Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d and this is a video comparing what I think are the best ultra books available in early to mid 2016 now before I go any further there are other good ultra books out there some of them have even reviewed on this channel but because of other like pricing or general availability or just not being good enough I didn't include them in this smaller group so the cutoff for this kind of ultra book thing was 3 pounds if you're above 3 pounds you didn't make the team anything under that was eligible so first up we have the asus ux305 coming in at 2.6 pounds comes in a couple variants a Core M version and a more powerful core i5 version which I have here next we have the Razer Blade stealth 2.75 pounds one of the more interesting laptops that came out this year because of the razor core that can connect to it the Lenovo yoga 900 2.8 pounds it's the only two and one device I have in this video it's also the device with the most plastic and it's built but that helps keep its weight down next up is the Dell XPS 13 also 2.8 pounds it's a mixture of metal and carbon fiber this is one of Dells best products and years and then we have the HP Envy 13 that's also 2.8 pounds but it's a little bit thinner so these are the windows-based ultrabooks for this video and then we have a couple Apple products the 12-inch MacBook coming in at 2.0 3 pounds it's the lightest of the bunch it's also the least powerful rocking a Core M I almost didn't want to include this in this video but the right user it can still be a pretty powerful ultrabook and then lastly the aging 13-inch MacBook Air 2.9 pounds we're expecting a refresh or like a complete dump pretty soon but I got to put this thing in here because it's like the og ultrabook when this guy came out it made the competition open up their eyes and everyone bumped up their game and basically spawned all of these things so what I'm going to do is go over some categories and kind of give you my top pick from the bunch and then a runner-up or two depending on the category the best build quality has to go to the two Mac books these things are incredibly well built they're super durable I mean people have had these things since 2008 and they're still kicking ass the rigid chassis super solid hinge and these things are tanks the runner-up is the Dell XPS 13 aluminum exterior carbon fiber interior it's also very rigid now keep in mind the rest of these ultrabooks have very good build quality I mean they wouldn't be in this video if they didn't they're all-metal builds but the MacBook and the XPS 13 have the best build none of these devices have upgradeable RAM they're all soldered on because that's just apparently how you keep these things thin but all the windows-based machines have upgradable em to storage some are harder to access than others the HP Envy you need to remove the adhesive feet to access the screws the razor blade stealth has a pretty delicate ribbon cable to deal with but if you're careful they're all upgradable and none of the MacBooks however have upgradable storage they're all a little slippery nothing too bad the razor blade stealth shows fingerprints pretty easily and not only are they super visible but even if you wipe it with a damp cloth these smudges to a show now some people don't care about this kind of stuff I do a little so I'm pretty happy that D brand makes some skins for the razor blade stealth they also make them for the XPS 13 and the MacBook so I'll put a link to them below and I think they look really nice aside from the low res MacBook Air all of these have really great displays the best-looking display is probably the fork a razor blade panel it looks awesome but keep in mind you got to power all of those pixels and you got to process all those pixels so on a small ultrabook like this unless you need 4k I'd skip it my favorite is the infinity display on the XPS 13 it gives you a very immersive experience and it keeps the footprint really small the downside is that the webcam is in the bottom quarter and you may not look your best from that angle the HP Envy also has a really good display and so does the 12-inch MacBook if you need a really sharp looking webcam look if that's something you care about the Razer Blade stealth is probably the best-looking of the bunch the rest of the webcams are kind of mediocre but I mean the majority of users aren't too picky about these okay the best sounding speakers 12-inch MacBook incredibly good speakers especially for its size the runner-up would be the HP Envy those project up and they sound pretty good the rest of the speakers are kind of similar I like a b-minus I mean that's just the nature of Ultrabook speakers they're very thin so it's tough to fit a great speaker in the best keyboard the MacBook Air I think this is one of the reasons why this device is still as popular as it is I mean an oppressed people on day one and then six years later it's still a great keyboard for an ultrabook and in my opinion it's better than even the newer 12-inch MacBook keyboard the rest of the keyboards are pretty good the Razer Blade stealth has Razer chroma which lets you customize the keyboard with some lighting it's very cool at first but it loses its novelty quickly you kind of get desensitized to it if I had to pick a runner-up for the keyboard it would be the yoga 900 it has a very nice feeling keystroke great travel good spring back but the layout is a little off or seriously if you use any of these for a while you'll get comfortable with them the track pads on MacBooks are the best they really are the gold standard for laptop track pads the runner-up is the updated XPS 13 that uses the Windows 10 built-in driver it's much improved over the previous generation drivers everything else is pretty similar glass track pads that aren't perfect one last thing to note the first gen ux305 track pads that I tested had some issues but the new ones are improved and you don't have that double clicking issue anymore none of these ultrabooks are going to be like hardcore performance machines I wouldn't want to do regular 4k video editing on it but they can play some lightweight games most of them are running i5 6200 use the razor blade stealth has an i7 6500 Yi so it's got a little bit more cache and a slightly faster clock not a big difference in performance though the Razer Blade stealth will be able to connect to the razor core for some more serious gaming now in theory the coral Beals it connects to other laptops that have a Thunderbolt 3 connection but developing the drivers and BIOS updates to make that connection happen won't be really quick or easy so if you need to get an ultrabook that can connect immediately when the Razer core comes out go with the stealth the other thing is that the XPS 13 has a new configuration that has the iris 540 graphics chip it comes in a gold color if you're into that sort of thing but the iris 540 is actually a very respectable integrated chip I'd say it's on par with the Nvidia 940 m review of that coming out soon you should probably subscribe all right let's talk about thermals and noise when they're idling they're all really quiet under load these ultrabooks are silent these ones are pretty quiet and then these ones are a little bit they're all running dual-core chips and they're all properly cooled so none of them get uncomfortably hot or anything even the i7 chip on the razor is properly cooled and this is all of them under load valve you really depends on what you use your Ultrabook for but Evette choose one for like best overall value it be the asus ux305 it goes for $750 for an i-5 it's wellspect and it's a great overall device there is no backlit keyboard though runner up surprisingly the Razer Blade stealth which is crazy because it's a razer product but for the tech you get in there with the RGB keyboard the great screen the i7 the ability to connect it to a core for 999 dollars it's a really solid so even if you have no intention of ever plugging this thing up for gaming it's a really well priced Ultrabook you just got to ignore that big bezel the top prize for battery life goes to the 13-inch MacBook Air it's an 11 or 12 hour battery partially because it's a low res screen but also MacBooks a really good optimization to just slowly sip on battery so the 12-inch MacBook also has good battery life the runner-up is the XPS 13 it'll last a full day of work with like 9 or 10 hours of battery life the ux305 also has pretty good battery life you'll get around 6 to 7 hours on that one as for my top pick overall for like Best ultrabook is no such thing as a perfect ultrabook but the one that comes closest is the XPS 13 it's a very good performer looks good the built well fantastic screen pretty good inputs and it's like a good price now the close second is the razor blade stealth it almost got first place but once you compare the display bezels I really can't give a thick display bezel a first place I was like best ultrabook simply because the infinity display look that much better but in terms of value you're getting an i7 on the base model so you're getting a slightly better performer at the base price that's the end of this video I hope you guys liked it thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time oh if you want individual reviews of any of the laptops in this video I've done most of them all of them most of them I'll link them below