Mark Prigg weighs up the pros and cons of the latest super-svelte computers
Buying a laptop has become a lot more confusing in the past 18 months – there are so many categories, from tiny handheld devices to those boasting the power of a desktop.
The most portable options fall largely into two camps – netbooks, which are generally low-powered, low-cost machines with screen sizes under 11 inches, and ultra-portables, the higher end, incredibly light models such as the Apple Macbook Air.
For both of these, the key is mobility. They may not offer the longest battery life or the best performance, but these are computers you can take anywhere and work on for a large chunk of the day, without breaking your back in the process.
As always, the technology is moving on swiftly. As a nod to one vision of future mobile computing, I’ve included Apple’s iPad, the giant iPhone it hopes will bridge the gap between phones and laptops.
Dell Adamo XPS
From £1,750 | johnlewis.com
Launched purely to take on the Macbook Air, and exclusive to John Lewis, Dell has really let its designers off the leash with the XPS, resulting in a rather wacky design. You open it by touching your finger on a heat-sensitive latch – the screen then lifts up and the keyboard angles towards you. It’s very clever, and works surprisingly well.
The XPS measures 0.99cm x 34cm x 27.2cm, and is incredibly slim to carry around. It’s a touch heavier than the Air, at 1.44kg. Like the Air, there’s no DVD drive, and a 128GB solid state drive gives you storage. Battery life is pretty decent considering the machine’s size. The standard life is quoted at 2.5 hours, with a five-hour battery also available, although with this one about four hours is probably nearer the truth.
The screen is excellent, and at 13.4 inches is a great size. It is a tad too glossy for my liking, although it is very sharp with bright, vibrant colours. There’s also a two-megapixel camera above the screen.
The XPS is a fast, slick machine, particularly when running Windows 7, and it deserves to be ranked as one of the best examples of an ultra-portable. It may not quite have the “wow factor” of the Air, but it shows that it is possible to create a stylish Windows machine that doesn’t look like it was designed by committee.
PROS Very thin, unique design
CONS No DVD drive, heavy
Apple Macbook Air
From £1,174 | apple.com/uk
Despite being just over two years old, Apple’s Macbook Air is still a real head-turner, and sets the benchmark for what an ultra-portable should be. However, it unashamedly sacrifices both performance and battery life for a machine that measures 0.4cm-0.93cm high when unopened on your desk. The tapered design means it feels even thinner and, at 1.36kg, it’s also very light.
To reach its size-zero status, there are elements that suffer. Battery life is quoted as five hours, although in reality this is a little lower, and there’s also no ethernet port so you have to rely on wifi, which can be a problem in some hotels. Saying that, Apple does now supply an adaptor in the box to give you ethernet via the USB port, and it’s worth packing this wherever you go. There’s also no DVD drive, but the huge popularity of USB sticks means this is less of a problem.
The screen is excellent, and at 13.3 inches is big enough to feel like a “real” laptop. Graphics performance is okay, and recent upgrades have boosted it further – early models, for instance, struggle a little with high-definition video. The back-lit keyboard is great, especially for a machine so thin, and it’s easy to touch-type.
Overall, the Macbook Air is still the ultimate in ultra-portables. It doesn’t have the performance of a conventional laptop, but is a machine you can take anywhere without having to compromise with a smaller screen. Apple has increased the specification of the Air several times since launching it, and its design shows how far ahead of the competition the company is.
PROS Highly portable, slick design
CONS Performance can be an issue, as can short battery life
Nokia Booklet 3G
From £649 | europe.nokia.com
Nokia’s entry into the netbook market may seem an odd one, but with a 3G card at the heart of the Booklet, it seems the phone specialist has hit the nail on the head – what you really want from a netbook is connectivity, and mobile phone firms are well placed to do that.
The 26.4cm x 18.5cm x 1.99cm Booklet is superbly made, and is a cut above the other netbooks here in terms of build quality – something that is reflected in its price tag. The machine is sturdy (weighing 1.25kg) and the keyboard solid, if a little cramped. But it has a very well thought-out design, with every port easy to get to. There’s also a GPS chip built in so you can use the Booklet as a satnav, and an HDMI port allowing you to give presentations easily.
