Ultrabooks: 1080p Screens for 2012

While ultrabooks are still relatively new products in the laptop market, rumours are already circulating about what improvements will be made to these super-skinny laptops in 2012. 

Ultrabooks are basically ultra-portable laptops with a casing that's under 2 cm thick, and which come loaded with power-packed components and a monster battery—think the Acer Aspire S3 or Asus ZenBook UX31E. As if all that wasn't impressive enough, it seems that these sleek notebook computers will be equipped with Full HD (1080p) screens from 2012.





We, however, don't think that upping the screen resolution should be the top priority for manufacturers, even if it's clearly still advantageous. As far as we're concerned, it's much more important to load a laptop with a good-quality screen panel and to make sure it reproduces colours as accurately as possible. It's basic stuff, but you'd be surprised how many manufacturers overlook these simple criteria.

So far we've tested two ultrabooks—the Acer S3 and the Asus UX31E—and our labs found that both had sub-standard screens barely worthy of the cheapest netbooks, with colour fidelity way off the mark (deltaE >12) and contrast levels struggling to reach 250:1. In that respect, the main competitors of PC ultrabooks, Apple's 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs, are still one step ahead.

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