Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102

The Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102 is a 10in tablet running Windows 8.1 at a competitive price. There’s also an 8in version of the Encore 2 available for around £170, but those wanting to use their Windows tablet for work will probably appreciate the extra space.

Those extra inches will certainly make a big difference to anyone looking to be productive on the road and, usefully, the 10.1in Encore 2 comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This gives you a licence to use the software on the tablet, on a smartphone and on a PC or Mac, making it great value. Be sure to activate your Office 365 subscription within six months of activating your Windows 8.1 licence, though, otherwise you’ll miss out.

Linx 7

The Linx 7 is the cheapest Windows 8.1 tablet we’ve ever tested. At only £80 it immediately grabbed our interest, and this was piqued even further when we found out it comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This alone is worth around £50, and will let you use the Office suite on one PC or Mac, one tablet and one smartphone, so you’re not even limited to just using Office on the Linx 7 itself. You can even get a £30 rebate if you trade in an old tablet, although the appeal in doing this will very much depend on what tablet you might have lying around.

SERIF PagePlus X8

Creating a worthwhile update to the excellent PagePlus X7 must have been no easy task, but X8 has many new features and has addressed PagePlus X7’s most notable omission: its lack of a baseline grid for lining up text elements across columns. PagePlus X8 also has improved photo editing, better support for electronic publishing and the ability to insert an existing PDF into your own publication and preserve its appearance.

PHILIPS Brilliance 288P6

UITRA HD (4K) screens have continued to drop in price as 28in 3,840x2,160 TN panels become cheaper to produce. We’ve reviewed several of these screens in recent months, but we’ve yet to see one we think is better than a high-quality, 2,560x1,440 resolution screen.

Philips’s Brilliance 288P6 seems to use a similar TN panel to equivalent-priced Ultra HD monitors, displaying near-identical characteristics. At the default settings, our calibrator reported a sRGB gamut coverage of 92.9 per cent. Most colours were well served, with bright greens and yellows looking rich, although deeper reds, blues and purples lost some of their vibrancy; the sRGB coverage rose to 95.2 per cent after calibration.