I’ve just sent back the Fujtsu Q702 hybrid. It was a great, productive all-rounder (Review here) and is also available with Core i3 and without VPro for much the same price as the Ultrabook I’ve just started testing. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 also fits many of the same user profiles as the Q702. It’s fitted with a digitizer, converts to a tablet and has a great set of ports. My first impressions are generally positive.

The Dell XPS 12 has been sent for a quick review via the guys at Ultrabook-king.de and I’ve had a chance to do some testing already. The first thing I noticed was how solid it feels. The hinge, frame, casing and keyboard seem top-notch although, probably as a result, it feels dense and a little heavy; Certainly too heavy to be a casual tablet.  Here’s a first-report and your chance to ask questions.

I’m a little bit behind the curve on reviewing the Lenovo Yoga 13 but given the amount of interest that we’ve had on the Yoga 13 over the last year (yes it was a year ago I had my first hands-on) it’s worth spending some time on a detailed review. Before that though, here’s my first impressions after 4-5 days usage.

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Just when you thought Asus had learned from its past experience with netbooks that launching a myriad of confusingly named devices was not helpful to consumers, they decide to do it all again with the Zenbook brand and the U500. Up until now, the Zenbook line has shared two specific things; first, all Zenbooks featured a similar wedge shaped design and metalic finish. Second, all Zenbook’s were Ultrabooks. Until now, that is. Asus has decided to throw the U500, a 15″ thin and light laptop, in with the rest of the Zenbook branded computers. While we would have preferred Asus didn’t dilute the shared features of the Zenbook brand, that’s not to say that the new U500 thin and light is not shaping up to be a solid Ultrabook alternative.

Liliputing have done a good job of reviewing the quirky widescreen U845W that I was impressed with on my detailed hands-on and Brad, the author, comes to a similar conclusion to mine –  We don’t see it being perfect for widescreen movies but we do see that it makes quite a productive researching/writing setup.

The U845W is available for $968 at Amazon in the USA at the moment and at £899 in the UK (inc. tax.) which isn’t exactly a bargain for a Core i5 ‘2nd-Gen’ Ultrabook with a hard drive, the Samsung Series 5 with Ivy Bridge Core i5 at $699 is the price-leader at the moment, but this wide-screen feature could be worth paying for. Some people want vertical space, others, horizontal space.

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We’ve got the new Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ivy Bridge Ultrabook on hand for testing. The U310 is the successor to the U300, it’s a second generation Ultrabook with an Ivy Bridge processor featuring HD4000 graphics. This is Lenovo’s entry level Ivy Bridge Ultrabook and can be had quite inexpensively (see the current price in the last section of this article). If you’re looking for an inexpensive back-to-school Ultrabook, the U310 should definitely be on your consideration list. You can find the U310 with a Core i3, i5, or i7 processor. Here are the specs of the model we’re testing:

Techradar, one of the mainstream tech sites in the UK, has had enough time with the Novatech nFinity 2367 to put out an early review. There’s nothing here to get too excited about if you’ve been reading other Ultrabook reviews but an SSD-based laptop for this price is certainly worth considering, ultrabook or not.

The nFinity 2367 is clearly not the most attractive Ultrabook, weighs a little more and has cut a few corners on the specs to get to the price but there’s an SSD on offer here along with a 2GB and ‘no-OS’ option that takes the price even lower. Ubuntu fans looking for an SSD-based laptop will want to take a very close look here.

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I’ve just finished the main text for the full Samsung Series 5 13” Ultrabook review. It’s been a tough one. [Details, specs, gallery here, Review will be live tomorrow and linked on this page.]

To all intents and purposes the Series 5 is a simple, unfussy and polite Ultrabook but there’s a lot going on under the hood. It’s a swan! Express Cache is doing it’s stuff to improve boot, hibernation and application startup times and Turbo is giving a leg-up where needed; but only a little one. It seems the Samsung Series 5 has been de-tuned in order to keep it quiet.

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