I’ve had my ASUS Zenbook UX32V for almost three years now and, if I’m quite honest, the fact that it’s managed to last this long has surprised me. Notsomuch from a “it’s still working” perspective, more that it still seems just as capable today as it did back then. Still it has begun to show its age in some regards, like the small 28GB SSD (which for some reason doesn’t show up as a unified device) being unable to do any in-place upgrades due to the limited space. Plus I figured this far down the line there was bound to be something better, sleeker and, possibly, far cheaper and so I began the search for my ultrabooks replacement. The resulting search has shown that, whilst there’s dozens of options available, compromise on one or more aspects is the name of the game.
Two Dell Alienware 13 Non-Touch notebook computers.
Essentially what I was looking for was a modern replacement of the UX32V which, in my mind had the following features: small, light, discrete graphics and a moderately powerful CPU. Of course I’d be looking to improve on most other aspects as much as I could such as a better screen, longer battery life (it’ll get at most a couple hours when gaming now) and a large SSD so I don’t run into the same issues that I have been. In general terms pretty much every ultrabook out there ticks most of those boxes however once I start adding in certain must-have features things start to get a little sticky.
For starters a discrete graphics card isn’t exactly standard affair for an ultrabook, even though I figured since they crammed in a pretty powerful unit into the UX32V that they’d likely be everywhere the next time I went to look. No for most ultrabooks, which seem to be defined as slim and light laptops now, the graphics card of choice is the integrated Intel chipset, one that isn’t particularly stellar for anything that’s graphically intensive. Larger ultrabooks, especially those with very high res screens, tend to come with a lower end discrete card in them but, unfortunately, they also bring with them the added bulk of their size.
Indeed it seems anything that brings with it a modicum of power, whether it be from the discrete graphics chip or say a beefier processor, also comes with an additional increase in heft. After poking around for a while I found out that many of the smaller models came with a dual core chip, something which can mean it will be CPU bound for tasks. However adding in a quad core chip usually means the laptop swells in thickness in order to accommodate the additional heat output of the larger chip, usually pushing it out of ultrabook territory.
In the end the conclusion I’ve come to is that a sacrifice needs to be made so that I can get the majority of my requirements met. Out of all the ultrabooks I looked at the Alienware 13 (full disclosure: I work for Dell, their parent company) meets most of the specifications whilst unfortunately falling short on the CPU side and also being noticeably thicker than my current Zenbook is. However those are two tradeoffs I’m more than willing to make given the fact it meets everything other requirement I have and the reviews of it seem to be good. I haven’t taken the plunge yet, I’m still wondering if there’s another option out there that I haven’t seen yet, but I’m quickly finding out that having all the choice in the world may mean you really have no choice at all.
