If you are looking for a really light and compact laptop, take a 13-inch model. This category has become the queen of mobility by offering an excellent compromise between portability, power and autonomy. Apple had unsheathed the first in 2008 with the introduction of the first MacBook Air, freeing itself from an optical reader and concentrating on the essentials: enough power and autonomy to work all day. If the Apple manufacturer always offers new versions of its laptops, it has since been joined and even overtaken by ultrabooks, the other name for ultraportable PCs.
Before going into detail, let’s remember the main thing: an ultraportable – or ultrabook – is a PC barely larger than an A4 sheet for a thickness often less than 20 mm. Clearly, it’s a computer in the format of a magazine! And its weight rarely exceeds 1.5 kg, which makes it very easy to carry, in a bag, briefcase or backpack. And note that the 13-inch format – which corresponds to the visible diagonal of the screen – is, as always, a simple name: in practice, some are a little larger, others a little smaller.
At the heart of current ultraportables, there are a few essentials. At the processor level, we have the choice between Intel and AMD. The first brings together its 11th generation – Tiger Lake – and its 12th generation – Alder Lake – which have little in common technically but both serve the same purposes. The arrival of these two families also allowed Intel to highlight its EVO platform, which amalgamates many of its technologies in very thin laptops and is manifested by the presence of a sticker on the cover of ultraportable PCs .
The great novelty is the arrival of AMD in this market segment with its family of Ryzen 4000 and 5000 chips, which show a very marked increase in performance both compared to its previous generation but also compared to competing models. Intel. And this, without giving up on autonomy, quite the contrary.
It should be noted, however, that AMD and the manufacturers (HP, Acer, Dell, Asus, etc.) seem to have been taken aback by the success of these new processors and the laptop PCs carrying them are regularly unavailable, in addition to being still few on the market, especially in the 13-inch format.
On the side of RAM and storage, we find an increasingly classic combination: 8 GB of RAM accompanied by a 256 or 512 GB SSD, which is sufficient in most cases. For more intensive tasks (graphics, video, 3D modeling, programming, musical creation, etc.), and as on all computers, it is better to turn immediately to models with 16 GB of memory or more. Attention, the RAM is more and more often welded and not expandable on the 13-inch models!
A field that has changed little in previous years, ultraportable ds screens are evolving for more comfort. At the level of the slabs, there is a presence of IPS technology to ensure viewing angles, contrast and brightness quite satisfactory. It is to be preferred to TN panels that are still found on certain entry-level models. All the models in our selection use an IPS panel.
In terms of screen format, there is also an evolution, the traditional 16:9 format is seeing more and more competition from 16:10 and 3:2. These, more vertical, allow to offer a more comfortable experience and better adapted to web browsing as well as to work on office documents. Previously present only on the top of the range, they are beginning to spread to the mid-range (we think of the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go, an ultra-portable entry-level, but with a 3:2 screen).
Often the poor relation of ultraportables, keyboards still deserve attention. We can therefore rejoice that 2020 has seen the disappearance of Apple’s “Butterfly” keyboards, which offered mediocre tactile feedback and presented reliability problems. Similarly, the “Maglev” keyboard at Dell presented for a time as a sort of manufacturer equivalent no longer seems to be used and was not selected for its premium ultraportables like the Dell XPS 13. The keyboard is the first interface with your laptop and therefore special care should be taken. Our selection therefore only contains models that we can recommend without worries on this point.
When studying recent ultraportables, we often see compromises made in the name of compactness and weight. And connectivity is often the first to pay the price. If the inclusion of multi-purpose ports such as USB Type-C or Thunderbolt 4 can extend the capabilities of a model, it is only through the addition of an adapter or dongle. The inclusion of a classic USB port, an HDMI output or an SD card reader are therefore all criteria to be taken into account when selecting an ultraportable that meets your needs.
Finally, an essential point, a good ultraportable must have good autonomy. Fortunately, it is not necessary to spend a fortune to obtain an ultraportable having at least 8 hours of autonomy and models exceeding 10 hours are more and more widespread.