I know the Samsung NP350 isn’t an Ultrabook but there’s a method in my madness here. SSD upgrade!
I bought the Samsung NP350 before Christmas for a very low price of £436 (£363 pre-tax) which I’m beginning to think was some sort of mistake because soon after I bought it, the price shot up by about 30%. (It’s currently out of stock at Amazon UK for £479) In the USA there is a new 1.4 GHz Intel Core i3-2367M version (ULV, like an Ultrabook) for $679 and a 2.30 GHz Intel Core i5-2410m version for $729. Yes, not quite as cheap as the £363 / $572 I paid but that ULV Core i3 version could be a prime candidate for a very long battery-life set-up.
Before we get into the detail on the Samsung NP350 I need to make it clear that I bought the Core i3 (2.2Ghz) version in the UK for a pre-tax price of about £370 (pre-tax business purchase price that equates to under $600 in the USA) In the UK, Ultrabooks start at around £680. The price differential isn’t so pronounced in other countries. E.g. In the USA, the Core i5 version of the NP350 is around $700 (where Ultrabooks start at $800) Having said that, the NP350 offers features that match, and in some cases beat Ultrabooks. I’ve bought the NP350 for use over the next months while i wait for the next wave of Ultrabooks and will be using it for blogging, video production, image editing, storage and as my day-to-day desktop.
Update: The original article had a battery capacity calculation error. Please see the correct figures in the battery testing section below.
Note: In the UK, the Amazon price is up by £100 now. Keep an eye out for offers.
A lot of people have been asking the very sensible question – Why Ultrabook when you can get a 1.5KG notebook that delivers the same battery life and runs at a higher clock rate?
In nearly all comparison cases, the ‘lower clocked’ Ultrabook is based on an Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) 1.3-1.8Ghz Core i3, i5 or i7 CPU and is being compared to a laptop running a standard mobile equivalent of 2.2-2.5Ghz. With Intel Turbo Boost some of the clock rates can go higher but it’s not important for the comparison.
I’ve had a great, although not exactly easy 2 weeks away from the desk for the Christmas period and I’m relieved to see that there wasn’t much in the way of Ultrabook news that I missed. In fact, the only real news was the availability, competitive pricing and interesting specification information for the Samsung NP530 13” Ultrabook that I discovered just minutes before Christmas Day. The Verge has a tip on a potential 14” HP Spectre Envy Ultrabook too but there’s really no information on that yet.
