Sony VAIO E14 Series SVE14122CXW 14-Inch Laptop Review

List Price: $579.99
Price: $539.99

Product Features
Intel Core i3-3110M 2.5 GHz
4 GB DDR3
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
14-Inch Screen
Windows 8

Other Opinion

By emily schaefer

I loved this computer. After doing lots of research looking for a computer to suit my needs I settled for the Sony Vaio E series. The keyboard is phenomenal - Beautiful backlighting (a novelty to me), no keyboard flex (great because I type frequently and quickly), and the keys themselves were awesome. The screen was very bright - An all around very attractive computer. Startup time was also great... UNTIL:
Within 24 hours of having this computer I started noticing glitches within the mousepad. Very frustrating. Also, after stalling Windows 8 "updates" my computer completely crashed. I spent 2 hours on the phone with tech support while my brand new PC had to completely reset. Needless to say it was a nightmare. It just froze on the start screen and wouldn't work even after restarting!

Finally, though I realize this is not Sony's fault -- My initial excitement was detracted by the fact that I soon noticed there was a small, but undoubtedly worsening crack in the plastic material surrounding the black trim of the computer. There were actually some wires exposed. Also, upon arrival the keyboard was popped out of place - While this is insignificant because ultimately the keyboard was fine, it is extremely frustrating that Amazon ships their products in these states.

Ultimately, I wish Sony should have kept their Windows 7 E series around a little longer.. Definitely avoid..

Toshiba Satellite U945-S4390 14.0-Inch Ultrabook Review

List Price: $799.99
Price: $648.00
You Save: $151.99 (19%)

Product Features
Intel Core i5 3317U 2.6 GHz
6 GB DDR3
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, 32 GB Solid-State Drive
14.0-Inch Screen, Mobile Intel® HD graphics with shared graphics memory
Windows 8

Other Opinion

By Geebs

The good
-Performance: with 6GB of RAM and a Core i-5, this computer's performance is solid for an ultrabook. It operates very smoothly.
-Windows 8: It takes a only couple days to get used to. Once you have a grasp on it, it's a very user-friendly OS.
-Weight: good for having a 14 inch screen

The bad
-Build quality: it feels fragile and cheaply built. The screen is shaky and you can feel the plastic case bend when you lift the laptop up with one hand; I don't imagine it would survive well if dropped.
-Speakers: God-awful. Laptop speakers are not supposed to be good, but these made my old Asus sound mind-blowing.

While the speakers are a major detail, I ultimately returned it because of the perceived build quality. Perhaps if you're not going to be moving around with it much at all, this comp might work for you. But if you're on the move, I would look for something with a more solid build.

Samsung Series 3 NP300E5C-A08US 15.6-Inch Laptop Review

List Price: $599.99
Price: $499.99

Product Features
Style: Windows 8
Intel Core i5 3210M 2.50 GHz
4 GB DDR3
500 GB HDD
15.6-Inch Screen
Windows 8

Other Opinion

By Takashi Barreto (Miami, Florida)

If you want to play the latest games, then this is not the laptop for you. If you just play counter strike, league of legends or World of warcraft this one will do.

this laptop can handle games like:
League of Legends (Mid to high graphics)
WoW (Mid to high)
Aion (low to mid)
GTA IV (Low)
Need for Speed Most wanted 2 (Laggy even in low settings)

for everyday use this laptop is fast, and even has settings to make it even faster. It just have one hard disk bay, so if you are planning to install a SSD on this, buy a HDD enclosure. it has one 4 GB RAM stick and you can install another one because it has two RAM slots.

UPDATE 21/12/12

The screen looks bad compared to other screens with the same size and resolution, its kind of weird to say it but its true, the screen looks washed out or up-scaled from a lower resolution or something.

The black shiny part of the notebook gets scratches VERY easily. that was very annoying to me.
The samsung easy settings are very slow to open if you are not planning to buy an SSD, but that's the only slow thing in the laptop, so you can live with it.
It has lots of bloatware installed too.

THE SOUND is horrible. It has a sound quality comparable to cellphone speakers and no bass at all.

The battery is pretty decent. You can easily watch 5 or more hours of video in power saving mode.

