The fact that Intel had to produce a concept reference design for a laptop to show what could be done, gives some idea of what a depressingly poor choice there is for laptops.These are very personal items, something that usually stimulates value-added qualitative design rather than bigger and better CPUs drives and screens. But the fact is, unlike the multitude of smaller hi-fi equipment manufacturers, the number of people making laptops has reduced massively in the last few years. Laptops look pretty much the same, product design wise (not feature wise), as they did almost a decade ago and none come close to other areas of high end consumer electronics in terms of design flair.So here is our list of recent laptops you can currently or will shortly be able to buy that are subjectively well designed. There are no real surprises other than the ones we chose to omit.

A Sky Hook is an impossible item that interns were traditionally sent out to buy , as a prank. These eight flying cranes, seven helicopters and one blimp, are as close to reality as sky hooks can get. The blimp proposal is actually named the Sky Hook.