The insulating liquids used in industrial applications are typically mineral oils. In recent years however, significant attention has been paid to alternative insulating fluids, including synthetic and natural ester liquids. In order to expand their practical applications, it is important to have detailed information on their dielectric properties. In this present paper, the dielectric properties of synthetic ester, Midel 7131; mineral oil, Shell Diala D; and vegetable (rapeseed) oil have been investigated. It has been shown that Midel 7131 has a higher ac breakdown voltage (27.6 kV) as compared with Diala D oil (26.4 kV) and rapeseed oil (24.6 kV). However, the breakdown voltage of the Diala D oil has the smallest standard deviation (7%) amongst the tested liquids (13% for Midel 7131 and 11% for rapeseed oil). Statistical analysis of the breakdown voltages has been conducted and it has been shown that the ac breakdown voltages can be described by a normal distribution. dc I-V characteristics have been measured and the space charge saturation regime has been observed for all three liquids starting from ~9 kV for positive energisation and ~10 kV for negative energisation in the point-plane topology. Apparent mobilities of the charge carriers in the tested liquids have been obtained using I^1/2-V curves; these mobilities can be used for calculation of the space charge influenced distribution of the electric field in liquid insulators stressed with dc voltage. Such analysis can be important for design and exploitation of HVDC power systems.