Comfortable keyboard BUT when you type make sure to disable the mouse pad since you can easily touch it with your palm and the mouse can go everywhere and click on someting you don't want it to click on.

The mouse pad has gesture capabilities, but the gestures keep turning off. I had to go to mouse settings to disable and enable again the touch pad in order to turn it on again. I do this almost every day. Very annoying. I contacted samsung support center before i figured out how to fix it myself. they told me to completely reset the machine. I did it and the same story happens. I contacted them several other times for other concerns with no solutions. in other words the Samsung support center is USELESS.

It gets really hot while playing games while on my lap so i recommend using this laptop with a cooling pad and/or in a table.

The plastic body's silver paint get scratched very easily too.

Well. I'm kind of disappointed for all these things. if I were an average computer user I would have returned it long ago, but luckily I can fix my own problems with this laptop and I have no time or money to do that (I live overseas).

If you don't mind all these problems go ahead and buy it, but to be honest... all that headache doesn't worth 600 dollars (I bought it only because it was at 500 dollars before holidays). there are many other good alternatives to this one with the same specs and lower prices. you just have to search a little bit.

HP Envy dv7-7238nr 17.3-Inch Review

List Price: $629.99
Price: $549.99

Product Features
AMD A-Series Quad-Core A8-4500M 1.9 GHz
6 GB DDR3
640 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, 0 GB Solid-State Drive
17.3-Inch Screen
Windows 8, 4.45-hour battery life

Other Opinion

By RinH

Overall, this laptop is pretty good. It's fast, quiet, and cool (even during a video encoding for 10 minutes with 100% CPU utilization).

I haven't found many pieces of software I'd call "crapware". I've only uninstalled Norton Security software.

The fingerprint processor is fast and very convenient.

The sound quality is wonderful: rich sound and very loud. I will not need external speakers even if I want to use the laptop for entertaining a small party of friends.

There's one thing I HATE: the damn touchpad doesn't process single taps well. It often ignores them and also jerks the mouse cursor around during the taps. I've recently updated the driver for it from the HP site, but that didn't fix the problem. I will report this to HP and will wait for a resolution.

Another thing that bothers me: this seems to be similar to what Aphex242 has reported here. I can't seem to have my older HP laptop and this one connect to my network wirelessly at the same without a period of time of disconnection. When one or another tries to connect to the router (CISCO), the one that was being connected loses its connection. And my Comcast modem loses its connection to the network. After 2 - 3 minutes, the connection gets restored, and both computers become able to be connected to the net.

Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C-T01US 17.3-Inch Laptop Review

List Price:     $1,599.99
Price:     $1,499.99

Product Features

    Intel Core i7 3630QM 2.40 GHz
    AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB graphics card
    8 GB DDR3
    1 TB HDD
    Windows 8

Other Opinion

By Cathy K. (Chula Vista, CA)

I had high hopes for this laptop because of the glowing reviews, but I am tonight returning my second defective unit. The first one repeatedly shut down as I was trying to set it up for the first time. I could see no pattern to its spontaneous loss of power -- it would run for maybe five minutes and then go black. I assumed this was an isolated case and happily ordered a replacement.

The one I received tonight took me directly to the BIOS configuration screen each time I turned it on. Although I'm not familiar with how the configuration settings look on a working laptop of this model, I could see no evidence of a harddrive, so I'm thinking the drive was not properly connected. I never got into the operating system to begin setting up Windows.

I suspect both of these Samsung laptops may have been returned items. The packaging of the various components was not exactly pristine, so that's a little annoying. Anyway, I give up on this laptop, and I'm very dissappointed because it was a nice looking little machine and all the features I was looking for at a decent price. I'll hit my local Frys tomorrow and buy a laptop off the shelf.

Sony VAIO T Series SVT13124CXS 13.3-Inch Touch Ultrabook Review

List Price: $799.99
Price: $677.99
You Save: $122.00 (15%)

Product Features
Style: Touch
Intel Core i3-3217U 1.8 GHz
4 GB DDR3
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, 32 GB Solid-State Drive
13.3-Inch Screen
Windows 8

Other Opinion

Looks good, but then you turn it on and use it.
By Bchaseski (Northeast)

I purchased the Core i5 model with 500gb hard drive with touch. I've been using this Ultrabook for about a week and here are my observations. I'm a software developer and am used to very heavy 17" notebooks with quad-core processors, a dedicated video card, screaming SSD drives and tons of memory, so this is a huge departure from my 'norm'.

