With the appearance of the new Windows OS, optimised for touch-sensitive displays, it was only logical to expect a torrent of devices with the same optimisation. Having in mind their huge product gamma, it’s no surprise that ASUS has decided to join the race, so we got their latest model, VivoBook S200, for testing purposes. With a 11.6” display, this notebook falls into the ultraportable category, and its design sticks to the Zenbook family values pretty faithfully. With the exception of the bottom cover and display frame, the entire case is made of ground aluminium, resulting in more weight that one might expect, which may bother users who expect ultraportable models to be equally ultra-light.

Rotating displays, touch-sensitive displays, tablet/notebook transformers… All of these were mere concepts a few years ago, yet they’re increasingly invading the store displays of today. Other than the Lenovo Yoga notebook, we’ve also been surprised by ASUS’ Taichi 21. Although the idea is the same, these two notebook models are actually quite different. While Yoga does its transformation from notebook to tablet by rotating the display by 360 degrees, ASUS has decided that Taichi should have two displays altogether.

Since we haven’t been seeing many Sony VAIO notebooks on retail stores’ shelves lately, at least not compared to some years ago, it doesn’t come across as a surprise that this famed brand has been a bit under the radar recently. In a recent conference held by Sony, a wider cooperation with a few select global distributors has been announced, leading to better availability even in the remotest markets, so we can expect Sony VAIO notebooks to join the neck-to-neck battle once again. The first wave brought us a VAIO from the new S15 series, representing the “House of Lords” in Sony’s notebook business.

Portable PCs have the widest range of purposes, and one particular subcategory of theirs has fleshed out in the past period due to advancements made in hardware production. We’re talking about gaming notebooks, of course, which do an increasingly good job at balancing portability, autonomy, but also gaming capabilities. Razer was among the first to try and create a product of this kind, and we believe that other manufacturers will start to enter the field too. Simply enough, the vision of a gaming notebook usually comprises a bulky, heavy notebook, such as those offered by Alienware, Dell (XPS) or ASUS (G). Still, CPUs made in 22 nm coupled with GPUs made in 28 nm lithography made the ideal balance possible. Lenovo has spotted another excellent opportunity in the fact that very few people have the need for an optical device nowadays. How is this sentence congruent with our story?

The era of ultrabooks and tablets has come. Tablets got their popularity by being “more than a smartphone, less than a netbook” and definitely shut the door behind the decrepit netbook generation. On the other hand, the ultrabook concept hasn’t managed to reshape the entire market so far, as it’s reserved for those with deeper pockets. Since more was invested than has been gained, it’s unsurprising that all manufacturers are pushing the market as much as possible, with a constant stream of new models. The long-awaited HP Spectre has reached our office at last.

It's not very often that we come across hardware that is both good-looking and price-sensitive, so we’re more than happy to see Lenovo trying to change this. Don’t expect to see an ultrabook in the 300-400€ range just yet, but with most such notebooks gravitating in the 800-1000€ range, we’re more than interested to see what Lenovo have done to magically drop the price to the 600€ domain.

Samsung has been experiencing nothing but success in the portable market for a while now. Truth be told, this applies to tablets and mobile phones much more than portable computers, but things are starting to balance out, it seems. We’ve been seeing more and more of Samsung’s notebooks in the lower market segment, for instance. The company was quick to roll out their vision of the ultrabook concept as well, in the form of Series 3 and 5, and on the wings of these successful models comes the latest 9-Series. After a few pompous announcements, we were finally able to get our hands on the newest model with a cryptic name of NP900X3C.

In the era of ultralight and ultraportable mobile devices, with a processing power comparable to that of most computers from a few years ago, it's hard to give a good prognosis to anything that differs conceptually and in size from the general trend of miniaturisation. The swarm of thin, light ultraportable mobile phones and tablets, both of which enable the user to perform almost as many tasks as an average notebook could, has simply done a lot to make notebooks look unattractive and insufficiently appealing to end-users. Although the notebook category has been around a lot longer than its current competitors, with new subcategories springing up on a yearly basis, it's clear that room for further improvement and innovation has to be found. Intel was among the first to detect the latest pulsations of the market, announcing an entirely new category of light and energy-efficient devices just over a year ago, entitled simply (and effectively) "ultrabook". The goal, it seems, was to open a new chapter in the development of portable computers, with ultrabooks the first step towards a new future according to Intel.

The ultimate gaming machines, such as Alienware or ASUS G-series, have always provoked amazement among gaming-oriented notebook amateurs. Top-notch gaming systems packed in a relatively small casing, easily transferrable from A to B (with A and B mostly being inside the same room), have constantly been rather expensive, though, and therefore reserved for a very thin target market. Although relatively new in the portable PC business at the time, ASUS managed to become one of Alienware’s greatest threats in the gaming notebook segment with its ROG series. The latest iteration, characterised by “5” in the second part of the numerical model name, comes packed with 3D capabilities, carries the name G75VW, and hides many interesting features under the hood.

Ultrabooks may still be in the takeoff phase, but one thing is for sure – they’ll be getting more and more popular, and companies have the utmost belief in their market success at the end of the day. Simply enough, these devices, standardised to a certain point, present a fantastic ratio of performance, mass and general mobility. Unlike netbooks, which break a sweat as soon as you give them a single more demanding task to do, ultrabooks are based on pretty strong hardware which can do a lot for you on the go. What we’re presenting today is Toshiba’s latest model of the kind, priding itself on a multitude of brilliant features, one of which definitely stands out – weight.