Thin laptops are nothing new, but when you demand gaming excellence from your system, well, like Fat Joe at Thanksgiving, it remains tough to stay svelte. Maingear says it has found way though with its new Pulse 17 (starts at $2,099). Promising to be the world’s thinnest gaming laptop, the specs — Haswell Core i7 4700HQ processor, GeForce GTX 765M graphics card with 2GB RAM, 17.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080 widescreen display — make that claim even more impressive.
Everyone knows that MacBook of yours is hot in many ways. It’s good looking, it’s stolen, and it gets too damn warm when resting on those felonious femurs of yours. The AirSlab ($49) slices through laptop battery heat with a cut of full grain Walnut veneer and a pair of corks. It’s flat out the best use of corks we’ve seen since you plugged up that bottle of stolen Moet.
If you plan on buying the new Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, grab your Transit Issue Passport Folio, and get your butt on a plane to South Korea stat. You could wait until the Series 5 comes to the western world, but who knows when that will be.
So once you get to South Korea to find your beloved Series 5 Ultrabook, what can you expect (besides an overwhelming abundance of technology, people, and food)? First you have to choose between the 13-inch or 14-inch models. The 14-inch measures 20.9mm thick and weighs 1.8 kg, while the 13-incher is 14.9mm thick and weighs 1.4 kg. Both feature 1366 x 768 anti-reflective displays, an Intel i5 chip , and each can take up to 8GB of RAM. The Series 5 is also a bit beefier, if you will, than some Ultrabooks with storage options like a 128GB SSD or a 16GB SSD to accompany a 500GB or 1TB HDD. The Samsung Fast Start option will wake the Series 5 from sleep mode in just 2 seconds, and it also features an optical disc drive, AMD HD7550M graphics, Wi-Fi, and HDMI just to mention a few. Oh, and while you’re playing with your new Series 5 toy, be sure to check out the popular street snack, “Beondaegi”, a crunchy and wet South Korean delicacy. Humm, hum, good.
LG seems to make just about everything these days: phones, TVs, microwave ovens, washers, dryers, yogurt robots… OK, they don’t make yogurt robots–yet. First they had to go and create the X-Note Z330, an amazingly thin notebook computer that measures just 0.58-inches in thickness, and weighs just 2.67 pounds. A 120GB SSD helps to keep the weight down of course, and LG says it also helps to boot this baby up in less than 10 Mississippis. The Core i5, 4GB RAM model is going for $1,500 right now in South Korea, ahead of its US debut. It comes with HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, as well as Intel WiDi for streaming content wirelessly to your HDTV. Stepping up to a Core i7 and a 256GB SSD tacks on another $800, but I’d think twice about making that move if I were you: I hear yogurt robots are gonna retail for $799.
HP’s top-of-the-line consumer laptops have been renewed with a sense of vigor–like when you wake up from that 4.5-hour Thanksgiving power nap. The redesigned HP Envys come in 15″ or 17″ flavors, with new Beats branding and a spicy red border around the backlit keyboard. The Radiance Infinity LCD displays pop with crisp color, and the 17.3-inch model comes with full HD resolution standard. Starting at $1,100, the Envy 15 is equipped with a Core i5-2430M processor, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB 7,200RPM drive, AMD Radeon graphics with 1GB of VRAM, DVD drive, and six speakers + subwoofer to crank out the Beats beats. Step up to the Envy 17 3D for $1,599 and you get the full HD Radiance 3D, 120Hz display, a pair of active shutter glasses, and Blu-ray player. That’s too much tech to sleep through, tryptophan or not.
Apple may have been the first to pull off the super slim laptop look, but hey, just because one Hollywood actress is freakishly skinny doesn’t mean another can’t strive to be abnormally gaunt, too. That’s the philosophy to keep in mind with the new Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, a 13.3” stunner that’s fresh out of Intel’s new “Ultrabook” line. Starting at about $1,200, you’ll be getting 256GB SSD storage, a 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-2677M processor, 4GB of memory, and USB 3.0, all in a really sharp, svelte package. At just 2.9 pounds, it’s lighter than the combined weight of two newborn babies–babies who, by the way, will never know that the MacBook Air came first. Shhh.