The Booklet is available in black, ice and azure, and in use, seems fast enough for pretty much any task – although, as with all netbooks, don’t expect to be playing the latest games.
Battery life is particularly impressive and is quoted at 12 hours, a figure I found to be pretty close to what you get when performing basic web browsing and word processing tasks.
Overall, this is a cut above the other netbooks. The 10.1-inch screen is sharp and the machine is fast enough for most tasks. It’s one of the best-designed and most well-built netbooks out there.
PROS Built-in 3G, great build quality
CONS Relatively expensive
Sony Vaio X Series
From £1,239 | sony.co.uk
Weighing only 780g, and as thin as an iPhone (1.2cm), Sony’s Vaio X is the undisputed king of the ultra-portables in terms of stats. It’s an amazing feat of engineering, and even the incredibly neat, hinged ethernet port has been well thought-out, meaning you don’t have to carry around an adaptor – Apple, please take note.
However, while it is a real work of art, the build quality of the Vaio X does suffer. It feels flimsy and the screen in particular seems fragile – you can bend it easily, which can’t be a good thing for an everyday workhorse machine.
It also falls short in the performance stakes – especially given its high price – and while it is fine for day-to-day email and web browsing, this isn’t really the machine for video editing or a lot of multimedia work.
Still, for the executive looking to make a statement, and who isn’t really concerned by price or performance, this is a true contender. It’s breathtakingly light and, while the 11.1-inch screen makes it more of a big-screen netbook than an ultra-portable (and believe me, the two terms are almost impossible to separate sometimes), the Vaio X is a breath of fresh air. Its luxurious looks prove that Sony is fast becoming the design guru of the Windows computer world.
PROS Incredibly small and light
CONS Feels a little flimsy and fragile, and performance isn’t great
Apple iPad
From US$499 | apple.com
Apple claims the iPad fills the gap between mobile phones and fully fledged laptops. You can email, surf the web and read books on it, while battery life and performance are good enough for almost all long-haul trips. Apple believes the iPad will outperform any netbook on sale, and give ultra-portables a run for their money too.
The speed of it is phenomenal. Using the photo editing application, you can zoom in and out of pictures at an incredible rate. For entertaining yourself on flights, it’s perfect – the 9.7-inch screen is vivid and bright, video looks superb, and books are easy to read. Crucially, they’re also easy to download, although at the time of going to press, Apple had not confirmed the UK price for either the iPad or its iBooks.
The company has also redesigned all of the small-screen iPhone versions of its applications. Email looks great – a pane on the left shows a list of messages, while the main window shows content. As the iPad is quite large (24.2cm x 18.9cm x 1.3cm), you can rest it on your lap. The only problem comes with typing at length. The on-screen keyboard is surprisingly effective but the lack of a real one limits the iPad’s usefulness for tasks where you need to enter a lot of text – you wouldn’t want to write an entire report on it, but long emails are fine.
The iPad is a great all-round home and leisure device. For business people, it won’t replace the laptop, but for the traveller who wants entertainment more than the ability to write long documents, it could be the ultimate gadget to take on the road.
PROS Superb design and interface
CONS Lack of real keyboard
Sony Vaio W Series
From £379 | sony.co.uk
Sony’s first attempt at a netbook is a good one. (It was one of the later companies to produce one, after dismissing them at first. )The Vaio W Series, available in white, pink, brown and blue, is firmly aimed at the home/student market and looks rather Apple-inspired, with its rounded edges, relatively small dimensions (17.9 x 3.2 x 26.7cm) and 10.1-inch widescreen display.
The Vaio also has a slightly higher resolution screen than most netbooks (1,366 x 768 pixels, rather than the 1,024 x 768 pixels of most 10-inch netbooks), so you can see more on screen, although text is a little smaller as a result. There’s a 160GB hard drive for storage, which is more than adequate for most people, and battery life is reasonable at about 4.5 hours.
