Introducing the Ultrabook Contenders

When Intel initially put out the idea of the ultrabook as a new type of laptop, I admit harboring plenty of skepticism—isn’t the ultrabook just a gussied up rebranding of an ultraportable? Unfortunately, being a skeptic/cynic  has served me well over the years, and so now here I sit in front of two ultrabooks trying to determine a couple of things: which ultrabook is the “best” right now, and are any of them actually worth buying. The first question may be a bit easier to answer, but the second….

I hinted at this in our Holiday 2011 Mobile Buyer’s Guide, but if you’re in the market for a good ultrabook, you could do a lot worse than to go out and grab a MacBook Air and call it a day. If you don’t like OS X and are happier running Windows 7, the MBA can of course run Windows as well, and it still probably rates higher than several of the ultrabooks floating around right now. Yes, the MBA will cost more for similar specs, but what the specs often don’t tell you is how laptops compare in the more subjective areas like build quality, keyboard quality, and display quality. That said, we still have these two ultrabooks to review, so let’s where they compete and where they fall short.

In the one corner we have Acer’s Aspire S3, with a 256GB SSD and an i7-2637M processor (1.7GHz base with Turbo up to 2.8GHz). Pricing on the S3-951-6432 we have in hand starts at $1230 online (down from the $1300 MSRP—and we’ve seen it as low as $1200 during the past few weeks). The base model S3-951-6646 on the other hand can be had for just $875 online (down from the $900 MSRP; we’ve seen t as low as $850). The entry-level model is different in a couple key areas from what I’m reviewing; first, it has a lower spec i5-2467M processor (1.6GHz base with Turbo up to 2.3GHz), and second it uses a hybrid HDD + SSD arrangement for storage. It’s that second item that worries me more, as the main HDD is a 5400RPM 320GB model and the SSD is a small 20GB unit. What’s more, the SSD isn’t used for any form of caching as far as I can determine (Intel’s Smart Response Technology requires the Z68 chipset), so it’s really just there to act as a swap file and a hibernation file repository. We’ll get to the full specs in a moment, but let’s introduce the other contender first.

In the other corner we have the ASUS UX31E, the big brother to the UX21E that we reviewed as our first ultrabook encounter. ASUS also sent us their higher end UX31E-DH72 model, sporting a 256GB SSD and an i7-2677M processor (a 100MHz clock speed increase over the previous model i7-2637M). The base model UX31E-DH52 has a 128GB SSD and an i5-2557M CPU for around $1100, sometimes less. Intel originally set a target price of $1000 or less for the base model of any ultrabook, but this seems to be a pretty loose definition as we can’t find a $1000 UX31E right now. The UX31E-DH72 we’re reviewing tips the scales at a rather hefty $1399 (MSRP and online price).

The market for ultrabooks has also expanded to include a few other laptops, like the Samsung Series 9. We’ve seen that in person, and the one area where it’s clearly better is contrast ratio on the LCD—and a matte LCD as well. We haven’t been able to test it yet, but we should have that one soon enough. Performance of the base model with an i3 ULV processor will certainly be lower than what we’re testing with the Acer S3 and ASUS UX31E, but we saw the upgraded NP900X3A-A02US model with i5-2537M and a 128GB SSD going for as little as $999 last week; sadly, the price is now back up to $1430, which isn’t nearly so interesting. It’s one to keep an eye out for, though, as $999 is a massive discount compared to where the Series 9 launched and that particular model has pretty good specs.

Both the Acer and ASUS offerings are 13.3” ultrabooks, which puts them in the same family as the Toshiba Portege Z835 and the MacBook Air 13, so that gives us five potential ultrabook-like devices to discuss (seven if we include the UX21E and MBA 11). How do all these ultrabooks compare to each other, and can one of them rise to the top? Not surprisingly, the answer to that question is rather complex and will ultimately distill down to what you value most in a laptop. We have examples of longer battery life, better displays, higher resolutions, larger and/or faster SSDs, and faster CPUs. There’s also the keyboard, build quality, and overall design to consider. Let’s give the rundown of the Acer and ASUS ultrabooks before we hit the benchmarks, and then we’ll wrap up with some thoughts on the ultrabook market as a whole.

