The kickstand on the Spectre x2 folds back to 150 degrees and pops out with a switch.
If you’re thinking that the Surface 3 is the Surface Pro 4's affordable alternative, think again. For $800, HP's Spectre x2 gives you 128GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, and Intel’s Core m3 series—the company’s latest Skylake CPU, tuned for low power. It’s also LTE-ready, so you can easily add it to your cellular plan for untethered working (that’s a $100 option for the Surface 3). Oh yeah, and you get the keyboard, too.
That's a heck of a package, especially given that a comparable Surface 3 bundled with its optional type cover costs $830—and sports an Atom processor. About the only places that the Surface 3 shines are in battery life and portability: The Spectre x2 died a little more than an hour sooner in our battery rundown test, and it's well over a half-pound heavier.
But the Spectre x2's larger display and solid performance put it far ahead of the Surface 3 for office and home tasks. Relative to the Surface Pro 4, there are compromises it makes in the display (which has a larger bezel, skews blue, and is slightly less bright), as well as with its kickstand design, but you still get tremendous bang for your buck.
HP Spectre x360
HP’s Spectre x360 is beautiful and easily the best 2-in-1 laptop of the year.
HP's Spectre x360 is our pick for the best 2-in-1 Ultra-book, and a close competitor to Dell's XPS 13. With a body milled out of solid aluminum, the Spectre x360 is beautiful and talented—you can flip the screen around for tablet mode or tent mode when needed. The Spectre x360's keyboard is luxurious next to the cramped Dell XPS 13 too, but the HP laptop is also wider as a result.
Performance is top-notch, but we took issue with HP’s decision to control thermals by throttling CPU speed. HP has since updated its BIOS to keep the performance ticking along under heavier loads. The cost is slightly more fan noise, but you get the performance you’re paying for. You also get great audio, awesome battery life, and touch support on all models.We have high hopes for the Skylake model that's coming down the pike.
Microsoft Surface Pro 4
The Surface Pro 4 is an evolved Surface Pro 3 and better in everyway.
We know, you think we’re biased with a category named “Best Surface,” but Microsoft’s Surface series is really an evolutionary step beyond the typical “convertible” devices that physically separate from the keyboard to run independently as tablets. Surface clones have arisen that are also light, yet still very capable: Lenovo has its new Mix 700, HP has its Spectre 12 X2. We expect the clone wars to keep heating up in the coming months.
The best one today, however, is the Surface Pro. 4. It has a top-rated display, great performance, and its keyboard and track-pad are miles ahead of competing designs. We choose it over the Surface Pro 3 for its performance and better thermals (with less fan noise) compared to the older model.
The only caveat: It’s expensive—and the essential keyboard adds $130 to the price. That means the mid-range Surface Pro 4 with 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM and Core i5 is a $1,430 computer. Ouch.
Still, for those who really valuable portability (it really is laptop performance in a tablet) and will actually use it as a tablet on occasion, you’d be hard pressed to beat the Surface Pro 4 today.
Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft’s Surface Book is expensive but fast and unique, and a radical re-thinking of a laptop.
There’s no way to describe Microsoft's Surface Book as anything but a luxury item. The configuration you want—the one with the GPU under the keyboard—isn’t even available until you slam $1,900 onto Satya Nadella’s desk. But what you get is glorious.
Start with the beautiful, high-resolution 13.5-inch screen, a discrete GeForce option, Skylake dual-core and exceptional battery life. That you can remove the screen to use as a tablet—err, clipboard—with the included pen is just a major bonus.
Performance in general is near the top of the heap. On graphics loads, including video-accelerated encoding, it can’t be touched by anything in its class.
Those who can afford it are going to get what they want: a beautiful laptop that’ll probably start conversations in the first-class cabin as you fly from Dubai to London.
Asus UX305
Asus gives you a ton of value for the money and arguably the best budget ultra-book.
Enter Asus UX305, the best budget Ultra-book in town. It packs in 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for the low price of $700. You’d think Asus would skimp in build quality or sneak in a lousy screen, but it didn’t. The body is aluminum, and the display is a 1920x1080 IPS screen with anti-glare finish. It’s also one of the thinnest Ultra-books today, at roughly 12mm thick and weighing just 2.6 pounds.
The CPU isn’t a Core i5-class, but rather than step down to Atom, Asus stepped sideways, with Intel’s Core M in the original UX305 and the new Core m3 in the updated UX305. We’re actually in the middle of testing the updated Core m3 UX305. The early results say it’s comparable in every way except perhaps performance.
There are some compromises. There’s no back-lighting on the keyboard, which is pretty standard in any Ultra-book today. The track-pad, while not horrible, is a tad bit springy. Still, it's one hell of a deal in a price range that usually nets you thick, ugly and plastic.
Dell XPS 13 (2016)
Dell’s 2016 XPS 13 keeps the same big display and small form factor that helped make last year's model the best Ultra-book of 2015.
When Dell XPS 13 launched last year, it got a well-deserved nod as our pick for best Ultra-book. Its aluminum exterior and carbon fiber top exuded quality; its nearly bezel-free 13" screen resulted in a laptop body that wasn't much bigger than a typical 11-inch notebook.
The 2016 version of the XPS 13 keeps its predecessor's excellent chassis, while including a USB Type-C port that serves as an alternative charging port and offering upgrades to the processor and storage types. Battery life takes a small hit with the move to Intel's newer Skylake CPUs, but the difference is minor enough that it's worth having the option of either NVMe or PCIe M.2 drives.
The only complaints that remain are the small keyboard, and the lack of auto updates for driver and BIOS updates. They're far from being deal-breakers, but slightly bigger keys and an easy way to update system software would be welcome.
That said, you can’t lose with the newest XPS 13—it's a truly compact Ultra-book with a screen that punches out of its class.
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