ultrabooks vs laptops

What are ultrabooks and what are laptops?

Laptops, as probably all of you know, are personal computers for mobile use and come in a wide range of different shapes and forms. They can sport displays with sizes of between 13 and 20 inches and they can weigh anywhere from three to 18 pounds.

The most popular laptops right now are probably the 15-inchers, which come with decent enough technical specifications to replace a desktop in terms of gaming performance or running multimedia content, but which are also light and slim enough to be transported from place to place.

 

Ultrabooks, on the other hand, are more ‘’specific’’ portable computers, being slim, light and thin, as well as powerful and elegant. They sport screens of either 11.6 or 13.3-inches and they come with low-voltage snappy processors from Intel, as well as very strong batteries.
They lack a couple of features that are pretty standard in laptops, like an optical drive, but they come with SSDs and are powerful enough to run a couple of video games and full HD content.

Ultrabooks vs laptops-differences

Classic laptops, on the other hand, are many times very bulky and heavy enough to not be the ideal travel companion (at least for a sane person who doesn’t want to carry around a seven or eight pound ‘’monster’’). Regular notebooks are also much thicker than ultrabooks, as well as not as fashionable or elegant.
Secondly, ultrabooks come with great batteries, capable of lasting several hours more than your usual 15 or 17-inch notebook. The Asus UX31 and the Lenovo U300S, for example, can go for well over six hours between charges, based on regular use, while most of the regular laptops require plugging in every three of four hours.
On the other hand, there are a couple of things that ultrabooks don’t feature, but notebooks do. There is the optical drive, which is nowhere to be found on either of Intel’s new ultraportable computers, but which is pretty standard on laptops.
Ultrabooks also come with integrated graphics and not dedicated graphics, as most of the powerful notebooks today, which will be a problem if you want to run some new video games. The displays are also glossy on ultrabooks right now, while there are quite a few notebooks that feature matte screens. However, the much awaited Toshiba Z830 ultrabook should itself come with an anti-glare screen, which should solve this particular problem.
It has to be also said that many times regular notebooks feature snappier processors than the ultrabooks’ Intel Core i5 and i7 and this will also make a difference when talking about the gaming experience or the playing of multimedia content.

Laptops can come in a bunch of different sizes, being targeted towards a more varied audience.

In terms of pricing, there is a big difference too between ultrabooks and laptops.