The keyboard is okay, but touch typists will suffer as the keys move very little when you depress them. It’s also quite loud, and the fan is noticeable in a quiet room.
Overall, this is a great little machine and one of the more powerful models out there. It doesn’t excel in any one area but is a good, stylish all-rounder that would be ideal for students or the odd bit of home surfing.
PROS Great design, fast
CONS Poor keyboard
Samsung N510
From £400 | samsung.com/uk
With an 11.6-inch screen, the N510 is definitely at the larger end of what can be considered a netbook, especially with some decent built-in graphics from Nvidia, which boosts its performance ahead of all the other netbooks out there. The screen is superb, and capable of decent high-definition video playback, which many of its competitors struggle with.
In fact, the N510 is somewhere between a laptop and a netbook – a big-screen netbook, in other words, which can replace pretty much most laptops. It’s a stylish yet understated machine, and the screen size makes it quite big – this isn’t something you’ll forget is in your bag, even though it weighs only 1.41kg.
As with previous Samsung netbooks, the N510 is a joy to use. It feels fast and responsive, and is capable of most things you throw at it. It’s undoubtedly at the higher end, but the understated looks and performance mean that for business users, this could replace your everyday laptop when you’re out and about with no problem.
PROS Fast performance, good graphics
CONS Relatively expensive, closer in size to a normal laptop
Dell Inspiron 11z
From £349 | euro.dell.com/uk
Dell has produced a lot of great netbooks in the past year, and the 11z is its biggest, boasting an 11.6-inch screen. It’s pretty much the same as the firm’s hugely successful Mini 9, scaled up – and it works well. The increased size also gives you a great keyboard that is only 8 per cent smaller than a full-size one.
Performance is just about acceptable, and the processor is fast enough for most tasks. The build quality feels a little “plasticky”, but this is still a decent all-rounder for the price, and the four-hour battery life makes it a good alternative to a fully featured laptop. Still, unless you really need the bigger screen, there are better – and cheaper – alternatives out there.
PROS Big screen
CONS Relatively poor performance
Eee PC 1008P (Seashell Karim Rashid Collection)
From £338 | eeepc.asus.com
This limited-edition designer netbook is the latest incarnation of the Eee PC, the machine that started the entire netbook revolution. It’s a far cry from the tiny original, boasting a 10.1-inch screen, superb battery life and decent graphics performance.
It is one of the newest netbooks on the market, having been unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, and is one of the best-designed I’ve seen – for the more forward-thinking user, anyway. It’s available in hot pink or chocolate brown, and New York designer Rashid has added a textured case that really makes it stand out. It’s pretty slim, at an inch thick, and lightweight, at just over 1kg.
The name is a little confusing, and it’s rumoured to be a mistake – it was originally planned to call it the “Clamshell”, but through the wonders of dubious translation, it appeared as the “Seashell”.
The keyboard is excellent and the whole unit feels well built. There’s also a three-megapixel webcam, and power for about ten hours – the battery is removable, so you can pack a spare. It’s snappy in use, feeling quicker than all but the Samsung (see above left). For the design-conscious , it’s a great choice – just opt for the chocolate brown.
PROS Great looks
CONS A hot pink netbook can look a little out of place in meetings
Money-saving tips
? The internet has seen an explosion of online electronics retailers, and the key to getting the best out of them is comparison sites. One of the best is Google’s shopping feature (google.co.uk/products), which uses its search engine to locate products. It’s simple to use, and you can even rate sellers. There is also a large range of online comparison sites for niche products – moneysavingexpert.com has one for MP3 files that can save music fans a lot of cash.
? Even once you’ve bought your machine there are some great ways to save money – try investigating online applications. For instance, rather than buying and installing Microsoft Office, Google Docs (docs.google.com) is a fully featured online alternative.
? For netbooks, you can look into other, free operating systems rather than always going with Windows. Ubuntu is simple to download and use, and is free from ubuntu.com. It may seem a little intimidating at first, but for netbooks in particular, it’s fast and easy to use.
