On the morning of the 22.11.2012 Aldi Sud in Germany is probably going to sell over ten thousand Ultrabooks. The new Medion AKOYA S4216 (MD 99080) includes a 1TB SSD-supported hard drive and a removable DVD that can be replaced with an included extra battery. We highlighted the Medion S4211 recently and the S4216 is exactly the Ultrabook variant we were expecting. Yours, if you’re in Germany and standing in line, for €599
Update: Medion Akoya S4216 Specs now in the database. We’ll add info links, videos and reviews as we find them so keep it bookmarked!
We saw this box-shifting show with the first Netbooks back 2008. At that time we estimated 20,000 sales in just a few hours. This time 2535 shops are likely to be carrying an estimated average of 5 per store resulting in over 10K boxes shifted, probably in under 2 hours given the virality of Aldi’s Monday and Thursday offers.
‘Mainstream’ is the target market here and that’s highlighted by the size, the DVD, the features and the price. A 1TB drive is exactly what could excite an Aldi-goer. It’s a big spec for a small price. The Core i3 with 1.8GHz (not a Core i5 with 1.7 Ghz) is targeted in that direction too. A 14” screen is big enough for everyone and a 1366×768 resolution won’t have those mainstream customers complaining they can’t read their emails. DVD, ‘Dolby’, WiDi, Centrino, USB3.0, HDMI, Gigabyte LAN, HD Webcam, SDXC, Windows 8 and two batteries. The Medion Akoya S5216 marketing is peppered with keywords. At 1.9KG it will half the weight of most customers previous laptops. At 21mm thick, half as high!
This is a fantastic deal on the face of it.
At €599 (that’s a pre-tax equivalent of about $640) Aldi won’t be offering the cheapest Ultrabook on the block but there’s enough in here to put at the top of many a list. We’ll get this into the database for you German readers. UK and Holland readers may also see this too after the Aldi Nord roll-out.
You can find out more here. If you’re planning to queue up on the 22nd, don’t forget to take pictures for us!
Via Chip.de
Source: Aldi Nord
The second battery via removable optical drive is a cool non-mainstream feature. I usually see that in business notebooks.
Absolutely Jiminy. For this price, having a DVD / battery slot is quite unique and valuable.
I just visited my Aldi here in Australia and the Medion S4216 is listed for sale here on 24/11/12 however it is model MD 99081 and seems to have some significant differences. On sale for $A749 (just over 600 euro) it has an i5-3317U, 8GB of memory but with both a 500GB HD and 32GB SSD. I would be interested in finding out if it has a matte or glossy screen, an whether it has one or two memory slots.
Check out http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/notebooks/medion/akoya_s4216_md_99081_windows_8_ultrabook/442283
apparently the Aussie one has a matte screen and 2xUSB2.0 + 1xUSB3.0
I bought an S4216 MD 99081 and its broken down already. The light for the WiFi comes on and stays on but the hard drive lights flash briefly and goes out; just the MEDION logo. on the screen.Only had it a week.
Are others reporting issues on forums do you know?
My brother ended up buying one. It took a little effort but my brother successfully upgraded the mSATA SSD, HDD, RAM and downgraded (upgraded?) to Win 7 and found drivers for all of the hardware. He has been using it now for about 2 weeks. The keyboard and trackpad are rubbish (he normally has a keyboards/mouse plugged in so this is not an issue) and the cpu fan is rather quick to engage but apart from that it is a very good machine. With the second battery installed he gets a consistent 5.5-6 hours of heavy use from it.