The 9 best Ultrabooks of 2014: what’s the best Ultrabook?

Tim Danton June 27, 2014

While the required specs have changed significantly since then, the emphasis has always been the same: for slim, lightweight laptops that have great battery life. And, as you’d expect of a standard created by Intel, certain key components (think processor and wireless radio in particular) have to be made by the company too.

The 9 best Ultrabooks of 2014: what's the best Ultrabook?

Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook

The end result is a stream of excellent, high-quality laptops from the top manufacturers for the past three years: if a laptop has an Ultrabook badge on it, you can be reasonably certain it’s going to live up to even high expectations.

Take speed. Every new Ultrabook needs to have one of Intel’s recent, fast processors inside (to be precise, the “Haswell” version of its Core processor range), while the storage must meet an 80MB/sec transfer rate minimum. In reality, all the Ultrabooks we see now include SSDs inside, which means retrieving files is fast even if you don’t have as much storage space as a traditional, mechanical hard disk. See also: The best laptops of 2014

All the screens we now see in Ultrabooks are top-notch too. Whether it’s a 13in, 14in or 15in model, you should expect Full HD resolutions.

Most Ultrabooks now also include touchscreens to take advantage of Windows 8, while you should also look out for high-end Wi-Fi. We recommend 802.11ac to match the latest routers, if you can afford it.

We run independent battery rundown tests to check manufacturers’ claims, but we’re pleased to say that this is no longer the issue it used to be. If you buy an Ultrabook, you can be confident that it will last almost all the working day (providing you don’t indulge in over-intensive tasks, such as video editing). The downside is that the battery is likely to be integrated into the body, which is the payback for such slim designs.