The size and weight are very good. Battery life seems to be just about at 5 hours with casual web surfing and a couple of 30 minute streaming videos from Hulu Plus. The processor (Core i5-xxxx) is fast and the combination of the mechanical 500GB hard drive and the 32gb SSD caching drive provide a fast experience. I looked into replacing both with a single 256GB SSD drive I had lying around and it is important to note that the 2.5" drive bay in this is the slim-height kind (7mm). I figured this would be the case so I'm not deducting any stars for that, but it is important to note in case you think you can upgrade it with any old SSD drive. That being said, it is going to cost about $200 more for a compatible SSD drive and that would bump the price up to what it would've cost for a core i7 model with 8gb of ram and a 256gb hard drive pre-installed. I definitely wish I had realized that first as I would've bought that model instead!

Screen is okay, definitely bright on the bright settings, however it is glossy and VERY REFLECTIVE. This is definitely a huge miss as my wife's Lenovo Twist has a great screen that is matte and way more effective to watch/use in any kind of lighting condition compared to my ultrabook. The resolution is the lowest resolution I've had in quite some time and I definitely can say I am missing 1920X 1080 resolution, however I'll get used to that and am not deducting any stars as I knew that when I ordered it. I installed Media Center into Windows 8 and hooked this up to a HD Homerun Prime (which is awesome!) and watching HD channels on this is nice, even on Wireless N. The glare however, is annoying in most lighting conditions.

Touchscreen is good, albeit finicky. I also own a Microsoft Surface that has a terrific touchscreen. The same applications, such as IE10 "metro", on the Surface work with all the gestures great. On the Sony, it sometimes takes many tries for the swipe down from the top of the screen to open the different tabs that are open or left-swipe in switches apps but doesn't go 'back' in the browser as easily as my Surface. I don't know if this can be corrected with any sensitivity settings as I haven't looked into that.

The keyboard is good. I type pretty quickly and the keys are spaced very well, have good travel, and keep up to my typing just fine. I don't really like the location of certain function keys like Delete, but that's something that I'll get used to as I use it more for development. At the price of >$800 I paid, I would've really liked a backlit keyboard, but I knew this when buying it so I'm not deducting any stars for lack thereof, however - hey Sony - start putting backlit keyboards on your ultrabooks!!!

The touchpad is quirky. I have read other reviews where this seems to be the case and I think I can adjust more settings but haven't go down that path yet as I'm trying to get used to 'what's there by default' before I make too many changes. On of the biggest annoyances is definitely that swiping anywhere close to the left-side of the touchpad will cycle through to the next application instead of moving my cursor to the right. I don't know that I want to turn that feature off and am trying my best to keep my fingers towards the middle of the touchpad when wanting to move the mouse instead of having a Windows 8 gesture take over. More on this to come when I get more used to the Sony.

FAN NOISE. This is a very common complaint everywhere on the web about these Ultrabooks. When I first unpackaged it and turned it on, the fan was screaming right away. Being that this is supposed to be a sleak & sexy ultrabook, I definitely have to deduct a bunch for this! I have a Dell Precision M6500 with a quad-core processor in it that doesn't make nearly this much noise from the multiple fans in it. Granted, it has more room for cooling in it, but Sony should've been able to figure out it's cooling/fan noise better with this. I really hope that in two years the fan doesn't burn out and I need to replace it! It seems to be on almost constantly.

Ports. This machine comes with 1 USB 3 and 1 USB 2 port on the left-hand side, which also is where the power core gets plugged in. It has a FULL sized HDMI port and D-sub port on the right, along with a gigabit network jack, SD slot (and memory stick pro), and a headset jack. I like the fact that I can use a regular HDMI cable to hook up to an external monitor or television instead of having to buy a special adapter for it. Kind of wish the D-Sub was a mini display port or mini hdmi or something more 'modern', but it is cool that you can just plug your old monitor into it without a need for another adapter.

