The 15” Samsung Series 9 2012 with Ivy Bridge has been a pleasure to test. It’s a stylish Ultrabook with potentially very long battery life and a great 3D performance boost over 1st-generation Ultrabooks. The screen is good and bright and the keyboard a pleasure to use. But all is not perfect. A surprising lack of CPU Turbo under battery load, a strange touchpad action and too many ‘micro’ ports takes some of the shine from the Series 9 but despite that, it sits in a unique position in the market. There are cheaper Ultrabooks in the 15” bracket but you won’t find a 1600×900 screen for this price or weight.
Following up our story last night which looked at the similarity between the Gigabyte X11 and the Mouse Computers Luvbook X, the Gigabyte X11 has finally been revealed as an Ivy Bridge Ultrabook. At 973gm it beast the Luvbook X11 that we still think it is based on by just 5gm. There doesn’t seem to be uch in the way of specifications yet so we wonder if this information is leaked or from a press release.
The processor on the Gigabyte X11 will be revealed in run-up to Computex (3rd or 5th June we hear) but you can expect the Core i5-3317U to be in the line-up somewhere; it appears to be the mainstream choice when it comes to 2nd-Gen Ultrabooks.
Engadget China have the first pics of the new, Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks from Asus. As tipped by us in Feb, the two models include full-HD displays. There’s a backlit keyboard too. Asus are calling the new Zenbook the Zenbook Prime and it’s tipped for June availability.
The report doesn’t specifically mention the UX31A and UX21A but given previous reports and matching specifications, I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re one and the same. The article doesn’t mention Ivy Bridge either but do we really need to consider Sandy Bridge as a possibility here? No.
Computex, Taiwan, is one of the most important trade shows for the laptop market and this year it coincides with the availability of low-power Ivy Bridge CPUs for Ultrabooks so it makes sense that Intel and their customers seize the moment to launch the 2nd Generation of Ultrabooks.
In an article at Techworld.com, Scott Pendrey, desktop product manager at Intel, gives us the information that “the first ultrabooks featuring Ivy Bridge processors will come to market on 5 June, with more to follow throughout 2012.”
Shown at CES and presented as ‘back to school’ Ultrabook solutions, the Lenovo U310 and Lenovo U410 were never going to have the best specification list but at a target price of $699 with Ivy Bridge they are definitely worth watching.
A few images and a user manual has appeared at the FCC clearing-house which gives us confidence they they are preparing for launch. We’ve gleaned a few more specifications too.
At the Acer press event at CeBIT today we heard about the S5, the levitating Ultrabook!
It’s still the ‘thinnest in the world’ and still 15mm thick but we did manage to confirm some specs and get a little look at the device manager.
At the moment it’s being marketed as a 2nd-gen Core Ultrabook but it’s clear that unless Intel have some more, major delays on Ivy Bridge production that it will launch as a 2nd-generation Ultrabook with 3rd-generation Core CPU.
More images, along with the hands-on video, below. DOn’t forget to check the related posts below for information from CES.
