Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.
Ultrabooks are thin and light laptops that use Intel processors and solid state disks (or solid state cache) to offer quick boot and resume-from-sleep speeds, among other things.
They’re pretty nice little machines, but when the first ultrabooks hit the streets in late 2011 they tended to have prices close to $1000.
Over the last few months we’ve seen prices fall considerably, and while the average netbook is still much pricier than a larger notebook the difference isn’t as big as it once was.
Here’s a roundup of some great deals on ultrabooks from Acer, HP, Samsung, and Toshiba.
- Refurb Acer Aspire S3 13″ ultrabook w/core i5, 320GB HDD for $600 – 1SaleADay (via eBay)
- HP Envy 4T ultrabook w/14″ display, Core i3 CPU, 500GB HDD for $700
– HP
- HP Envy 6T 15.6″ ultrabook w/Core i5, 500GB HDD for $800
– HP
- HP Folio 13 ultrabook w/Core i5, 128GB SSD for $798
– Best Buy
- Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook w/13.3″ display, Core i5 CPU, 500GB HDD for $700Â – TigerDirect
- Samsung Series 5 14″ ultrabook w/Core i5, 500GB HDD for $750
– Best Buy
- Samsung Series 9 11.6″ notebook w/Core i3, 64GB SSD for $700 – TigerDirect
- Refurb Toshiba Portege Z835 13″ ultrabook w/Core i3, 128GB SSD for $660 – Adorama
- Toshiba Portege Z835 13″ ultrabook w/Core i3, 128GB SSD for $730Â – TigerDirect
- Ultrabook bundles (notebook, case, mouse, flash drive) for $798 and up – Walmart
Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, and other companies also offer ultrabooks, but so far I haven’t seen any of those devices drop below the $800Â threshold.
Prices on first generation ultrabooks will likely continue to fall as new models hit the scene this year. Intel plans to launch its third-generation Core processors designed for ultrabooks in June and I suspect we’ll see a number of new thin and light laptops from PC makers once that happens.
That’s when we’ll also start to see updated models of existing ultrabooks such as the HP Envy 4T and Envy 6T — which means we may see clearance sales on the models with second generation Core chips in a month or two.
1366×768 displays across the board. This resolution is hardly large enough at 12.5″, but completely UNSAT for 13-15.6″ screens. In fact, it might be the worst res ever released – unusable for computer work, and all “HD” content has to be scaled from 720 to 768 lines. What dolt decided this should be standard? I thought the whole idea of the “ultrabook” was to compete with MacBook Air, but none of these even come close with that res, not to mention half still have non-centered trackpads. Ivy bridge models so far are the same. For shame!