Dell Inspiron 14R-5437

Dell Inspiron 14R-5437
 

Nice Price. Almost 10 hours battery life. Removable battery. Optical drive. Good friction on screen hinges (no screen bounce).
Low 1,366 by 768 resolution screen. USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports are same color. Non-backlit keyboard.
Ten hours of battery life in a well-equipped, affordable 14-inch desktop replacement laptop. That's the Dell Inspiron 14R-5437 in a nutshell.

Acer Aspire S7-392-6411

Acer Aspire S7-392-6411

 

Very thin and light. Strong build quality/sturdy materials. Dual friction hinge. Very good benchmark test performance. Speedy wake from sleep. 8GB of memory. 2.4 and 5GHz Wifi support. No Bloatware. Very good battery life. Full size HDMI port.
Odd keyboard layout. Could use a larger SSD array. Thinness is expensive.
If you're looking for a svelte laptop to show off, yet still be able to do real work in Windows 8, the Acer Aspire S7-392-6411 is the ultrabook you want at the top of the list. It's the current pinnacle of the ultrabook trend and shows the brilliance that the PC makers can return under Intel's increasingly stringent standards for ultrabooks.