Types of ultra-portable laptop

In today's marketplace, the term ultra-portable can encompass a broad range of laptops. However, there are significant differences, so take heed of the following before making your choice.

Ultra-portable: A blanket term

Most major laptop manufacturers will market at least one laptop as
"ultra-portable", simply meaning that it's their lightweight, small form-factor product targeted at mobile consumers. General characteristics apply such as a screen size of between nine to 13 inches. These laptops will also lack an optical drive, with the space given over to a large battery. Manufacturers will tend to use low-voltage CPUs to give long battery lives. While these conserve power, they aren't as powerful as dual-core processors.

Netbooks

Considered by many as the lowest level of laptop, these tiny laptops are accordingly priced at around the £200 mark, such as Asus' Eee PC laptops. Most have a screen size of 10.1 inches. Don't expect blistering performance. Netbooks typically use Intel Atom processors, which is great for office applications and surfing the Internet, but they struggle with more demanding video playback. Poor graphics performance makes gaming out of the question. For students Netbooks are perfect for students, and anyone who isn't fussed about performance. What these mini books lack in the processing power, they often make up in battery life. The latest examples exceed eight hours.

Ultra-portable

You can normally tell whether a laptop is a true ultra-portable by its price tag. Squarely, these are aimed at consumers in need of a specialised, low-weight but relatively powerful machine. Screen size can hit 14 inches, but the keyboard can still feel cramped. Performance ranges more greatly between the models. Some examples, such as the Samsung X120, come with a dual-core processor, in this case the 1.3GHz Intel Pentium CULV. These handle video playback and multi-tasking far better than the netbook processors. Higher speeds can be achieved by opting for laptops with SSD hard drives. Solid state drives are lighter, they have no moving parts, and the increase in performance through transfer speed is notable. For example, an ultra-thin MacBook Air with an SSD can easily keep up with a MacBook Pro on every benchmark, except video and high-end graphics processing.

Tablets and small laptops

Tablet PCs either have a keyboard that folds behind the screen, or no keyboard at all, making them very thin and light. The iPad has raised the tablet's profile, but iOS is still not a great operating system for working on. There are many touchscreen tablets running Windows to choose from. Mention should be made of small laptops, AKA thin-and-light. These are closer to mainstream laptops in size and performance. They are less specialised, meaning that most carry a mid-level price tag.