AMDs Ultrathin laptops have been a long time coming. I remember a promise of an Ultrathin at CES in Jan that didn’t materialise. I’ve heard big talk from AMD at their investor conference back in Feb. The Samsung and HP Ultrathins were launched around June but it’s mid August now and if you’re looking for an ultrathin based on AMD’s A6 at under 2KG, only the Samsung Series 5 NP535U3C fits the bill. But how does it perform? It’s coming in at about €100 / $100 less than the equivalent Ultrabook so there’s room to maneuver for the AMD-based Ultrathin.

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Back toward the beginning of May, HP revealed a deluge of new Ultrabook products. Despite a rather confusing array of press releases and announcements, we waded through it all and found what many others missed — HP would be offering the Envy 4 and Envy 6 as not just Intel-powered Ultrabooks, but also as AMD-powered ultrathins. After quite a while, HP now has available the AMD Envy 6 Sleekbook for $699; can it compete with low priced Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks, and what about it’s twin, the Envy 6 Ultrabook?

At the AMD financial analysis day a few days ago (FAD) three families of APUs targeting the sub 20W TDP space were announced which means good options and good competition in the mobile computing space and with the low-power ‘Trinity’ application processor unit (APU) an interesting (competitor for Intel + products for us) addition to the thin-and-light market. It’s exciting news and something we’ll be following, and eventually testing, on Ultrabooknews. Here’s my analysis of the facts presented. We’ll be ignoring the AMD C, E and Z series APUS in this article. They are targeted at tablets and low-cost netbook-style devices.

The question here is – What does ‘Trinity’ A-series enable and will it be a true Ultrabook competitor?

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