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook

The Aspire S3 ultrabook is the first unit that I actually laid hands on, and initial impressions are quite good. If you’ve always wondered why no one seems interested in matching the thinness of Apple’s MacBook Air laptops, wonder no longer: these ultrabooks are extremely thin and light, striking an impressive pose. Outside of the Acer branding prominently visible on the Aspire S3, in most other areas you likely wouldn’t guess this is an Acer product. Considering their reputation as a purveyor of budget offerings, that’s generally a good thing. Let’s start with the specs.

This isn’t the slimmest or lightest laptop in existence (our measurements above include the pads on the bottom if you’re wondering), but as far as the performance goes it will be on the higher end of the ultrabook spectrum. The i7-2637M has a base clock of 1.7GHz, which isn’t much more than the less expensive i5-2467M, but the maximum Turbo Boost is an impressive 2.8GHz (500MHz higher than the 2467M). The Micron C400 SSD is also a good choice and provides good performance at a price lower than the competition; the SF-2200 SSDs are still the king of performance, but the C400 is a reasonably priced alternative. The formatting/partitioning of the 256GB (240GB in practice) C400 is interesting, as Acer allocates an 8GB hibernate partition with another 16GB recovery partition—not exactly ideal, but perhaps the dedicated hibernation partition is part of what helps the system suspend/resume so quickly. Memory is also somewhat interesting in that there’s 4GB soldered onto the motherboard; that’s good for saving space but not so good for upgrades if you ever need more RAM.

The battery capacity might seem a little on the small side, but you can still get north of seven hours of battery life (and around six hours of web surfing). Acer also claims up to 50 days of standby time; I wasn’t sure initially whether they were talking about time in hibernate or time in sleep, as the former means a system is pretty much off whereas sleep is a low power mode where you can wake up and start working in a matter of seconds. I left the laptop unplugged and in sleep for a week at one point just to see what would happen, and the battery still had over and 85% charge when I opened it back up, so apparently they really do mean 50 days in suspend (i.e. sleep) mode, which is quite impressive.

One of the highlights of Intel’s ultrabook initiative is fast suspend/resume times as well as boot/shutdown times. The Acer certainly does all of those quickly; we clocked the boot to desktop time at 24 seconds with a shutdown time of seven seconds; POST time actually is a bit long at five seconds. Interestingly enough, there is no option for hibernate; the hibernation volume appears to be part of the magic of behind Acer’s ultrabook, providing for a hibernate-like state while still allowing for ultra-fast resume, so wake from sleep only takes about two or three seconds—fast enough that I can’t imagine anyone complaining. Overall performance is good, and the components and specs look fine, but the major differences between ultrabooks are going to be in the design elements. Let’s consider those areas before coming to a conclusion on where the Aspire S3 ranks.

The top panel has a nice brushed aluminum finish that gives the laptop an immediately higher quality appearance than most consumer laptops. Open the laptop up and you’re greeted by a decent Chiclet keyboard layout, all in a slate-gray matte finish. The bottom casing appears to be plastic as well, though it feels solid and doesn’t exhibit much flex—likely owing to the Magnesium-Aluminum frame. Overall it’s an attractive looking laptop, and it’s really thin and light, just as you’d expect from anything bearing the ultrabook moniker. But how does it fare in actual use?

Build quality is generally good but not exceptional. There’s some twist that’s particularly evident in the LCD lid, even with the aluminum cover. A thicker and more rigid aluminum sheet would have been good for eliminating this. Elsewhere, the laptop feels solid. The bottom chassis is made of a magnesium-aluminum allow, similar to what we find in many higher quality business notebooks, and unlike the LCD it feels very rigid. A couple areas that give me some pause as far as build quality. First is the LCD hinges; they work fine right now, but hinges are notorious for wearing out after a year or two and I could easily see that happening with the S3. My other complaint is with the seams around the chassis; they run all around the outside edges of the bottom chassis and the LCD panel and may catch some dust and develop some creaks over the long haul.

Also a little bothersome for me is that with the thinness of the laptop, the LCD cover weighs nearly as much as the bottom of the chassis, so if you open the display up beyond about a 135 degree angle, it can tip over. This is a minor consideration and comes with the ultra-thin territory, but I definitely feel we’re at the point where an ultrabook is as thin as I would ever want—and perhaps even too thin at times. Part of the problem with laptops getting ultra-thin is that it affects other areas once you try to use the laptop, like the keyboard.

Part of the ultrabook specifications is that the devices are no more than 0.8” (20mm) thick. As you can imagine, that means the key travel on the keyboard is inherently limited. I tried to measure how far the key travel is as a point of reference; obviously this is not the only important metric when looking at keyboards, but among many touch typists a slightly longer travel distance is preferred. The Acer S3 keys have around 0.06” of travel (1.5mm), where my Microsoft Natural keyboard has just over 0.12” (3mm). It’s a very noticeable difference, ad while I can certainly type on the Acer S3—I’m writing this portion of the review on it—it’s not my favorite typing experience. I also have occasions where key presses don’t register, probably due in part to the way the keys feel; I end up typing with a light touch but the keys could use a bit more force.

Besides the feel of the keyboard, the other elements are actually quite good. The layout works for the most part, with a decent amount of space between the keys, but I don’t understand why the Enter/Backslash keys are shaped the way they are; also, the tiny cursor keys with PgUp/PgDn crammed in takes some getting used to (and the UX31E cursor key layout is preferable in my book). The keyboard is still a healthy jump up from the previous Acer floating island keys, however, and I imagine anyone who likes chiclet-style keyboards will be fine with it.

The touchpad also works well enough, though at first it took some getting used to. It’s a single large clickable touchpad with Elan hardware/drivers, similar to what you’ll find on MacBook laptops. The bottom-left and -right corners register as left and right mouse clicks if tapped, and tapping on the surface also works as usual for Windows laptops. The difference is that you can also press into the touchpad and get a noticeable “click”, which is mostly useful for when you want to drag windows or other content around. It’s actually an interesting change and makes the single large touchpad design useable, but I do notice that when trying to drag across a larger area the “press” often gets lost. This mostly occurs near the top of the touchpad where the “click” doesn’t work as well; the middle and bottom depress quite easily but the top requires more force and doesn’t feel like it really goes in as much.

My biggest complaint with the Acer S3, not surprisingly, goes back to the old standby: the display. It’s okay for office use, but there’s nothing special about it relative to the competition. The contrast ratio is poor, the resolution is a bog standard, and that’s pretty much all there is to say. I don’t find 1366x768 panels to be the end of the world, particularly on 13.3” laptops, but at the same time given the opportunity for something like a 900p display or a higher contrast matte panel, I’d definitely be interested in paying more for the privilege. The Aspire S3 ends up being a decent representative of the ultrabook platform, and it’s also one of the less expensive ultrabook offerings if you eschew the larger SSD configurations. However, the lack of a dedicated SSD for most of your storage (I personally need at least a 120GB drive) limits the appeal of the entry-level models while the higher spec unit we’re reviewing clocks in at a hefty $1300.

ASUS UX31E Ultrabook

Where the Acer S3 looks impressive “for an Acer laptop”, the ASUS UX31E is flat out amazing looking. This is pretty much an ASUS equivalent of the MacBook Air—style and class in an extremely thin chassis. The construction of the chassis is all aluminum and it feels very solid, including hinges that look fairly robust (though admittedly they mat still wear out in a year or two—it’s hard to say without using the laptop for a long time). Like the Acer S3, this is the higher spec version of the UX31E, so let’s start there.

The ASUS UX31E is actually slightly thicker and heavier than the Acer S3, though I’m sure ASUS would argue otherwise. In something of an ultrabook pissing contest, everyone seems to be exaggerating the thinness of their offerings by neglecting to include the added height from the rubber feet, and I’m not sure I agree with that. Regardless, I can’t say that the difference between 0.81” and 0.79” is something anyone will notice or care about; what they likely will care about is the overall quality of craftsmanship, and this is where ASUS’ UX31E excels. The chassis has a construction highly reminiscent of the unibody MacBook casing, which is a good thing—well, good except for the hard corners, where I find myself preferring the rounded edges on the Acer S3, even if the hard edges look nicer.

In most areas, the ASUS UX31E is going to go toe-to-toe with the Acer laptop. It has a slightly faster CPU and a larger battery capacity, but the Sandisk SSD is a virtual unknown. Pricing is where ASUS is really going to struggle against other offerings, as the DH72 model we’re reviewing is currently selling for $1400, $170 more than the Acer S3. There are a few features you get from the ASUS that couple sway your decision however. First and most importantly, ASUS includes a 1600x900 LCD. The contrast ratio is still mediocre, but the display can get very bright and for office work I’m fine with mediocre contrast, particularly when I get a higher resolution with it. The second noteworthy feature is the single USB 3.0 port on the right side, providing at least one other way to quickly get data on or off the system. Finally, ASUS chips in with a USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapter; it’s only Fast Ethernet (100Mb), but latency and throughput are still much better than the single stream wireless solution.

There are other differences between the Acer and ASUS ultrabooks. I mentioned that Acer has a “hibernation partition” on the SSD, something I haven’t encountered with Windows before, and moreover the firmware doesn’t support Windows’ normal hibernate mode. Instead, when you put the Acer to sleep, it enters a pseudo-hibernate state where it can still resume in around three seconds but it can stay in standby for 50 days. Well, ASUS’ UX31E uses a traditional hard drive partition and hibernate mode, so putting it to sleep means it will still draw a moderate amount of power (compared to the Acer). ASUS has a utility that estimates standby time, and on a full charge you’ll get about a week of standby. Put the system into hibernate mode on the other hand and you can last as long as the battery will hold a charge—I don’t have a good way of measuring that, unfortunately. Other than that difference, ASUS does better in POST, boot, and resume times: 4 seconds to POST, 16 seconds to get to the Windows desktop from initial power on, and 19 seconds or so before you have an active wireless connection; resume from hibernate is only slightly faster, requiring 13 seconds to get back to the desktop. (Sadly, my desktop system takes longer just to get through the POST!) I’m not sure if it’s the ASUS firmware and BIOS optimzations, the choice of SSD, or perhaps both, but regardless the UX31E is a speedy little laptop.

The design of the UX series is very striking, and the construction is top notch. There’s no flex or twist in the chassis or display, and the casing is brushed aluminum throughout. The only plastic to be found is in the display bezel (matte black, thankfully!), the keyboard, and the touchpad—areas where the plastic makes sense and still looks nice. The top panel has a circular brushed aluminum finish that’s an interesting break from the regular streaked lines, and the ASUS logo at the center looks rather cool. Like so many other laptops, the keyboard is another chiclet offering, with a few minor layout quirks, and the keys have a matte-but-shiny surface. Out of all the ultrabooks I’ve seen so far (I’ve looked at all of them), this is the most attractive from an aesthetics point of view, with only the MacBook Air able to match it in most areas. What about actually using the UX31E, though?

Everything feels exceptionally solid well put together, which is great. Unfortunately, when you start typing things take a bit of a turn for the worse. I have a few complaints about the keyboard, some similar to the Acer and others shared by Apple. The hard edges on the chassis don’t feel nice at all if you happen to rest your wrists on them while typing; I know that’s probably bad typing form, but I still did it on occasion while writing this page of the review. Key travel is also quite shallow, right there with the Acer S3 at about 1.5mm. Finally, there’s the layout issue I have: the power button is in the top-right corner of the keyboard, right where I’m used to finding the Delete key on 95% of laptops; after the third errant press of the power button I was more than a little irked (each time you hit it, a dialog pops up asking if you want to sleep, hibernate, shut down, or do nothing—almost as though ASUS realized before shipping that a bunch of people would accidentally press the power button. Here’s an idea: move the power button away from the keyboard.

At least one reader has complained to me on several occasions about his experience with the keyboard, saying he returned a UX31E because the keyboard was unusable, with missed key presses and a very uncomfortable feel; I suspect the missed key presses may have been from a bad unit, as I didn’t have that problem in general (though you do have to be more precise in typing, similar to what I experienced on the S3), but I’m definitely not going to compare the feel favorably to a ThinkPad or Latitude. Most people should be able to find a local store to test out the UX31E in person to see if they’re okay with the keyboard; I am, but it’s more something I could live with rather than something I actually like. It’s not horrible, and I actually prefer the Fn+cursor key shortcuts over what Acer has done on the S3, but I’d still prefer a dedicated column of Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys like some of the previous ASUS laptops had (e.g. U3x series)

The touchpad on the other hand does pretty well overall. It’s absolutely huge compared to most Windows laptops—about as large as what you’ll find on a MacBook. Also like the MacBook and Acer S3, the touchpad is clickable, allowing you to press and drag windows for example. While I found that feature to be potentially useful, like the Acer S3 the ability to click along the top area of the touchpad requires a lot more force and thus doesn’t always work when trying to click+drag. Tapping on the bottom-right and left corners give the expected right- and left-click mouse buttons, though I did miss the ability to configure a two-finger tap as the middle-click (something ASUS appears to have removed in their driver build). The touchpad hardware comes from Elan, just like the Acer, and given the size of the touchpad I was pleasantly surprised by ASUS’ Smart Detector feature that’s designed to eliminate errant touchpad activation while typing. I never had to fool with the touchpad settings (outside of disabling the pinch-to-zoom and rotate gestures that I never use).

There’s only one other item with the ASUS UX31E that I dislike, and while it’s generally minor it still warrants mention: the power brick is actually a step back in my book. I know putting the Windows License sticker on it might be novel, but I wouldn’t care about a sticker on the bottom of the laptop (a la Acer’s S3). What’s more, the plug/brick is just one more wall-wart that’s more unwieldy than a regular power brick with two cords, plus if you ever lose it or need a replacement you have to keep the old one for the sticker. That’s not the end of my complaints, though: the actual connector to the laptop is very tiny and seems fragile. I’ve had a few broken power connectors over the years, and this one looks more prone to damage than others. I hate to keep mentioning Apple, but the Maglock is a far superior solution, particularly for smaller laptops—one where you’re unlikely to damage the laptop side of the power connection. I’m not sure how much it would cost to license Maglock from Apple (or if they would even do it), but I wish we could get a more durable power connector standard. Outside of worn-out hinges, that’s the next most likely part to get broken in my experience over the past ten or so years.

Finishing up our look at the UX31E, like so many laptops the display is the one area where I wish ASUS had done a bit more. There are a limited number of LCD panel manufacturers, and it looks like given the choice between a higher resolution and brighter panel or a lower resolution and higher contrast panel, ASUS opted for the former. Mind you, the panel can get very bright—around 500 nits at maximum—so you can definitely use it outdoors. Black levels on the other hand are equally high, resulting in a pedestrian 200:1 contrast ratio. It’s the one area where Apple’s MacBook Air still has a clear advantage. It may not be faster or cheaper, but the MacBook Air 13 has a comparatively excellent 1440x900 panel with a 750:1 contrast ratio. Oh, and the MacBook Air 2011 models both offer backlit keyboards—something I really wish ASUS and Acer provided.

Ultrabook Application Performance

We’ve really covered most everything that matters, as the core hardware is very similar. By this time you should have a good idea which ultrabook (if any) is right for you, but we still have benchmarks to run. We’ll start with our usual application performance metrics, skip the gaming tests (HD 3000 is sufficient for entry level gaming and that’s about it), and then looks at the battery life and display metrics. All of the ultrabooks we’ve tested have SSDs for storage, which really helps the general application performance; keep in mind that models that opt for an SSD+HDD hybrid solution (like the less expensive Acer S3) won’t have nearly the overall responsiveness. We’d just as soon Intel revise the ultrabook spec to mandate SSD storage only for the OS and apps (e.g. at least a 60GB SSD), but that ship has unfortunately sailed. Anyway, let’s hit the charts, starting with PCMark 7.

Our full set of PCMark 7 results is the most compelling view of using an ultrabook. They don’t have the raw compute power of a quad-core notebook or even a non-ULV Core i5, but for most tasks the ULV processors are plenty fast. Windows boots and shuts down very quickly, launching multiple applications simultaneously doesn’t grind performance to a halt, and even better you can mostly avoid the long-term performance degradation that usually comes with Windows and conventional hard drives. There are a couple other items of interest to point out with these results. First, the Micron C400 is clearly faster than the SanDisk U100 SSD; this manifests in many of the benchmarks, but the Storage suite in particular shows just how much of a difference there is. Also note that the UX21E we tested had a SandForce 2200 based SSD, and that’s why it also scores well despite only having 128GB (e.g. fewer NAND die). The other item to point out is that the ASUS shipped with newer Intel graphics drivers; usually such things don’t matter much, but here the updated drivers really boost the Quick Sync performance (and thus the Computation score) as well as some of the 3DMark results we’ll see below. Let’s hit the rest of the application benchmarks before we summarize things.

Once we get away from the SSD-centric tests like PCMark (Vantage appears particularly unkind to the SanDisk U100), performance falls out where you’d expect. With the high Turbo Boost modes available on the i7 ULV processors, the S3 and UX31E can actually give the 35W TDP Core i5 parts a run for the money, but if you put a sustained load on the CPU (which most of these tests do) you’ll see the clock speeds drop after the first 30-45 seconds. Generally speaking, even the OEM i5-2410M/2430M are faster than the i7-2677M in most tests, but that’s fine as the ULV parts are at least close and they still use half the power at full load. Taking a look at the AMD side of things, we’ll just skip Brazos—it’s there for reference, and since it ships in 13.3” laptops it’s a fair addition for low-power laptops, albeit one that costs half as much as an ultrabook. Llano on the other hand still comes out okay in performance comparisons; where it was clearly faster than the i3-2367M ULV part in multi-threaded scenarios, the Core i7 ULV parts regain the lead, but that’s not the entire story.

Rounding things out with 3DMark, the three ultrabooks place at the bottom of the charts. They’re faster than the E-350 IGP, but that part competes in a completely different price range so that’s okay; Llano on the other hand puts paid to anything without a discrete GPU. We’d still like to see A8-series APUs in laptops costing under $600, and Llano uses more power than the ULV chips and goes into thicker, better cooled laptops. Still, it’s a great budget laptop part if you care more about graphics than CPU intensive tasks. Give it an SSD for storage and it will hang with the ULV parts in many of the other tests as well.

Netbook Levels of Battery Life

When netbooks came on the scene, they made the idea of a $1000+ ultraportable seem rather laughable. Several years later we’re rebranding ultraportables as ultrabooks (provided they have Intel Inside) and giving it another go. Of course, ultrabooks pack a few tricks like SSDs for better battery life and performance, and Intel’s ULV Sandy Bridge processors are proving to be very efficient when it comes to saving power. We ran our usual suite of battery life tests, with the LCDs set to as close to 100 nits as possible (50% brightness on the Acer S3 and 18% brightness on the ASUS UX31E).

The Acer has a much smaller 3-cell battery, but even with a 38Wh capacity it still boasts respectable battery life of over four hours of H.264 playback and nearly eight hours of idle time. Switch over to the UX31E and not only do you get a higher battery capacity, you also get apparently better power optimizations. In our H.264 test the ASUS “only” manages close to 5.5 hours of playback, while it jumps to 8.5 hours of Internet surfing and over 10.5 hours of idle time. Look at the relative battery life charts and the results are even more impressive: the three ultrabooks we’ve reviewed place at the top of the charts, and even if we compare with Atom, the UX31E matches and sometimes exceeds what the best netbooks could achieve; the other two ultrabooks where we’ve done full reviews also place near the top of our relative battery life charts.

Something else we tested that we don’t have in the above charts is idle battery life with the LCD at maximum brightness. The Acer drops to 400 minutes, but then it only gets about 120% brighter as we’ll see on the next page. The UX31E on the other hand does a swan dive down to just 357 minutes, but you have to take into consideration the 450% increase in brightness. Put another way, power draw for the Acer is around 4.7W at 107 nits (50%) and 5.59W at 234 nits (100%); the ASUS on the other hand uses 4.38W at 93 nits (18%) and jumps up to 7.91W at 519 nits (100%). Even though that’s a pretty big jump in power use, we still have to credit the LED backlighting technology: 500+ nits for less than 5W of power isn’t really that bad.

The short summary here is that you may have to pay more, but you do get substantially better performance than a netbook, you don’t sacrifice much in the size or battery life departments, and build quality is generally far higher than inexpensive laptops and netbooks. Does that make ultrabooks a better option than other laptops? Not for everyone, but there are certainly people that will like what ultrabooks have to offer.

And Then We Get to the LCDs…

Sadly, as much as some areas of the laptops are improved over other offerings, the displays in general are nothing to get excited about. The Acer LCD is a bog standard model while the ASUS goes for a higher HD+ resolution and one of the brightest backlights we’ve tested on a laptop; unfortunately, contrast ratio along with color quality and gamut are all in the dumps. Let’s not dwell on it too much before we see the charts.

Of the laptops we’ve reviewed recently, the UX31E has the brightest LCD by far…along with the highest black level by far. The result is a contrast ratio that places near the top of our selection of eight mediocre displays. The Acer S3 on the other hand has middling white and black levels but the lowest contrast of the eight tested laptops. Continue on to color accuracy and gamut and things go from middling to lousy. The ASUS’ incredibly bright backlight results in very poor post-calibration Delta E of 3.67, with some colors in the double digits. Turn to the color gamut and we find part of the reason for that: the gamuts of both these ultrabooks are very poor, which means several of the test color patches are outside of their color range.

Viewing angles are typical of TN panels, with the vertical shots showing major color shifts. The ASUS panel does a lot better than the Acer, though neither one is great. We’ve got excellent 10.1” IPS panels now shipping in $400 tablets; why can’t we get a similar panel in 13.3” trim in a $1200 laptop? I’m probably preaching to the choir, but seriously: first IPS panel in a 13.3” laptop for under $1000 gets an Editor’s Choice award (as long as the rest of the laptop doesn’t completely suck).

In the grand scheme of things, though, how much do the LCD test results really matter? That’s a more difficult question to answer. Some users will never know what they’re missing, while others like to edit photos or watch movies and will immediately notice the poor contrast and colors. The color quality is a potential deal breaker for me, but if you’re just surfing the web and working in office applications, it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. For a go-anywhere laptop, the ASUS’ ultra bright LCD is definitely a plus—I took it outside and maxed out the backlight intensity and was still able to view the display contents without complaint, which is more than I can say for the laptops that max out at 200-250 nits.

When we look at the target the ultrabooks are trying to take down—Apple’s MacBook Air—the LCD results in particular are unacceptable. The MacBook Air displays are by no means perfect (I'd like a color gamut of at least 70% AdobeRGB for example), but notice how out of the tested laptops they place at the top in every test other than maximum brightness? That's what we'd like to see from the competition. ASUS at least made some effort to be different by going with a 1600x900 LCD with a high maximum backlight intensity, but Acer could have literally picked up any other 13.3” LCD and put in a similar showing. Take the price and OS out of the equation and the MacBook Airs are the superior “ultrabooks”, for two reasons: build quality and display quality. Acer improved their build quality over most of their budget offerings, and ASUS is right there with Apple in terms of build quality, but >500:1 contrast with >350 nits maximum brightness is the minimum I’d like to see, and really we’re talking about $1000+ laptops so it’s not too much to ask for an extra $50 to improve the displays.

Ultrabook Wrap-Up

We’ve now looked at three 13.3” ultrabooks, plus the MacBook Air 11 and 13, and the ASUS UX21E. I’ve also had some hands on time at a local store with a Samsung Series 9, so that covers much of the ultrabook market right now. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to see any of the Lenovo IdeaPad U300/U400 offerings or any other ultrabooks in person (yet), so I’ll have to leave them out of consideration.

Taken as a whole, the one thing these laptops are doing right is making really slim and amazing looking devices. For those in the generic Windows laptop world that don’t get to many coffee shops where the cool people hang out, the first encounter with an ultrabook is almost invariable one of amazement. “Wow! That’s an amazing looking laptop. Is it any good or does it just look cool?” I had several (non-techie) people come by while I worked on this review, and that was basically the reaction from every one of them. I agree on the first point: these ultrabooks really look sleek. The question of whether or not they’re good isn’t quite so clear.

Understand first and foremost that the target market for an ultrabook values aesthetics and portability over performance. There are dozens of laptops that cost less and offer more performance, but that’s not the point. The purpose of ultrabooks is to provide a fast, light business laptop that can last through most of a day’s workload and not weigh you down while you carry it around. If that’s what you’re after, the Acer S3, ASUS UX31E, and Toshiba Portege Z835—and very likely the Lenovo U300 and any other forthcoming ultrabooks—should keep you happy. Buy whichever one has the best price or most appealing look and you’re good to go. If you’re looking for other features, however, you’ll want to consider exactly what you get a bit more. Personally, I’d rather have a slightly bulkier laptop with a 1080p display, more connectivity options, and a discrete GPU for some moderate gaming—the Dell XPS 15z is still one of my favorites for walking the fine line between price, features, performance, and quality. But let’s assume you’ve decided you want an ultrabook; which one should you get?

For best build quality right now and aesthetic, out of the units I’ve seen I’d place the Apple MacBook Air and the ASUS Zenbooks at the top of the list. The aluminum unibody construction of the MBA makes for a very solid feeling laptop and the ASUS Zenbooks are right there with it. If you value screen quality over other elements, the MacBooks once again get a recommendation, but I also have to give props to the Samsung Series 9 13.3” model—it has a beautiful matte panel with a great contrast ratio, and colors look far better than on the ASUS, Acer, or Toshiba offerings. On the other hand, ASUS offers a very bright display and is the only 1600x900 resolution in a 13.3” ultrabook right now—at least a baby step over the status quo laptop LCDs.

Some people still value wired connectivity; for such users, Toshiba is the only ultrabook I’ve seen so far with an integrated Gigabit Ethernet port—and yes, I missed having GbE on both the Acer and ASUS; would it have killed them to at least include a 2x2:2 MIMO WiFi adapter? Acer lacks USB 3.0, so connectivity folks will likely want to go elsewhere. If you’re after a good keyboard, my initial experience is that all of the ultrabooks (including the MacBook Air) don’t have a lot of key travel, which may or may not bother you. Subjectively, however, I think the Samsung Series 9 was the most comfortable keyboard for me to type on, followed by the MacBook Air, with the others all rating as slightly behind those two; also worth noting is the MBA and Series 9 both have backlit keyboards. Finally, for best battery life, so far ASUS comes out quite a bit ahead of the others, thanks to a larger 48Wh battery and good power optimizations.

That covers most recommendations, but there’s still one more point to consider: cost. While the Acer S3 doesn’t place first in most areas, it’s still an ultra thin laptop that looks decent, and the 256GB C400 SSD is better than most of the other SSD options. ASUS got the 128GB SF-2200 SSD right in the UX21E, but the 256GB SanDisk U100 doesn’t look like it can even keep up with the second tier SSDs; considering the cost, I’d avoid ASUS’ 256GB models. Apple meanwhile charges the most by a fairly sizeable margin—shocking, I know—but if you look at the previous paragraph you’ll find that they warrant consideration on most categories.

The most reasonable conclusion is that you have to choose what’s most important, as you simply can’t get it all. You can get an $1100 ASUS UX31E that has similar or slightly better performance compared to the base model $1300 MacBook Air 13, you get a higher resolution and brighter LCD panel, and you get USB 3.0 support along with Windows 7. For $200 more, you get a higher contrast LCD with a 16:10 aspect ratio, Thunderbolt, a backlit keyboard, and OS X. If you already prefer OS X, the choice is very simple, but some Windows users might actually be willing to spend the additional money for an MBA13 ($300 extra when you factor in the Windows license). If I were to recommend just one ultrabook right now, the $1100 ASUS UX31E-DH52 gets my vote, but if you want more performance without breaking the bank, the Acer S3-951-6432 has everything you need except for a good LCD and USB 3.0 priced at $1230. If you want the MacBook equivalent of the Acer, you’ll have to pony up $1700 to get the same CPU and a 256GB SSD, though I’d say the LCD and improved build quality are worth at least $200.

The ultrabook market is still relatively new, and there are additional models coming out from other companies. As SSD prices drop, we’re likely to see better prices as well, and really we’d like to stick closer to $1000 for a 128GB SSD and a Core i5 CPU. We’d also like to see more attention to detail, particularly on the LCDs. For a 13.3” laptop, 1440x900 or 1600x900 is my preferred resolution, but along with that I’d like something that can handle the full sRGB color space and offer close to a 1000:1 contrast ratio—and an anti-glare surface would be icing on the cake. We’ll see if any of the upcoming ultrabooks can surpass the current offerings, which unfortunately end up looking very much like a revised take on attractive but expensive ultraportables. They're not bad, but they're also not the type of product we can universally recommend without pointing out some of the potential drawbacks.