Recommendations for a budget ultraportable?

I don't have a laptop anymore, as I gave up my company laptop recently. I'm in the market for something new, but I probably will only use it when I'm on the go - I have a nice desktop at home.

Here's what I'm looking for:
11" - 13" display, ~3 lbs
Able to do some light gaming
Decent battery life (>3 hours)
A nice touchpad
Good build quality
Around $500

If you look at the specs, the MacBook Air 11.6" would be just about perfect. Only problem is that it's about $1000, and I just can't justify spending that much on a laptop I won't be using very often.

I looked at the Asus 1215T, but it's only a single-core solution. There are some Acer laptops with good specs on paper, but the build quality seems pretty shoddy. I think I've settled on the X100e - I've had Thinkpads before, and they're absolutely awesome - and I'm just waiting on a good deal.

Anyone have any suggestions besides the X100e? The touchpad seems a little small, and the processor technology is a bit old. I want to make sure I'm not missing something better.

I looked at a lot of these ultra portables and couldn't find anything with enough power to satisfy me. Maybe AMD's new laptop CPUs coming out may change that?

beenthere said:

I looked at a lot of these ultra portables and couldn't find anything with enough power to satisfy me. Maybe AMD's new laptop CPUs coming out may change that?

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Yeah, most of them are pretty underpowered, but I expect that when it's cheap and small form factor while trying to maintain decent battery life. I'd be happy with most CULV-type chips, but those Atoms are absolute dogs. The L625 in the x100e isn't awesome, but it's a dual core 1.3GHz and the IGP looks ok. It at least seems like a "real" processor, unlike the Atom architecture.

You could try customizing a barebone from rjtech.com. They have a 12 in MSI and a 13.3 in Clevo, but both are gonna come in just north of $700.

Define light gaming? More appropriately do you need a dedicated graphics card or are you talking about bejeweled or something?

I'd like to be able to play games like Civ 5, Company of Heroes, Starcraft II, etc. at low settings. All I need is a playable framerate. For that, it seems like I need either a good IGP or a lower power discrete solution. Something like the Radeon 4250 or the HD 3200 seem like they would be ok. The ION would be great if it wasn't always paired with an Atom. Something like that.

I'll check out rjtech.

Best I could do on rjtech was this build

http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=29898

I included:

I3 330m (2.13 ghz) processor
Nvidia GT 330m videocard
3 gb memory
win7 32

Intel Spring Peak SP15-GFX, 15.6" HD LED LCD, nVidia GT 330M 1GB, DVDRW, Bluetooth, WLAN

Price is $847.

I don't really have time to look through all the examples on that site, so you could probably come up with something a bit cheaper that would still fill your needs.

Here's what I'm looking for:
11" - 13" display, ~3 lbs
Decent battery life (>3 hours)
Good build quality
Around $500

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That's a 15.6", $850 system that weighs almost 6 pounds. Not quite what I'm looking for. I saw a couple of other systems that were 13.3", but nothing with decent graphics, and they were $600 plus RAM and a hard drive.

I don't have a laptop to recommend, but I just wanted to add that you don't need much of a GPU to play SC2 on low settings. I was playing that with my little Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated GPU with no lag except when you have HUGE battles.

IgnitedX said:

I don't have a laptop to recommend, but I just wanted to add that you don't need much of a GPU to play SC2 on low settings. I was playing that with my little Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated GPU with no lag except when you have HUGE battles.

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Good to know. The 4500 is better than the x3100 that I used to have in my T61, but the big frustration with it was really bad Intel drivers. I know their IGPs are getting better (the one in Sandy Bridge is supposed to be quite good) but I'm still a bit skeptical of the driver support.

johan851 said:

I don't have a laptop anymore, as I gave up my company laptop recently. I'm in the market for something new, but I probably will only use it when I'm on the go - I have a nice desktop at home.

Here's what I'm looking for:
11" - 13" display, ~3 lbs
Able to do some light gaming
Decent battery life (>3 hours)
A nice touchpad
Good build quality
Around $500

Click to expand...

For a bit over budget ($800) you could pickup an M11x R1 from bestbuy.com. It is a very nice blend of ultra portable and gaming performance tbh. I'd take a look at that before you pull the trigger on something else.

A website I ALWAYS check out just to see the deals they have on laptops is www.techbargains.com . I picked up my Samsung R540-11 regular retail right around $1,000 for $578 including shipping from the Microsoft store. They have some remarkable deals but the best ones tend to sell out within a couple hours. I saw an i7 laptop for less than $500 but it was literally gone within minutes. Might be worth keeping an eye on until your laptop needs are satisfied!

Current deal they have on a Lenovo i3 for $549: http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/237139

Bluefalcon13 said:

For a bit over budget ($800) you could pickup an M11x R1 from . It is a very nice blend of ultra portable and gaming performance tbh. I'd take a look at that before you pull the trigger on something else.

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Link to M11x from Best Buy

As far as I know/experienced, this thing is a beast when it comes to gaming, and has great battery life on top of that. Two games I know it kinda struggles with are BF:BC2 multiplayer, and Global Agenda due to the CPU limitations. Other than that, I had one for almost a month before I returned it (order issues Dell never bothered to fix) and it was a great laptop! I would have bought the Best Buy one, but I wanted an on hand replacement, and didn't want to wait for shipping, so I picked up the Best Buy G73 instead (it was in stock). I do miss the portability of the M11x, and the quality was great. Again, if you are willing to bump up the price $300, you will not find a better ultra-portable gaming laptop on the market.

S&K said:

A website I ALWAYS check out just to see the deals they have on laptops is www.techbargains.com . I picked up my Samsung R540-11 regular retail right around $1,000 for $578 including shipping from the Microsoft store. They have some remarkable deals but the best ones tend to sell out within a couple hours. I saw an i7 laptop for less than $500 but it was literally gone within minutes. Might be worth keeping an eye on until your laptop needs are satisfied!

Current deal they have on a Lenovo i3 for $549: http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/237139

Click to expand...

Pretty good deal. I've been keeping my eye on the Lenovo Outlet, where they have some similar deals. I'll watch techbargains too. I don't really trust the non-Thinkpad Lenovos, though. I saw a G560 the other day and wasn't particularly impressed with the build quality.

The m11x is pretty interesting. I really don't want to like it, because I hate glossy screens and I don't like the look (silly LEDs and alien heads everywhere) but it does seem like a pretty capable laptop. It's also sort of heavy considering my priorities are "thin and light with some gaming", not "gaming but not quite so big". I'll think about it, though. And I suppose I can always drive down to BB and look at it. It's surprising how much they managed to pack into that frame.

Hmm...the R1 looks a bit suspect with regard to screen hinges. 2/3 of R1 owners in the poll here report broken hinges: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/poll-4724-a.html

I'd worry that after a year of warranty the hinges would fail and I'd be SOL. My last Thinkpad lasted for 3 years before I sold it for half the original value, still in excellent shape. Bummer, Dell.