Wireless. The wireless is a Atheros AR9485WB-EG adapter. This means that you cannot use some of the cool features of a core-i5 & Intel Display adapter. There is a cool technology called Intel WIDI which allows you to wireless display content from a machine that is compatible to your television. Unfortunately Sony didn't use a compatible Intel wireless adapter in this ultrabook so this isn't available without taking it apart and upgrading the wireless adapter. I assume this was done to keep the cost down. Wireless signal seems to be comparible with my other wireless devices throughout the household.

Overall, 3/5 stars. Some of the shortcomings I knew about prior to my purchase, others I learned when it arrived at my house. I would definitely return it if I could get a refund and search for another ultrabook that wasn't so half-baked, so be sure to read the return policy before you purchase this!!. Sony did a good job in design and aesthetics but missed on basics like an anti-glare screen and the fan constantly running. Some of the components used could've been better but they probably did this to keep the cost down so I can't take off stars for that.

HP Pavilion 14-b010us 14-Inch Laptop Sleekbook Review

List Price: $589.99
Price: $414.80
You Save: $175.19 (30%)

Product Features
Intel Core i3-2377M 1.5 GHz (3 MB Cache)
4 GB DDR3
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, 0 GB Solid-State Drive
14-Inch Screen, Intel HD graphics 3000
Windows 8

Other Opinion

By Rick L. Parrish

It's light. It stays cool! It works faster than my Food Processor and it has Windows 8. I love this guy. I recently had another model in this line which I passed on to my granddaughter and thought I'd not find another one as good but I was wrong. This 14 inch has an I3 processor. Plenty of Ram and a large harddrive to store things. Windows 8 takes some getting used to but the startup and shutdown times will stun you on this new operating system.

I floundered around til my granddaughter took pity and showed me how to get to the desktop I was familiar with quickly and then I was unleashed. I'm actually getting used to the app start screen now and use it more and more, but that is turning this into a review of Windows 8 and this is about the laptop itself. This is also one of the few new models that has a removable battery so you can change them out if you're a constant user like me. A lot of the new ones are built in and when it's dead you gotta plug it in (make sure you check that). The touchpad is opened up a lot with this computer because of the Windows 8 and by that I mean it has a lot more functions than just point and tap. It's under four pounds with the battery in! The display is stunning for a 14 inch widescreen and the sound is very good for a laptop.

One of the best things about it that the HP maintenance software runs unobtrusively in the background and right off the bat my laptop had a problem with the fan suddenly spinning up quite audibly and locking the laptop up completely somehow until you had to reboot. This happened twice and I was about to throw the thing away when I did a third reboot and the laptop informed me that it was updating the bios and not to turn the power off. I was surprised at no popup informing me of the fact beforehand but I guess with the laptop frozen that would have been hard to do. At any rate the bios installed flawlessly and after the restart the laptop fan has never acted up again nor has the notebook frozen since. I can only surmise that HP was on top of the problem in hardware conflict or whatever it was and took steps to correct it immediately. Since we pay quite a bit for these toys I really appreciated that fact I can tell you.

The 4 gigs of ram and the 1.5ghtz processor make it sail along and the 500gb hard drive is more than adequate for my needs. The built in hi-def camera and software keeps you looking good in all kinds of light when skyping or whatever you do. The fact that it stays cool is really neat too and I can just lay it on my lap without any uncomfortable heat building up. All in all a great little machnine that does what it's supposed to. It does not come with a cd/dvd drive which seems to be the standard now. I guess everybody uses flash drives and external hard drives for storage of media etc now. It has an outlet for plugging it into your HD TV with hdmi outlet and you can watch videos (in true 1080p with surround sound (dolby dts etc) which surprised me again) and see pictures or listen to music etc. It holds it's charge for about 3 to 3 1/2 hours of constant use. It's also pretty tough and the hard drive has extra protection. I tend to drop them so that helps. With the windows 8 you have to add some software to do some things but that's easily done and available.

Overall I'd recommend it without hesitation. Especially after the hardware issue was self-resolved so quickly and efficiently!