graphics card to complete a package that should breeze through your daily tasks and even lets you play quite a few games.

Specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 15.6 inch 1336x768 display, 1TB HDD, AMD Radeon R5 M335 graphics card.

HP 15-AC648TX

$949

The HP 15 is easily the best looking laptop on the list, looking more like a premium ultrabook rather than the budget-friendly workhorse that it is.

You get the same solid Core i5 as the Lenovo, a larger screen and a solid graphics card, together with good speakers and a full island-style keyboard.

The ventilation and cooling engineers at HP have done a great job with the HP 15 - the laptop is designed to remain cool even after extended use and the fans, though powerful, are nice and quiet.

Specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, 15.6-inch 1366x768 display, 1TB HDD, AMD Radeon R5 M330 graphics card

ASUS X556UB

$999

The Asus X556UB continues Asus' current trend of building sleek ultrabook-inspired daily drivers. While a tad heavier at 2.3kg, the Asus X556UB looks great and comes in a variety of colours.

Under the hood, this piece of tech is no slouch either, having the best spec sheet of any laptop on this list. This machine should be more than a match for your daily tasks and the onboard NVidia GeForce GT940M graphics card will be able to handle most games you throw at it at low medium settings.

Like other Asus laptops, the trackpad on this is especially great, with loads of multi-touch gestures and awesome sensitivity.

Specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 15.6-inch display, 1TB HDD, NVidia GeForce GT940M graphics card