Ultra Books are now becoming more and more popular as times passes but they still considered as a costly or luxurious version of a normal Notebook. The most basic featured Ultra Book from Dell that is XPS 13 costs around massive Rs, 76,000 and you can get the same or more powerful configuration from Dell at a price of Rs. 44,000 in the form of Inspiron 15R. This is around Rs, 32,000 cheaper than XPS 13.
What is Ultra Book?
Ultrabook is the term first used by Intel to market their low TDP CPUs.In simple language it is a Notebook only with its body made up of materials like carbon fibre to make it light weight and use a low TDP CPU to power it so that it consumes less power than a normal notebook at same price. Usually the increase in battery life is significant because of the highly efficient CPUs used in an Ultra Book. They can also contain special Hard Drive known as SSD which stands for Solid State Drive. SSDs don’t have any moving parts and contain memory cells which make its reading and writing speeds much faster than a normal hard drive. Because of these SSDs the boot time of an Operating System decreases significantly.
Most of the Ultrabooks don’t contain a dedicated GPU instead they use integrated graphic chip as their main graphic processor.
Why are Ultrabook so costly?
You may have been thinking of the fact that as Ultrabooks contain a lower TDP and less powerful processor, it should cost much lower than a normal notebook with powerful components. But it is not so. On average the price difference between a Notebook and Ultrabook in Indian is around Rs. 30,000. Ultrabook are costly because of the following facts:
- High quality display with Corning Gorilla Glass
- Use of SSDs as booting drives
- Premium carbon fibre body
- Use of highly efficient and lower TDP CPUs which offers maximum performance at lower power.
Should you buy an Ultrabook?
If you want a premium product than yes you should buy an Ultrabook but keep this thing in your mind that Ultrabooks are not value for money product according to me. You can get the same or more powerful configuration in a Notebook at a price Rs. 30,000 lower than a basic Ultrabook. But in case if you travel frequently and want a laptop with longer battery life and at the same time you need that thing to be light weight than also Ultrabook is a great choice. On average the weight difference between an Ultrabook and a Notebook is around 1.4 kg which is quite significant.
Which companies has launched their Ultrabook in India up till now?
Many laptop makers has already launched their Ultrabooks in India and last one to follow is Sony which had recently launched some of their Ultrabooks in India. Here is the list of the Ultrabooks available in India with prices:
Dell
- DELL XPS 13 Ultrabook at Rs. 76,000
HP
- HP Folio 13 Ultrabook at Rs. 67,500
- HP Envy 4 1002 TX at Rs. 57,000
- HP Envy 4 1025TX at Rs, 52,000
- HP Envy 4 1003 TX at Rs. 46,000
- HP Envy 6 1003 TX at Rs. 46,000
- HP Envy 6 1001 TU at Rs. 41,000
- HP Envy 4 1002 TU at Rs, 41,000
HTC has recently announced that they will be launching HTC One S here in India on 15th June, 2012. HTC One S is the one of the smart phone of the much hyped HTC One series. It was already launched in some of the European countries. It is expected to be priced at Rs. 33,000 which is definitely a high for a dual core smartphone like HTC One S. It’s bigger brother HTC One X is already present in India and is currently priced at around Rs. 35,000. One X is powered by a quad core CPU ( Nvidia Tegra 3 ) as compared dual core CPU in One S.
