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You’d have to actively be avoiding the tech media over the past several months not to have heard about Ultrabooks. Their coming has garnered a boatload of buzz, fueled in no small part by Intel’s $300 million fund to get hardware and software makers behind the cause.
Ultrabooks are Intel’s answer to the spread of ARM-based tablets—a way to capture the hearts and minds of the masses with an x86-based portable device (of the Intel persuasion, natch). To that end, Ultrabooks are required to meet a few key “desirability” standards. They must be slim, lightweight, have generous battery life, and boot and resume from hibernation in brisk fashion. It’s also understood they should look cool. As Apple products so clearly demonstrate, style sells. And sure enough, Ultrabooks—at least those that have debuted so far—are heartily infused with MacBook Air influence.
So are these new, “cool” devices the next must-have products? Is all the hoopla warranted? We review the first four Ultrabooks to kick off the category. All are 13.3 inch models, but each brings its own brand of hot-newness to the table, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, as you’ll see on the following pages.
When Ultrabooks were first announced it seemed doubtful that manufacturers could turn out these wannabe MacBook Airs at the sub-$1,000 price Intel was promising. Acer put those doubts to rest with the Aspire S3, which debuted at $900. Given its relative affordability, it’s not surprising that the Aspire S3 makes a few compromises in its Air aspirations.
Measuring .68 inches at its thickest, the ever-so-slightly wedged three-pound chassis is matte silver throughout, save for its black rubber hinge and gray keyboard. An attractive brushed-aluminum lid lends the S3 a solid feel and a classy countenance—at least when the notebook is closed. The inside and underneath are all plastic. Nevertheless, the S3 feels rigid when held by one corner, and we like that it opens almost 180 degrees.
Overall, the S3’s island keyboard is comfortable to type on, although the key press is a bit shallow and many of the oft-used keys around the periphery, such as Enter, Shift, Backspace, etc. are truncated. That’s particularly true of the arrow keys, which also double as volume and screen-brightness controls. Using the S3’s unified clickpad, which supports multitouch functions, didn’t give us any woes.
Closed, the S3 cuts a more impressive figure, with its handsome brushed metal lid on display.
Port selection is spare, a quality of all Ultrabooks, and here consists of a headphone/mic, a media reader, HDMI, and two USB 2.0 ports—the S3 is the only Ultrabook in this roundup not to feature USB 3.0.
Acer tapped the Core i5-2467M for processing duty. While the base clock is just 1.6GHz, it can Turbo up to 2.3GHz, and thus performed better in most benchmarks than the 2.13GHz Core i7-640LM Arrandale CPU in our zero-point ultraportable rig. The S3’s lagging score in Quake III is no doubt the result of its single-channel RAM, which is particularly problematic in older titles. Conversely, its score in Quake 4 demonstrates the advances of Sandy Bridge’s integrated graphics, although the gaming chops of any ultraportable out right now will be pretty limited.
In our video playback test, the S3’s battery lasted five hours; it recharged to full capacity in half that time. Videos themselves looked crisp and color-accurate on the S3’s 1366x768 glossy screen if the screen was tilted just so. Otherwise, color and detail were diminished to varying degrees.
The S3 is unique among these Ultrabooks for featuring a mechanical hard drive, but it’s paired with 20GB of NAND flash for SSD caching, using Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT). Thus, your most-often used programs benefit from the SSD’s faster performance. The S3’s boot time of approximately 39 seconds, however, was a good deal slower than that of the SSD competition.
Acer also offers a $1,300 S3 model with a Core i7 and a 240GB SSD. But truth be told, the body is better suited to the lower-cost category, where it must make due with the modest praise of being a decent budget option.
$900, www.acer.com
Sub-$1K; attractive, sturdy lid; decent performance.
Plastic insides don't match aluminum outside; no USB 3.0; uses HDD; narrow vertical viewing angle.
| CPU | 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M |
| RAM | 4GB DDR3/1333 |
| Chipset | Intel UM67 |
| Display | 13.3-inch, LED-backlit, 1366x768 |
| Storage | Hitachi 320GB HDD, 20GB SSD |
| Connectivity | 2 USB 2.0, HDMI, headphone/mic, media reader, webcam |
| Lap/Carry | 3 lbs, 0.3 oz / 3 lbs, 11.5 oz |
| Zero Point | Acer Aspire S3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) | 1,260 | 1200 (5.0%) |
| Photoshop CS3 (sec) | 183.6 | 162.5 (13.0%) |
| Proshow Producer (sec) | 1,533 | 1,497 (2.4%) |
| MainConcept (sec) | 2,530 | 2,591 (-2.4%) |
| Quake III (fps) | 191.7 | 168.8 (-11.9%) |
| Quake 4 (fps) | 17 | 38.5 (126.5%) |
| Battery Life (min) | 240 | 252 (5.0%) |
Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Comments are closed on this article
aarcane
February 07, 2012 at 4:10pm
Every power user's lineup, which one should have consisted of an Android Phone, a Netbook, a Laptop, and at least one Desktop should now be reduced to a Desktop, an Ultrabook, and an Android Tablet. So long as the phone can perform USB and Wifi tethering, it's no longer essential (only desirable) that it be an Android device.
bautrey
February 07, 2012 at 10:22am
For the lenovo laptop, on lenovo's website it states that it is $1200. Now for that price, I think thats a steal compared to what your getting.
hackmaster
February 06, 2012 at 9:18pm
these days, people are mostly paying for looks, which is kind of disappointing. Size is not the only thing that should be considered. The best gaming rigs are like aircraft carrier size- as in not build for travel.
thetechchild
February 06, 2012 at 8:47pm
Rather unfortunate that ultrabooks are still practically embryonic. Just look at smartphones, which are soon to boast 2 GHz quad cores, 1080p screen/camera resolutions, and touch screens to boot...
Hopefully, within the next 2-3 years, Intel will more seriously invest in its R&D (honestly, Sandy Bridge E was hardly a jump from Sandy Bridge, even though they could *easily* have pushed a much faster CPU for the same price), and we'll start getting cost-effective quad cores, and, perhaps more importantly, integrated GPUs. I won't knock on the power of discrete GPUs, but if we're looking at entry-level ultrabooks just under a grand, then a lot of the price heavily relies on Intel, and secondarily, the screen.
Waiting for something like the Asus UX31E, but a beefier proc and better screen, and a little more *under* a grand as opposed to just over it.
0ly1r3m@1ns
February 08, 2012 at 6:45pm
sandy bridge e was more just to make an enthusiast line up the real stuff will come with ivy bridge
US_Ranger
February 06, 2012 at 3:59pm
Hopefully you can do this same article with the AMD notebooks when Trinity comes out.
Cregan89
February 06, 2012 at 3:58pm
Put a Dell Inspiron Duo style 1920x1080 IPS display on the ASUS Zenbook for anything less then $1400 and I'll buy it yesterday.
