Sandra is a freelance IT writer with extensive experience across both business and consumer audience. She is equally at home writing a smartphone review as a research report for an international telecoms company.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is attractive and solidly built, with an excellent touchscreen and a great keyboard. However, we'd like to see more ports and a removable battery at the very least. As it stands, this ultrabook is too expensive for widespread deployment.
The EliteBook Folio 9470m is a well-made ultrabook with a particularly good keyboard and touchpad. We like the removable battery and optional battery slice, but would prefer a higher screen resolution across the range. Windows 8 fans will also note the absence of a touchscreen option.
The swivel-screen XPS 12 offers clever design, solid build quality and a high-quality (if reflective) screen. Battery life is not great, though, and this system is severely lacking in connectivity — even by ultrabook standards.
The VAIO T13 ultrabook is attractively priced, but Sony has made a number of compromises to achieve this.
Toshiba's 13.3in. Portégé Z930 is a small, neat and lightweight business-grade ultrabook with mobile broadband support. However, it's expensive, and the screen could be better.
The Satellite Pro L830 isn't a particularly lightweight, compact or powerful 13.3in. notebook, and the screen quality could be better. Still, it's quite solidly made, there's plenty of hard drive storage and the price is reasonable.
The Vostro 3560's 1080p screen is well worth the extra outlay, and rest of the specification is solid, although we'd like more storage options. The physical design is unremarkable, the keyboard a little too flexible and battery life disappointing, but it's still good value for money.
The Aspire S5 is an exceptionally slim, light and stylish ultrabook. However, it's also expensive: to blow us away, it needs a better screen, an Ethernet port and longer battery life — and a lower price.
The Satellite Pro C850-10N delivers decent performance at a reasonable price. The keyboard flex is a concern, but build quality is generally robust. Overall, it's a good basic business workhorse.
Despite a number of drawbacks, the Vostro 3555 could be a good buy if you're looking for a low-cost business workhorse. It's also the first business notebook we've seen with three USB 3.0 ports.