Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: ultraportables

Welcome to Engadget’s back to school guide! The end of summer vacation isn’t nearly as much fun as the weeks that come before, but a chance to update your tech tools likely helps to ease the pain. Today we’re getting down to the very important business of helping you sift through laptops — and you can head to the back to school hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of August we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — you can hit up the hub page right here!

DNP Engadget's back to school guide 2012 ultraportables

Given their roots — luxury machines like the original MacBook Air ($1,800) and last year’s Samsung Series 9 ($1,649) — you’d be forgiven if you initially dismissed Ultrabooks as being too extravagant for a college-bound student. Thankfully, though, prices have sunk so low that you can now find a thin, fast, ultraportable laptop for as little as $700. The only problem, perhaps, is a paradox of choice: the selection is already crowded with dozens of contenders, and there are 100-some-odd more models in the pipeline, according to Intel. Fortunately for you, dear readers, we’ve had the chance to handle or even review many of them, and were able to whittle down the offerings to a handful of promising contenders. Whether you’re prepared to spend $750 or $1,400, we have something that’ll fit the bill.

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Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: ultraportables originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell XPS laptop family expanded, offers new options

Dell has certainly done its part to be worth checking out as a major force when it comes to computer hardware, and their notebooks have been pretty spiffy all this while. Having said that, Dell has worked to expand the XPS laptop family by introducing two models – the Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook and Dell XPS 15. We shall definitely take a closer look at both machines, and first of all, there is the Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook which is said to offer outstanding performance that comes in an extremely mobile package.

The Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook will come in a couple of configurations – although both of them will come in a highly-durable machined aluminum chassis alongside an innovative silicone base, with the entire design measuring just 20.7mm thin. Not only that, it comes with a brilliantly bright 14″ 400 nit HD+ edge-to-edge display, a backlit keyboard that comes in handy when you want to work in the dark or in low light conditions, and optional performance graphics, with up to 11 hours of battery life that Dell claims is the longest battery life of any Ultrabook in the market right now, for its class, of course.

Apart from that, you can opt for a traditional 500GB hard drive to work in tandem with a solid state drive in the form of a 32GB mSATA card. There is also the Intel Rapid Start and Smart Response technologies, where the former lets you achieve super fast boot-up and hibernate response times, while the latter is able to recognize and cache the most frequently used files and applications in a flash, letting you experience far more uptime and being more productive than ever before instead of playing the waiting game.

As for the Dell XPS 15, this is a thin powerhouse device that is said to deliver performance, graphics and screen resolution for creativity and entertainment’s sake. Sporting a stunning, vivid, edge-to-edge display which is said to be up to 75% brighter compared to standard panels, the Dell XPS 15 also comes with powerful NVIDIA graphics as a standard, a backlit keyboard like the XPS 14 Ultrabook, an optional integrated slot load Blu-ray disc drive, and up to 1TB of hard drive space alongside a 32GB or 128GB mSATA card option.

The Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook will start from $1,099 upwards, while the Dell XPS 15 has a higher starting price of $1,299 and above.

Press Release

[ Dell XPS laptop family expanded, offers new options copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]


Dell XPS 14 review: a 14-inch Ultrabook with Ivy Bridge and graphics might

Dell XPS 14 review a 14inch Ultrabook with Ivy Bridge and graphics might

While we can’t say that we universally liked Dell’s first attempt at an Ultrabook, the XPS 13 we reviewed about three months ago, we can quite confidently say that it earned our respect. Here was a smartly styled, sophisticated machine free of stickers and bloatware from a company that, let’s be honest, has delivered its share of each over the years. That machine was far from perfect, but it showed a purity of vision in design that you couldn’t help but acknowledge.

So where do you go from there? Why, you go bigger of course. Meet the new Dell XPS 14, successor in name only to a model that went out of production over a year ago. It is, as you might have guessed, an inch larger than the XPS 13 and so has more room for ports and pixels — but there’s more to it than that. In some ways this feels like a more polished machine than the 13 that came before, and it’s certainly faster but it, too, is far from perfect. Join us for a joyous exploration of why.

Continue reading Dell XPS 14 review: a 14-inch Ultrabook with Ivy Bridge and graphics might

Dell XPS 14 review: a 14-inch Ultrabook with Ivy Bridge and graphics might originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics

Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics

Dell’s XPS 13 Ultrabook has been rather lonely since it launched in early 2012, but the company is introducing two new laptops to round out the updated XPS line. Today it announced the 14-inch XPS 14 and the 15-inch XPS 15, both of which feature the same aluminum chassis as the XPS 13 and run Core i5 or Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors.

The XPS 14 Ultrabook will be available in two configurations, both of which include a backlit keyboard and a 400-nit, 1600 x 900 display. The main difference between the two models is connectivity: the higher-end XPS 14 comes with integrated mobile broadband and uses Dell’s NetReady “pay as you go” service to get online when Wi-Fi is out of range. Both versions come with up to 8GB of RAM and can be configured with a 500GB drive spinning at 5,400 RPM paired with a 32GB SSD or a standalone 512GB SSD, and the WWAN model comes standard with a 500GB drive with a free fall sensor on board. Another difference is graphics: the base model ships with Intel HD Graphics 4000, while the WWAN model offers an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M GPU. Dell claims the notebook provides up to 11 hours of runtime, “the longest battery life of any Ultrabook.” The XPS 14 starts at $1,099 and is available today. It just so happens that we’ve already taken the laptop for a full test drive: check out our review here.

Next up is the XPS 15, which weighs 5.79 pounds and sports a 1920 x 1080 Corning Gorilla Glass display. The laptop includes either a DVD-RW or Blu-Ray drive and comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. As far as graphics go, you get a choice of NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 630M chip with 1GB of dedicated memory or GeForce GT 640M graphics with 2GB of RAM. Pricing starts at $1,299, and like the XPS 14 this laptop is available today. Check out our hands-on gallery below.

Continue reading Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics

Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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