Ultrabook

Blatter

Looking for a very good ultrabook. Have a budget of €1,000-1,300. Looking for the most bang for my buck.

Would like:

Very good battery life

Screen no smaller than 13 inches. Full HD, preferably ISP, would also like it to be touch but it's not a dealbreaker.

Can play most games at low to medium settings, no fancy graphics card required.

Excellent processeror and 8gb ram.

An 120 gb SSD with a good harddrive. (Or just a 250gb SSD on it's own)



Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Torqay

Ultrabooks normally don't have gaming graphics nor "excellent processors". A dual Core i7 ULV processor is even slower than a regular Core i5 laptop processor, never mind a quad Core i7. Normal Intel HD graphics can play some current games in lowest settings but certainly not medium. A Core i7-4750HQ is probably what you're looking for, 4 cores and Iris Pro graphics (currently available with the Schenker S413, £1,017 w 8 GB RAM and a 240 GB Samsung 840 series SSD), but you won't find it in Ultrabooks yet, and if manufactures decide to use it in Ultrabooks you shouldn't expect more than 5 hrs battery life. You're asking the impossible, I'm afraid.

Vince1974

What about this one?
http://www.komplett.ie/komplett/product/zkb-02pc/80011390/acer-aspire-s7-392-54204g12tws/details.aspx

I'm also on the lookout for a good deal on an ultrabook around a grand.

Torqay

Vince1974 wrote: »

What about this one?
http://www.komplett.ie/komplett/product/zkb-02pc/80011390/acer-aspire-s7-392-54204g12tws/details.aspx

I'm also on the lookout for a good deal on an ultrabook around a grand.

1,300 yoyos used to buy you a dual Core i7 ultrabook.

Acer must be completely out of their minds. €1,300 for a crappy Core i5 Ultrabook??? System memory is soldered to the motherboard and can't be upgraded, not even the battery is "user-accessible". What a piece of sh*t.

Vince1974

Any decent suggestions then?

Last year I bought a Samsung 9 series for 1100e and it came with a free tab 2, you'd think they are cheaper now.

Torqay

Vince1974 wrote: »

Last year I bought a Samsung 9 series for 1100e

And you need a new ultrabook already? ^^

And no, I woudn't have any recommendations as Haswell ultrabooks are still too scarce and early adopters usually have to pay a premium.

Vince1974

Torqay wrote: »

And you need a new ultrabook already?

I don't want to hijack this thread but someone broke into our house last Sunday and took it.

Torqay

Sorry to hear.

wandererz

It depends on what you need, rather than what you want. Sometimes compromises need to be made.
For me "Ultrabook" means ultra portable and performant.

In my case, i decided to go with a vaio pro 13" due to the light weight. Make no mistake about it..this thing is seriously lightweight!

Even with the additional external battery clipped it weighs the same as the latest Macbook Air. It is THE ultrabook as far as i am concerned.

The biggest problem is the trackpad. Due to the fact that the body is carbon fiber and hence flexes, if you have the laptop on your lap or other non-hard surface, then clicking on the trackpad is a bit of a problem. If you are the sort who is used to tapping rather than clicking then this isn't a problem. If you use an external mouse mostly, as i do, then it certainly isn't a problem.

For me it still is great due to the light weight and i am willing to put up with the trackpad issue.

Mine is specced with Corei7, 8GB Ram, touch screen, 128Gb SSD.

Other options in the Windows world are the Acer Aspire S7 and the latest Lenovo.

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

if manufactures decide to use it in Ultrabooks you shouldn't expect more than 5 hrs battery life. You're asking the impossible, I'm afraid.

Minimum specs for the 3rd Ultrabook Badge (3rd gen, "Shark Bay") stipulates a minimum 6 hours of video playback, 9 idle. Which means any Ultrabook also has a >1 week charge in S3 standby. They also have a 3 second resume time along with other features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook#Specifications

Torqay

Overheal wrote: »

Minimum specs for the 3rd Ultrabook Badge (3rd gen, "Shark Bay") stipulates a minimum 6 hours of video playback, 9 idle. Which means any Ultrabook also has a >1 week charge in S3 standby. They also have a 3 second resume time along with other features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook#Specifications

Yep, I don't think we will see Iris Pro in ultrabooks, it only comes with three chips, and they're all 47W max TDP, certainly not Ultrabook-material. Some ULV chips do have Iris (GT3) graphics but that's nothing to write home about if you want to play demanding games.

Some manufacturers might come up with ultrabooks with dedicated entry-level GPUs as a sales spin ("Wow, look at this, it's got Nvidia graphics") but they will hardly be any good for gaming.

Overheal

As 'entry-level' as the iHD graphics are I think you're underselling them.

Here's a 3rd gen Ultrabook reel, noting that 4th gen show some performance gains over whats shown here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCQrXGWPa_E

Shown are the most common range of games and games engines, but I'm sure even the likes of CryEngine would run decently. About the only type of thing I'd be concerned about is Planetside but even when you get that title down to minimum settings its quite playable even despite the fact that those settings make it look like UT2004. Here's a vid. PS2 is the most graphically/computationally taxing game I can think of and its F2P if you want to use it as a benchmark. This guy's vid uses higher than base settings, he could drop them more to smooth out the framerate.

Is an Ultrabook for the hardcore gamer? Hell no. If you're buying an Ultrabook you're buying it for the Portability matched with general performance and speed, with gaming being a tertiary consideration. But yes, it will play ball.

Torqay

Sure, but them Ultrabooks usually boast FHD displays and you'll need immense graphics power to enjoy demanding games with all the bells 'n' whistles at this resolution. (GTX series or adequate)

There is always a market for such hybrids, performance and mobility but Ultrabooks don't cater for this clientele. It is no problem to pack beasty performance into 11 or 13 inch laptops with adequate cooling but they will never be as slim nor will they have the battery life you'd expect from an Ultrabook, just not possible with 90W+ max TDP.

Vince1974

Any good recommendations for the OP?