Ultra-what? Netbook? What’s the difference?
All laptops are not created equal. Most aim to fill a specific niche, so it’s important to understand what kind of laptop fits your needs before you start shopping. Of course, every kind of laptop represents a tradeoff between price, mobility, computing power, and entertainment potential.
Ultrabooks
Thin and light, Ultrabooks are easy to carry and perfect for the person who brings their laptop everywhere but doesn’t want to sacrifice power. Ultrabooks use low-power Intel Core processors, solid-state drives, and have a unibody chassis. They’re fairly bare bones in terms of ports, and the majority don’t have optical drives. The lack in ports here can be attributed to the UltraBook’s thin body, which has to be less than 0.8 inches thick in order to be called an Ultrabook. Offering more power thanks to their faster processors, extra RAM, better storage, and larger displays with high-quality 1080p resolution, they definitely differ from the below netbooks in both specs and price. Ultrabooks start at about $600 but can be sold for well over $1,000.
Netbooks
Like Ultrabooks, netbooks boast extreme portability, a lightweight profile, and long battery life. While some have predicted the death of the netbook in the wake of tablet popularity and Windows 8, for now, the category continues chugging along. In part, the endurance of the netbook may owe something to its affordability. Even the best netbooks generally start around $400, about half the price of an Ultrabook. Unfortunately, they also come with about half the functionality. That being said, it’s hard to beat a netbook on bang for your buck when it comes to Web browsing, word processing, and other basic uses. Netbooks are great as student laptops, and serve well as backup computers, especially if you want to take a device on a trip without being terrified of it getting stolen.
Value laptops
While we’ve argued before that you shouldn’t buy the cheapest laptop, value laptops will always retain their place among wallet-conscious consumers. Several of the best budget laptops represent a pared-down version of a successful mainstream laptop, offering users decent specs while doing away with unnecessarily flashy extras. The key to buying a value laptop that will last, rather than become frustratingly inadequate after a season, is to look for components that would have been considered top-notch a year or two ago. That way, even as your value laptop ages, it can keep up with what we expect our computers to do.
Business laptops
Industry computing requires industry-grade laptops. The best business laptops boast durable exteriors for travel, powerful interiors to handle any software, and a wide variety of ports to handle both presentations and data transfers. Often laptops marketed for small business come with added security features, such as a fingerprint scanner. While geared toward office use, a business laptop obviously carries an attraction for anyone who likes to work hard on their computer. However, prices often soar above $1,000, putting them out of range of many who can’t write them off as a business expense.
Gaming laptops
Most of the best gaming laptops bank on capability rather than portability, pairing bulky 17-inch screens with mind-blowing specs. Gaming laptops are thick, heavy, and often a bit beastly in their design. However, the adage “true beauty lies within” rings true here. High-speed quad-core processors race through operations, aided by vast amounts of RAM. Meanwhile, with a superior graphics card, a top-of-the-line gaming laptop can render any modern game on “ultra” settings with stunningly smooth imagery. Lightning-fast solid-state drives and brilliant 1080p displays generally round out the offerings. Additionally, since gaming requires such advanced visualization capacities, gaming computers are perfect for advanced image editing as well. Generally speaking, they’re both the fastest and priciest models out there. With price tags often over $2,500, it’s hard to justify a gaming laptop unless you plan to spend a significant chunk of time every day on your computer, pushing it to its limits.
