Intel's seen the future of the laptop, and it's called the ultrabook. Designed to compete head-to-head with the MacBook Air, these new machines are extremely thin, promise over five hours of battery life, and boot / resume from sleep very quickly. Every major laptop manufacturer now has an ultrabook on its product list, so whether you favor Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, or Toshiba, there's a review here for you.
Ultrabook reviews
Samsung Series 9 review (15-inch, 2012)
One year ago, Samsung released the Series 9 laptop, and at the time, we'd never seen a more premium Windows machine. It was thin, light, visually striking, and choice components filled the svelte machine, including a comfortable backlit keyboard, a fast SSD, an aluminum alloy chassis, and a wonderful matte screen. If it weren't for the 13-inch computer's $1,649 price tag (which admittedly fell to $1,399 after a few months), it might have been a roaring success.
As is, it was good enough for...
Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG review
What is an ultrabook? Intel has a pretty loose definition: as long as your laptop is less than 0.8 inches thin, has five hours of battery life, rapidly wakes from sleep, and has a second-generation Intel Core processor, you're basically part of the club. What "ultrabook" stands for, though, is an entirely different matter. The first wave of ultrabooks were designed specifically to compete with Apple's MacBook Air, and it showed: a teardrop-shaped wedge design, a metal frame, a 13-inch screen,...
HP Envy 14 Spectre review
Can you believe that just six months ago, HP was thinking of ditching the PC business? It seems far fetched today, now that we know the company had laptops like the lightweight, long-lasting Folio 13 and the powerful yet relatively inexpensive Envy series up its sleeves. And of course, that's before we consider the HP Envy 14 Spectre, too. First revealed to us in an FCC filing and then again in a video tease, the Spectre turned out to be a 14-inch ultrabook practically bathed in Gorilla...
Dell XPS 13 review
Acer Aspire S3. Asus Zenbook UX31. Lenovo IdeaPad U300S. Toshiba Portege Z835. HP Folio 13. And now, Dell's XPS. Since Intel and its OEM partners set out to beat the Apple MacBook Air on price and match its exceptionally thin, superbly solid build, six Windows laptops have risen to the challenge... and while a few have come close, none have quite done the job. The XPS 13 is Dell's entry into the ultrabook arena, and while it's got the same basic specs as most of the other thin-and-lights...
MacBook Air with Windows 7 review: the ultrabook to rule them all?
Let’s be honest: The ultrabook phenomenon is by and large Intel's and the rest of the PC industry's reaction to Apple’s MacBook Air. Just take a look at a lot of the designs and the features: the influence (and in some places the outright imitation) is obvious. However, while the ultrabooks on the market today have all tried to mimic and beat the Air on one thing or another — price, more storage, and so on — none have managed to pull it off.
In fact, I’ve concluded in almost all...
HP Folio 13 review
“I hardly think that we're too late, the work we're doing with Microsoft is extraordinarily compelling — ultraportables are compelling," HP’s Todd Bradley said during the call where Meg Whitman, the company’s new CEO, declared her decision to keep its PC business. Of course, Bradley wasn’t only defending HP’s role in the computer and mobile market, but he was hinting at HP’s intention to jump into the new crowded ultrabook pool. And the HP Folio 13 is just that entry.
I...
Toshiba Portege Z835 ultrabook review
In the last couple of weeks, ultrabooks — Intel’s new category of ultrathin and ultralight laptops — have been arriving one by one, each aiming to derail the MacBook Air’s lead with a mix of competitive pricing and new features. But none of them have been successful; each has had its own set of compromises which just haven’t been worth the savings. To recap: the Acer Aspire S3 had a slower hard drive / SSD combo and atrocious keyboard, the Asus Zenbook UX31 had unforgivable trackpad...
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ultrabook review
Months before Intel decided to jump-start its new ultrabook category, Lenovo made an extremely thin laptop which essentially fit 95 percent of Intel’s vision: the IdeaPad U260. The aluminum-wrapped laptop, which came out last December, was just 0.7 inches thick and was one of the best Windows ultraportables ever created in terms of performance and overall build. However, it couldn’t take on its closest competitor — the MacBook Air — for one major reason: battery life. An incredibly...
Asus Zenbook UX31 review
When Intel unveiled its notion of the ultrabook in June, Asus could hardly contain its excitement. Just moments after Intel’s Sean Maloney announced the newly-named laptop category, which promised fast boot times and great battery life, Asus’ Chairman Jonney Shih took the stage in his always-entertaining, yet transcendent style to show off his company’s future UX ultrabooks. The laptops had more than just a few things in common with Apple's MacBook Air – aluminum chassis,...
Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook review
Back in June, Intel laid out its plan for the future of the laptop. These "ultrabooks," as Intel thought it would be more appropriate to call them, had to become more like phones and tablets — more portable, more nimble, and unlike the ultraportables of past, more affordable. They had to be, well, more like Apple’s MacBook Air. However, Chipzilla did more than just present its vision: it provided a guiding light for those non-Apple manufacturers with a set of guidelines on how to create...
