What’s a good low-cost laptop?

QA while ago you recommended the Toshiba Satellite C40-C as a low-cost laptop. When my old laptop died recently, I thought it was just what I needed, providing a 14 inch screen for around £200, but sadly it’s no longer available. Can you suggest an alternative? Jim Entwhistle

AThe C40-C came out alongside a number of cheap full-size laptops, but few have been launched since. Lenovo’s Ideapad 100S-14 looked good but it has also been discontinued, as has Dell’s Inspiron 14 3000. We haven’t tested the larger 15 3000 (£279 from www.snipcacom/25500) but it seems a decent option, although Dell’s budget screens can disappoint.

The HP Stream 14 (£200 from Amazon www.snipca.com/25501) is a larger version of the Stream 11 (see Issue 447, page 23). It’s attractive – if you like sky blue – but the keyboard could be sturdier and it has just 32GB of storage.

If that doesn’t suit, you can buy HP’S Notebook 14 with a 500GB hard drive from Tesco (£229 from www.snipca.com/25499, pictured). Its quad-core AMD processor isn’t much quicker than the dual-core Intel Celerons in its rivals, however, and you’ll need patience to run Windows 10 on it (or on any of these laptops).