Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

CNET Top 5: Macbook Air Alternatives

2011-08-15
the MacBook Air it's helping make Apple the hottest laptop maker on earth so that begs one question isn't there something else I'm Brian Cooley with the top five alternatives to a MacBook Air these are all Windows machines by the way but that's fair since the MacBook Air runs Windows just fine through boot camp number five is the Lenovo ThinkPad x1 now like most thing pads and unlike a lot of other Windows laptops this guy doesn't feel like it's made by Mattel it's rock solid with a clean look and Intel Core i5 CPU like some of the new MacBook Airs solid-state drives available and it has a webcam that works really well in low light you won't realize how much you'll like that until you have it for all those little nasty videos you shoot that I don't want to see on the downside that solid construction gives this 13-inch machine kind of a porky weight about 3.8 pounds versus 2.3 for the same size MacBook Air and the battery life on this guy is weaker as well number four the Dell XPS 15z this is the thinnest 15-inch Windows laptop out there with an available full 1080p display to take advantage of that big screen size and a nice metal case to give you that luxury hand feel that Apple MBAs have in spades now a MacBook Air trait you won't get here is battery life we got a mere three and a half hours in our video playback test compare that to six and three quarters from the 13-inch MacBook Air the sweet spot price for this guy though is pretty good around 1,200 bucks number three the toshiba portage a r 835 it's also powered by the Core i5 Intel chip as a battery that lasts three hours longer than the last model for a full seven hours that's even nosing out the 13-inch MacBook Air also the price is pretty good for this guy about 800 bucks that's cheap for this class what it's missing is sexy this is not a machine you'll ever have to wipe any drool off of number two is the samsung series 9 this little hottie has one thing even a MacBook Air doesn't have an even more outrageous price at 1650 list this machine requires a commitment and probably a second shift to pay for it it's the most direct assault on the MacBook Air though with the same weight solid-state drive five and a half hour battery life stylish lines and a really good display and it's all powered by the latest Intel Core i5 but you know even for this money it doesn't quite have that machine from an ingot feeling of quality still it's hot but make sure you shop aggressively for price if you're gonna buy one of these always check the links to the best merchants prices in the CNET review okay here's the number one ultra portable you want to carry when you don't want to carry anything with an Apple logo it's the Sony Vaio Z thin light powerful blah blah blah that's basically par for the course at this point but two things set this guy apart this interesting docking station that graphs on an optical drive including blu-ray ability a bunch of extra ports and a dedicated AMD Radeon 6630 graphics processor we've never seen anybody create an ultra light with that kind of range that we'd actually want to own oh the other big difference it's a fortune a voz starts at 2 grand well you asked for number one Dan Ackerman and Scott Steiner are busy every week digesting the latest ultra light laptops and you're gonna want to find their reviews at CNS laptop review section it's right there on the front door and for more top 5s like this and links to all the reviews of these machines go to top-5 cnet.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.