What is an Ultrabook and how to choose the right one for you?

CES 2012 was flooded with a lot of identical Ultrabooks, that are going to be available in the market this year. So, here’s what you need to know about Ultrabooks and how you could choose the right Ultrabook for you. The 4Cast has the complete report for you!

We had a long week at CES 2012 this year and we got hands-on with a lot of Ultrabooks, that would be hitting the market soon. If you’ve been looking around for a thin travel laptop, then you’d have probably heard about Ultrabooks and also about their looks and features like the thickness, minimalism and weightlessness.

Although MacBook Air has been around in the market for a while now, these Windows based Ultrabooks look almost exactly like the MacBook Air and infact, some claim to be much lighter than the Air. While you hear about all these, some customers are yet to understand what a the Ultrabooks are and what exactly can they do to accomodate your lifestyle. Here’s a quick exploration from The 4Cast team about whats, hows and whens about Ultrabooks.

What is an Ultrabook?

Intel was the one who framed the word, Ultrabook, which are capable of running the second-generation Intel Core Processors. These Ultrabooks come with an Integrated Graphics powered by Intel, and also reduced weight and size without compromising performance.

These cool new laptops are powered by Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors at the moment, and are expected to get ported to Ivy Bridge processors in near future for improved performance and lesser battery consumption. Right now, we have got one at The 4Cast and we get an average of 8 Hrs, though our MacBook Air gives us around 9 Hrs. on an average.

This year would see a lot of these slim and sleek devices pitching in the market to compete with MacBook Air and we already had a glimpse of these books at CES 2012.

Which one is right for you?

Storage:

As you read earlier in this post, Ultrabooks come with so many form factor reductions with no compromise to the performance and features of the normal Laptop. The storage systems used in these notebooks are not an exception. Ultrabooks use Solid-State Drives, also called as SSDs, which are basically used in mobile devices. At present, the SSDs are capable of holding 64GB to 120GB of data in them.

SSDs have got much higher transfer rates when compared to the normal HDDs used in typical laptops and desktop PCs. These SSD storages that comes with the Ultrabooks are reasonable for light-weight users who store only limited data onto their device, but users who store large media files might find it difficult to get used to these kind of devices for storage.

 

If you have got a notebook or a PC or a Mac with a larger storage, you might have to backup your data to those devices since the Ultrabooks come with minimal storage and the cost would go high if you want to upgrade your storage at this point of time.

Before you buy an Ultrabook, make sure you calculate the amount of strage space you use on an average on your other computers and get the Ultrabook accordingly. But if you are about to run heavy applications on the Ultrabooks, things might slow down and you might want to use a conventional HDD to get your tasks done faster. So its you who must decide upon which is important to you. Storage or speed?

You need to check for:

• The amount of storage you need (Average)
• Does the Ultrabook fall under your budget?
• Do you have an alternative storage system?
• How about a cloud storage system for managing files?

Speed:

As we told earlier, the storage space of the Ultrabooks directly take a hit on the speed of the device. The Ultrabooks come with the new Intel Sandy Bridge processors that are super fast (At the moment) and satisfyably good in performance.

The Ultrabooks come with a Intel Core i5 processor, and the performance is really good when compared its size and lightness of the device. We have got a Toshiba Portege Z835 Ultrabook here with us and it sports a 1.4Ghz Intel Core i3 processor with a 4GB RAM module and Intel HD 3000 Graphics. The laptop performs pretty good and more than what we expected it to perform.

You need to check for:

• The speed configuration
• The purpose for which you would use the Ultrabook for.
• The RAM of the Ultrabook

Battery Life:

The battery life is what these Ultrabooks are made for. Simple, Clean and minimalist devices like these Ultrabooks perform really well when it comes to power consumption. Intel’s new Ivy Bridge technology promises to bring processors that consume much less power than the present Sandy Bridge processors.

The Ultrabooks, on an average, stands steady for over 6 Hrs. with 8 Hrs. of battery life promised by the manufacturers.  And ofcourse, you need to first plot a plan on how you would use your device, since this factor has takes a direct hit on the battery life of the Ultrabook. Most of the Ultrabooks come with batteries sealed within the device, giving no space for us to extend the battery to get more working hours.

You need to check for:

• The avarage battery consumption
• The choice of Battery – Check if your Ultrabook supports extension of batteries

Graphics:

Graphics is one thing that many customers ask for in a PC and Ultrabooks, to be true, does not perform too good in Graphics when it comes to gaming. This is the case only with Ultrabooks which has got an Integrated Graphics Card. We tried getting our hands dirty with Call of Duty and Diablo 3 on the Toshiba Portege and it performed pretty well, but definitely not upto the mark as MacBook Air would perform.

If you aren’t a gaming freak, but still need graphic cards for applications like Google Earth and CAD Programs or Cinema 4D, then there are certain Ultrabooks which comes with a dedicated Graphic card. The Lenovo ThinkPad T430u uses a Nvidia’s Optimus card and gives you a super cool perfromance boost.

Cost:

Cost if the most important factor when you want to get a Ultrabook. Before you go out and buy one, you should know that Ultrabooks comes for around $1, 000 and above. But if you are planning to get an Ultrabook for the price tag of around $1,000, then you are getting it right and it is worth the money.

You also need to check if the Ultrabook is really worth it if the price goes above $1,300. At this point of time, $1,000 Ultrabooks are really worth it. But do remember that there are some really awesome processors from Intel coming over very soon, and this would ripe the money you are paying for the Ultrabook today. The Toshiba Portege which we have got here costs $1,429. We got it to test things out on it and it preforms really well. But down the lane, we do smell some huge price drops for the Ultrabooks and shedding too much money into the Ultrabooks would just burn your pockets at this point of time.

Bottomline:

As you might have know by now that Ultrabooks are mainly for people who travel a lot and are dependent on Windows based PCs. If you think you fall under this category, then the Ultrabooks are your perfect companion for traveller. Some prefer using these devices as their mainstream laptops. But we would advice them to put this thought on hold, since this is a very rapidly growing market and would get mature very soon to serve as a main stream laptop. What do you say? Are you planning to get a Ultrabook this year? If so, which one are you aiming at? Let us know!