We have laptops, and we have tablets, so where do ultrabooks fit in? Right in the middle! They have the performance and physical keyboard like regular laptops and also great portability that is similar to tablets. Even though many have tried to sell tablets as productivity devices, none have had much success for now, and this is where ultrabooks found their spot in the market. Soon, all laptops will, in a sense, be ultrabooks. The lack of optical media and smaller and less heat-intensive processors allow for thinner and lighter machines to be made. But until that happens, here are some great choices that are available at the moment.
The New Macbook
This one is kind of controversial, and we will explain why is that later in the text, but let’s start with some specs first. As for the design department, it is the most advanced laptop on this list and possibly in the world at the moment. At 13mm thickness and around 900 grams weight, this is a joy both to carry and use. The screen is amazing – 12 inches in size and a whopping 2304×1440 pixel resolution, which Apple calls a Retina display, mean that you can’t see individual pixels at a normal viewing distance. Another great feature about this new Macbook is the lack of fans, making it completely silent. All-day battery life, which goes up to nine hours without charging, is an essential addition. Let’s now move to the so-called more controversial part, which would be the price, lack of standard ports and a more mid-range CPU. The thing that got people riled up most is the one USB type C port. Yes, just one port, a port no current devices use, so if you buy this laptop, you will need to be prepared to buy multiple adapters that are not exactly cheap. If you need a laptop for writing, blogging and multimedia, this is a great choice, but that is it, it can’t do much more. It is up to you to decide if the amazing screen and design are important enough to sacrifice expansion and performance.
Dell XPS 13 [2015]
This is one of the best-designed Windows laptops hands down. An 11-inch form factor with a 13-inch screen, they shrunk the bezels around so much that you now have a 13-inch ultrabook in a size of an 11-inch in the past years. It is not only a beautiful machine, it also has great specs and sells at a very respectable price. There are actually two main options, the first being a non-touch screen model with 4 gigabytes of RAM and an Intel i5 5200U with the price tag of $899. The other is a touch screen with 8 gigabytes of RAM and the same CPU, but at a higher price of $1399. There is no dedicated graphics card here, but the integrated GPU is no slouch; it performs most tasks very well and is even able to handle some popular multiplayer games like League of Legends, DOTA 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at low setting with playable framerates, just don’t expect to run Crysis 3 at 60fps on this thing. Overall, this will be a much better option than the Macbook for most people. More power, a larger screen and a lower price are enough for me, as I’m more of a form-over-function kind of guy.
HP Stream 11
Wow! That is the perfect word to describe this ultrabook. How much does it cost, you ask? It can be found for as low as $185. Does that include Windows, you ask? Yes, it has the latest Windows 8.1 64bit software. I’m sorry if that sounded like an ad, but it is amazing what HP has managed to do at such a low price point. This is not a computer that will run your games or render your videos, but you don’t really expect it to. What you expect is to be able to surf the web, watch some movies and do some word processing and/or blogging on the go, and that is exactly what it does. If you look at the specs, they are low-end specs: an Intel Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, not much but certainly enough. The screen is also not the best but still good enough and far from being a bad screen. For less than $200 you just can’t go wrong with this one.
And with that we conclude our list in the hope that we helped you along the way. You have seen three great and very different ultrabooks. Thank you for reading, leave a comment below and have a great day!
