You can tune in, ask questions and steer the testing on Saturday 3rd Dec at 2100 MEZ/CET (Your timezone details here.) I’ll be live for about 2 hours so please, drop in and join-in on Ultrabooknews.com/live . Follow@ultrabooknews on Twitter for reminders.
I want to publicly thank Morgan, @morganmobile who’s just packaged up an Acer S3 and shipped it off from Finland to us here in Germany. Who needs PR people when you’ve got contacts like that! He’s been busy testing a number of solutions and I plan to get his thoughts here in text soon.
We’ll be running the Samsun 900X1B live review on Saturday [details here] and finalizing a written review over the next 3 or 4 days. After that we’ll be getting it together with the Acer S3 for a week. I’ll let you all know about the live session for that.
Once the S3 is out the way we should be lined-up with the Toshiba Z830. I know a lot of you have been waiting for a review of that so my apologies about the delay. It’s expected within the next 2 weeks. As for the Lenovo U300S, I’m working on it. [Any Lenovo PR people out there?]
Update: Session is finished now. A report will go up soon. is now available.
I think I’m right in saying that this is the first ever Ultrabook live review and Q&A. It happens tonight, here on Ultrabooknews.com/live
It starts at about 2100 GMT+1 (Berlin time. Your local time here)
We’ll be spending 2 hours (yes, it’s going to get detailed) testing the UX21 and we’ll include battery life testing, video video editing, gaming, web, usability and a whole lot more. There will be a chat session (already open at Ultrabooknews.com/live if you want to log in and start talking) and I’ll take general Ultrabook or UX21 questions and guidance from you. Some of the session (not all of it) will be recorded and posted tomorrow. You’ll need a flash-enabled browser and about 1mbps of bandwidth to join-in.
See you later. In the meantime, here’s a teaser and a bit of World of Warcraft on the UX21…
I’m pleased to announce that we have our first Ultrabook here for testing. Thanks to Asus for sending over the ASUS UX21E, the 11.6”, 1160gm (2lb 9oz) Ultrabook in Core i7, 128GB build. (Model details – ASUS Zenbook UX21E-KX008V)
It looks just a awesome as the first time I saw it at IFA in September, boots in an impressively quick time, turns in a 300ms Sunspider score, has good speakers, a very bright (but glossy) screen , is totally silent as I type this and it looks like it will allow you to web-work for about 4.5 hours.
We’ve just had a note from Toshiba Europe to say that the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J is now shipping in Germany, Austria and, I believe, the Benelux area. Specs are as we have then in the database (note it’s the Satellite and not the Portege in Europe…so far) and the official spec list confirms a matt screen. (Entspiegelt) Recommended retail price is €1099 but I see a number of retailers offering it for €999. Amazon for example. (Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J – aff.)
Thanks to everyone that turned up to watch me mess about with the Samsung 900X3A yesterday evening. We spent a good 2 hours going over almost everything except Bluetooth 3+HS and USB 3.0 which we couldn’t test.
Sascha joined me in the studio last night for a full-on 3.5hr marathon testing and discussion session with 10 different tablets. The iPad2, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Acer Iconia Tab A500, HTC Flyer, Blackberry Playbook and Samsung Galaxy Tab were the focus of our efforts and we recorded three parts of the live session for you to view below.
The Blackberry Playbook impressed with its smooth UI, video handling and gestures. The Flyer beat the other 7 inch tablets in a browsing test (and is as fast as any Tegra2 + Honeycomb browser I’ve tested.) The Galaxy Tab was crowned the value-for-money king and in the 10 inch category, we couldn’t really find a winner. The iPad2, of course, just sits in a special space all on its own and isn’t truly challenged by the 10 inch Android devices although as Honeycomb and Honeycomb-optimised apps start for mature, that could change., especiall when we look to lightweight hardware like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Anyway, here are the videos. We hope you enjoy them. All products are owned by Sascha or myself.
Don’t forget the detailed HTC Flyer Live Review tonight, May 18th, at 2100 CEST (Berlin) on Carrypad.com/live. Follow @chippy for more on that.
The first video is an overview of all the tablets Two 10″ Devices were tested in detail in Part 2 Three 7″ devices were tested in detail in Part 3
This is totally unplanned so it should work out perfectly!
Update: The Live Session is over.
I’ll be writing a follow-up soon but please check out the recorded videos on YouTube – They’re well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL21405378FDB03DF9
Late notice: Sascha has turned up in my neighborhood with the Playbook, Transformer and iPad2. I have the Tab 7, HTC Flyer, and Iconia Tab A500 in the studio so it makes sense, while we have the opportunity, to go live!
The chat is open already so if you’re looking at a tablet purchase in the next weeks, get over there now because this is a rare opportunity to see the best. The tablets aren’t bad either!
– aff.)
