Can't pick between these 8 ultrabooks / convertibles...

[shmoo]

So I'm Considering:

Apple 13" Macbook Air
Lenova Yoga 2 Pro 13"
Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga
Acer Aspire S7
Samsung ATIV 9 plus
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon
Toshiba Kirabook 13-i5s
Vizio Think+Light 15.6", haswell version should be coming along very soon

So per Maziar's laptop buyers faq:

1. What is your budget?


$1600 or less

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

Must be very thin and light, a 15 inch laptop would be nice but I mainly want something small I can throw in a backpack with my textbooks to go to class. I've had a 12" in the past and while a larger screen is nice, I find smaller screens to work just fine. The Vizio is one of the few true ultrabooks that is 15.6 inches, that's why I'm considering it.

3. What screen resolution do you want?

1440 x 900+, the super high res IPS screens look very nice but from what I have read, most programs don't scale too well at that size. It just seems that such high resolutions don't have much use on small screens other than 4k movies whenever those become common.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?


YES, very portable.

5. How much battery life do you need?

6+ Hours

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

No games, I have a desktop for that

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

This will be for use as a comp-sci student. I will mostly just use it for reviewing notes, doing homework, coding, possibly running a virtual machine here or there...

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

256 gb+ MUST BE SSD

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

Don't Care

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

Till it breaks, hopefully 4+ years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

None

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

Well lets get this out of the way... I HATE Apple. The Macbook air seems like it might actually be the best option in this case though. The macbook air is the same price or less as similarly configured pc ultrabooks with the same specs (except no super high res touchscreen), and it can run windows off of bootcamp. It might be good to be able to run mac os and windows as a comp sci student as I may find it most convenient to program in different environments for different projects/classes...?

All of the pc ultrabooks I have read about have moderately good to just moderate customer reviews on newegg/amazon... It seems like half of the pc ultrabooks drop wifi regularly, half of them have severe ghosting with their displays, the yoga 2 pro has its yellow color issue, and it seems like more people are having issues with stuff not working in general. I like to think there would be a better alternative but the macbook air seems to be the most reliable. It's not like a desktop where you can just pull a part if it sucks...

13. What country do you live in?

USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I don't like apple because once upon a time they were a cool company with a different approach to personal computing. Now they're a huge company that's completely closed, overprotective, and controlling in every way imaginably possible when it comes to their software and hardware. The snobbishness of their image gets to me so much that I just want to go into every apple store I see, fart, and leave...

But yeah I would buy a macbook air if it was really the best logical choice, I just really hope it doesn't come to that haha.

 

[13thmonkey]

I'm using an x1 from 2011, (not carbon), very light, battery lasts for 2hrs, so you might need the slice battery as well, but the battery does charge to full in about 30-45mins. I'd forgotten how fast that was until I used a T410 at work, charging takes 2+ hours, i.e. you can confidently fully charge it over lunch, or at least give it a meaningful charge. This is all with an i3. 2+HT.

 

[Ipaqman]

I am using a Yoga 2 13 (non-Pro) that is full HD and has an empty M.2 SSD slot. I added a Crucial M500 M.2 128GB SSD to it and now have a SSD boot drive and a 500GB media storage drive. The total cost was $799 for notebook and $99 for SSD.

I get 8 to 9 hours of battery life for Internet browsing. It does not have WIFI issues and none of the yellow issues of the Y 2 Pros. The M550 card gives this notebook better CrystalDiskMarks than the Y 2 Pros. I get 370MB write speeds.

I passed on the Yoga 2 Pro because of the Windows scaling issues. I have full HD which is more than enough. The contrast and color of this screen scores higher than the Y 2 Pro screen.

I love that I can use it in tablet mode or in stand mode on my chest for bedtime viewing.

Have fun researching. I spent over a month deciding.