Ultrabooks: Thin, light, and powerful

Ultrabooks: Thin, light, and powerful
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Last year, I took a look at the HP Stream 11, which at just $199 is one of the lowest cost Windows PCs around. HP has refreshed it for 2015, moving from the Bay Trail-M SoC to the latest 14nm Braswell line. The refreshed model is now the Celeron N3050, which is a dual-core Airmont processor. It has a 6-Watt TDP, which means that the system is still fanless, but performance should be improved over the original Stream 11. Pretty much the rest of this 2.6 lb device remains unchanged, including the 1366x768 TN display. When you go budget, the first thing you lose is IPS on a notebook, even though low cost tablets can still fit them in. It’s a real shame, since an IPS offering on the Stream would really set it apart. There is 2 GB of memory, and 32 GB of eMMC storage. After owning a Stream 11 for a year, the storage is certainly not ideal, but Windows 10 has made some changes to be more efficient with storage on devices with small amounts of eMMC, and with the latest update that came out last week, you can now set it to install apps to the SD card if you do need to expand it. The other big changes for 2015 is that the Stream 11 is now offered in two new colors, with Cobalt Blue and Violet Purple now being the two choices. Despite the poor display, the HP Stream 11 offers a decent keyboard, and battery with battery like dell MT186 battery, Dell PP32L Battery, Dell WU841 Battery, Dell Latitude E5400 Battery, Dell Latitude E5500 Battery, Dell XPS M1730 Battery, Dell HG307 Battery, Dell XG528 Battery, Dell N877N Battery, Dell J037N Battery, Dell Vostro 1220 Battery, Dell Inspiron 14V Batterylife has been very good even one year on.
You can certainly find Chomebooks that cost less than the Dell Chromebook 13, but not too many offer as nice of a package as the Dell. I’ve not used the Dell model, but you can see that the styling plays homage to the XPS 13 with the carbon fibre weave. Dell has also outfitted it with an IPS 13.3-inch 1920x1080 display. Powering the Chomebook 13 is the Celeron 3250U, which is a 1.5 GHz processor based on Broadwell Core rather than Atom, so the performance is pretty good. It’s a full 15-Watt processor too, and if you want to spend a bit more than $500, Dell offers other processor choices as well with i3 models available. This is expensive for a Chromebook, but the build quality is a step up from the netbook style devices that populate the lower end of the price spectrum.
It’s a big jump from the budget section to Ultrabooks, which are generally well worth it if there is enough room in the budget. Ultrabooks are by definition thin and light PCs, but with enough extras to justify the price increase. Pretty much all Ultrabooks these days come standard with IPS displays, which offer much better viewing angles, contrast, and color than traditional TN panels found on less expensive devices. Battery life has also made some big jumps in the last couple of years, with 2015 being the year of battery life in the Windows laptop world. Ultrabooks also tend to come equipped with solid state drives, which offer much greater performance than the larger, but slower hard disk drives found in most laptops under $700. Back in September, Intel officially launched their 6th generation mobile Core processors. This will be a staple of the Ultrabook segment, which relies on the U series, which are 15 Watts, and the Y series, which is 4.5 Watts and branded as Core m.
When I first saw the Dell XPS 13 at CES in January, I had a feeling it might be the laptop to beat this year, and then we got a chance to review it in February. Simply put, the XPS 13 is easily the first laptop I would recommend to anyone. The design is beautiful, with the almost bezel-less infinity display meaning Dell can offer a 13.3-inch laptop in a much smaller form factor. It’s light weight too, at just 2.7 lbs (1.2 kg) for the non-touch model. We reviewed the Broadwell version, and the refresh for Skylake is mostly a processor change. It’s now powered by 15-Watt Skylake processors, with ranges from the i3-6100U up to the Core i7-6500U. Storage is all SSD, with the 256 GB and higher being PCIe drives. The display options are a matte non-touch 1920x1080 offering, and a 3200x1800 IGZO panel. The high resolution version is simply stunning to look at, but you do sacrifice battery life to drive the higher resolution display, with the XPS 13 FHD model setting a record for battery life on our light test at 921 minutes, but the QHD+ model losing around six hours of battery life to the lower resolution model. The upgraded panel also comes at a price premium. The base Core i3/4GB/128GB XPS 13 starts at just $799, and for $999 you can get a Core i5-6200U and 8 GB of memory, with a 256 GB option being another $100. The lowest price on the touch model with the high resolution display is $1399, which also includes 256 GB of storage, meaning you pay a $300 premium to get the high resolution panel. That’s a big jump, and with the loss of battery life, for most users I would stick with the 1920x1080 model. The Dell XPS 13 has a great aluminum finish on the outside, with a soft-touch carbon fibre keyboard deck. The backlit keyboard is excellent, and the trackpad is also great (especially with the latest Windows 10 build which fixes some issues with the Precision Touchpad). Dell was the laptop to beat at the start of the year, and they still offer the best Ultrabook available today.