Gadgetory

in a world that seemed to have moved on wholesale to smartphones and tablets all of a sudden the notebook is red-hot again or more precisely the Ultrabook those machines that have forget about it battery life instant on architecture cases so slim you'll worry they're not eating that's what I'm talking about i'm brian coulis with CNET's top five ultra books as of q1 2012 five machines that might make you forget about some laptop called the air or something like that number five Lenovo's IdeaPad u310 and austere the lines are on this guy like a piece of art compared to a 13-inch MacBook Air it matches it pretty much head for head costs a bit less though and it also offers USB 3.0 HDMI even Wireless external monitor support which is kind of cool for a portable machine but this is one of the earliest Windows ultrabooks we tested so it ranks a little lower than the ones that came next like these number for the assist Zen book UX 31 this one stands out for great audio from its speakers I'm looking at you MacBook Air it's got a higher res screen than a 13-inch share lots of ports and look so much like the Apple product it ought to be embarrassed we have found better trackpads however and the keys a little shallow and kind of mushy but it matches the top-end macbook air for about a hundred less MSRP number three Toshiba's portage a Z 835 the way we tested it this is sort of to the MacBook Air as the Kindle Fire is to the iPad which is to say a little smaller and cheaper smaller in the sense that the keyboards kind of cramped and odd and cheaper and that it's 799 bucks for our configuration that does have an Intel Core i3 CPU bit of a give back there but overall this one says so long luxury tax on light and thin number two the Dell XPS 13 this machine is almost an optical illusion the body seems barely large enough to contain a 13-inch display but it does and the aluminum magnesium and carbon fiber construction makes you wonder if you've got laptop or a Ferrari racecar great unique design on this one as well but no HDMI port like several others and battery life is a little soft for this crowd okay the number one machine in the Ultrabook category that we are loving right now is the HP folio 13 we gave it a C net editors choice that's largely because it succeeds on so many important fronts you're gonna notice everyday great battery life good keyboard lots of ports a good trackpad as well great display all in a sub $900 price point now it's not so long on style frankly kind of plain and a little thick around the ankles but you can get your style points somewhere else this is currently the best of the bunch for more top 5s like this head the top 5 dot cnet.com and for all our notebook laptop and ultra book reviews they're right there on the front door at cnet.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching