I want a skinny laptop (maybe ultrabook)

[Million]

Hi all,
I posted a while back regarding an Acer ultrabook I saw on sale and was tempted by. Since then I've distilled my wants to this:
Thin
Light
Nice 13-14" screen visible in sunlight, not fussed about touch screen
Win 7-8
Decent battery life
Capable of running (multitasking) browser/word/spreadsheet/PP etc, HD multimedia (not editing), old games like Pharaoh/RA2, at a push photo editing software (I use CS2) but not entirely necessary - I've been looking at c6gb RAM, i5 core, maybe SSD but probably unnecessary cost for me
Budget is ~£600
Last thing I've been looking at is the Samsung Series 5: http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/laptops/NP530U3BA03UK Seems pretty good for what it is, I have yet to see the screen in the flesh though.
Does anyone have experience or opinions in this market, or advice to add?

[scaryjim]

What about the ULV Trinity version of the series 5? it'll be less CPU powerful, but much more graphically capable, and should have plenty of CPU for the tasks you want to do. Plus it runs in at £100 under budget: http://www.ebuyer.com/396856-samsung...np535u3c-a02uk

AMD did a quad core ULV trinity A8 - the 4555m - but it's a devil to actually find a product with one in in the UK. Lenovo do a 14" IdeaPad with it in - the S405 - but there don't seem to be any UK retailers and with tax and shipping it'd end up overbudget to import. There's also an Acer V5 and an HP Envy 6, but they're both 15.6", and again you'd probably end up with a grey import. Sucks that we get the sticky end of the deal when it comes to low-power AMD products, but always seems to be the way

[Million]

Thanks Jim. I don't know AMD's processors of the last 5 years at all really - do you think I'd notice much of a performance drop from the i5?

[scaryjim]

I think I've said elsewhere that I don't really notice much difference between my work laptop - which is a core i7 - and my home laptop - which is a ULV Core 2 Duo @ 1.3GHz - for general office tasks, browsing, etc. I've not got any personal experience of the low-power Trinity chips, but I'd be surprised if they were less capable than my old Core 2. Obviously YMMV as far as "acceptable" performance goes, but remember this is (presumably, anyway) a highly portable secondary machine. I used to drag my Core 2 Acer into work, run it on battery for 3 - 4 hours of office work, basic web design & web graphics editing (logo design, that kind of thing), with several web browser tabs open in the background - and I didn't once feel like the laptop was slowing me down. And if I could do that on a 1.3Ghz Core 2, I'd be amazed if you couldn't do all that on a 2.1GHz Trinity.


The biggest differences to the Core i5 are going to be: the i5 has hyperthreading, so will be a bit better in multithreaded tasks than the A6 (which is one module/two threads), but the graphics in the A6 will be faster than in the i5. From my point of, for a low power highly portable laptop, the Trinity is a better balance: it should give you adequate CPU performance for general office tasks and web browsing, good video decoding support for media duties, and when you decide to fire up a game it'll give you performance as good as or better than a low-end discrete card. I don't think Intel's IGP - particularly in a low power Sandy Bridge CPU - could offer that.

EDIT: just to clarify: if you run CPU benchmarks or deliberately give it a CPU-heavy workload, you'll notice the difference, definitely. But for the tasks you want to perform, the Trinity is probably better balanced.

[Million]

I really appreciate your clear and concise reply Jim - thanks very much. Seems John Lewis have it for £500, with their own 2 year warranty (a year better that Samsung's own, and probably a damn sight easier to get hold of). Might pop in and pick one up this weekend

[samuraiweasel]

If you need a dvd drive have a look at the Acer M3 series.
still kinda thin and has an option for a gt650m

[Million]

Who uses optical drives?! Something I certainly don't want - waste of space these days unless you have a specific requirement for one, and then I have my PC, or a USB one

[Million]

Update TWIMC:
I bought the Samsung NP535U3C-A02UK linked above from John Lewis on Saturday, and have used it for a couple of hours since. I'm contemplating returning it as I'm finding Windows 8 quite unpleasant to use. I also find that it doesn't seem to be as fast as it should be in everyday programs like Google Chrome browser, which stutters as I scroll. Lots of things seem to stutter when I scroll in fact. Just glad I bought it from JL because their customer service is so good

[Bunjiweb]

Not an Ultrabook - more like a slightly more capable Netbook, but I recently bought a HP DM1-430SA. It uses an AMD E2 Dual-core processor which despite not being anywhere near an i5 does absolutely fine at running Chrome at a high speed. I also use Photoshop CS2 on it happily. Screen is a bit smaller than you mentioned at 11.6" but I find this an ideal size personally. It also runs games quite happily due to a proper discrete AMD 7340 chip. Finally the battery life is pretty excellent compared to a lot of laptops in this price-range.

Downsides - Windows 8 took a white to get used to & the screen resolution could be better (1368*768) but at 11.6" it's more than usable.

http://www.expansys.com/hp-pavilion-...LKSpevSgrJXxN4

Ben