Not that long ago at CES 2013 Sony announced they were introducing two new additions to the Vaio T-Series lineup, a touch-enabled T-14 and a new T-15 model, also with a touchscreen and today these two new Ultrabooks are available to order from Sony and Best Buy
Chinese VR-Zone published, back in August, what looks like a roadmap for Haswell which might be worth thinking about if you’re waiting for news of next-gen Ultrabooks. We hadn’t reported on it although we’ve heard various rumors, some of which were pointing to an accelerated roadmap. This item of news aligns with that but doesn’t include the Ultrabook SKUs which are said to come in Q3 2013
Given the current state of Ultrabooks with the Ivy Bridge processor platform well integrated into the segment and a huge choice of new form factors including more mobile and tablet solutions, we though it might be worth highlighting it.
MSI appear to have quietly given the MSI S20 slider an airing. We first saw this back in June in a not-too-professional presentation by themselves but despite that it’s been one that has gained quite a bit of interest. Recent news highlighted a target price (yes, the good old non-committal target price!) of $799-$899.
Engadget and LesNumeriques have news for us…
One in ten of you reading this article are from Germany, a country that leads the world in Ultrabook availability. How do we know this? We know this because we regularly scan retailers in USA, Germany, UK, Canada, France, Italy and Australia for information on pricing and availability for our database and Germany is always out front.
Those of you that think the English-language countries are the place to look for Ultrabook trends, reports, sales numbers need to think again because not only is there a huge availability of Ultrabooks, the cheapest Ultrabook is close to the $600 mark (pre-tax.) 599 Euros buys you the Lenovo U310 today – inclusive of 19% sales tax which most EU businesses will claim back.
Here’s a list of interesting Ultrabooks, including my comments, that you might want to look at if you’re a QWERTZ person. Pass it on to your German friends!
Three new Ultrabooks have appeared at Amazon US in the last week. The Lenovo U310, Lenovo U410 and Acer Aspire S5
Starting with the Acer Aspire S5-391 you can pre-order for $1399.99. [Amazon link] It sounds expensive but as is often the case, the high-end version is being made available first. Core i7-3517U at 1.9-3.0Ghz with 4GB RAM and a healthy 256GB SSD. Be aware though that the screen is 1366×768. At this price it could be a difficult sell don’t you think?
We’ve been hearing about 23rd April availability of Ivy Bridge for a while now but what does that mean and what does it mean for Ultrabooks? What’s clear is that there’s still some time to go before anyone is able to buy a 2nd-gen Ultrabook. Our estimate for the earliest models is now mid-June.
There’s two things to consider. ‘Availability’ in this case means 1st shipping of the Ivy Bridge CPUs. Arrival at manufacturers production facilities comes some days after that and then manufacturers can ramp up their production lines for the first major run. Testing and shipping from the production facility and then testing by distributors and shelf availability will take 2-3 weeks after that, for the first-in-line and ready-to-go manufacturers. We’re estimating mid-May for the first Ivy Bridge laptops. But not Ultrabooks.
Update: Paul Otellini just announced “The first Ivy Bridge chips we’re shipping are quad cores” in the Intel earnings conference call this evening. (via)
We’re hearing that the 2-core, high-end processors used in Ultrabooks won’t start production until mid-May which means you won’t see the first Ultrabooks in the hands until mid-June. At that point availability will still be limited and we expect only one or two manufacturers to be able to hit that availability date. After that, other manufacturer products will start to roll in. Here’s how we think it will pan out from now until the end of the year…
It’s not an Ultrabook (Samsung say it doesn’t hit pricing targets but the truth is that it’s missing a security subsystem and of course, Samsung want to position this away from the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks) but it’s a hot item and one that many will want, even though the pricing is way up there. $1399 for a 13”-er and $1499 for a 15”-er is not exactly small change. Both the 900X3B (13.3”) and 900X4B (15”) are up for pre-order.
There’s no sign of the Folio hitting European shores any time soon but I see that it’s available in Taiwan and China [Link including images, specs, prices in Chinese] already and orders for the base (Core i5) version at the HP.com site will ship out before the end of the month. With a spec list that closely matches the Toshiba Z830, a competitive price of $899 and a 59Wh battery that should, assuming it’s well-designed, give you about 8 hours of web-working time and 6 hours of average battery life, the HP Folio has to be near the top of your list. Unless you’re concerned about weight and style that is…
Our close blogging friends over at Netbooknews.de (We’ll be working closely at CES in Jan) have what must be the first hands-on report for the LG Xnote Z330 Ultrabook. It’s slim, attractive and comes in Core i5 and Core i7 versions, with a 128GB SSD. It will arrive on European shelves in Jan or Feb (Marketing talk for Feb!) for a reasonable, if not ground-breaking, price of 999 Euros. (Post-tax price.)
Toshiba UK, operating independently from West Europe, North America and other regions have had specs, pricing and availability for the Toshiba Z830 available for a few weeks now but, for good measure, (or we suspect, a bit of timely fact regurgitation from The Register) the story is doing the rounds again today.
Toshiba UK already have model names, price and details available (details here) so all you’ll need to do is to wait for the first hands-on and then you can finally make your decision between the 4 Ultrabooks and the Ultrabook alternatives.
Interestingly, one large electronics retailer in Germany is convinced that the Z830 with be available on the 7th November [Conrad]. We’re trying to confirm this and are also looking forward to the Z830 as the first review device here on Ultrabooknews. More details on that in due course.
Via Pocket Lint
Excellent news! I was worried that the entry level Toshiba Z830 would be above €1000 but it’s not. The Toshiba Satellite Z830 Ultrabook is available for pre-order in Europe (or at least in Germany and UK) for €999. Even Amazon Germany are listing it. [Z830 At Amazon – Aff.]
Update: Toshiba UK are now listing a range of models.
The model we’ve found at at least four retailers is the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J (4GB, Core i5 2467 @1.6Ghz, 128GB SSD and delivery estimates range through November.
The Lenovo Ideapad U300s matches the ASUS UX31 almost spec-for-spec and both appear to be ready to go. Pre-order pages are up (see our information page for the Amazon affiliate links that are available) and at least one website has one for testing. The first statement from James Kendrick, the reviewer for ZDNet was that the Lenovo U300s is “already the best Windows laptop I have ever tested.” Let’s hope there’s no showstoppers as the testing progresses.
While the U300s only has a 1366×768 resolution screen against the UX31’s 1600×900 screen, there are other differences deeper in the specifications. Customers are going to have a hard time deciding between the two…
