Best Ultraportable Laptops

When taking your computer along for the ride, thin is in

Ultrabooks might be small -- they weigh less than 5 pounds and measure 0.82 inch thick or less -- but they pack more than enough power for most users. That's thanks to the baseline requirements imposed by Intel, owner of the Ultrabook name and the company behind the required Intel Core processors found inside Ultrabooks. These laptops also require at least 5 hours of battery life and a speedy wake-up from sleep of less than 7 seconds. Most use solid-state drives (SSD), which are much faster than traditional hard drives.

If portability is a big priority, consider a convertible laptop that can fold up into a tablet, or the original ultraportable laptop, the Apple MacBook Air (Est. $1,100 and up) . We cover both in separate sections of this report.

The thinnest, most dramatically beautiful Ultrabook in reviews is the Acer Aspire S7 (Est. $1,400 and up) . It boasts a 1,080p HD touch screen that you won't find on most other laptops, or you can opt for the 2,560 by 1,440-pixel MacBook Retina-style display. HD movies look glorious and so does the laptop itself: "Absolutely stunning," says Laptop Magazine of the S7's sleek, minimalist design. It starts with a slim aluminum unibody and adds a scratch-resistant white Gorilla Glass lid. At just a half-inch thick and less than 3 pounds, the whole package is even thinner and lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air.

Acer's newest version of the S7 had just hit stores at the time of this update. It gets the latest fourth-generation Intel Core processors code-named Haswell for longer battery life than before, up to 7 hours of normal to heavy use. You also get more memory, faster SSDs and quieter fans, among other upgrades.

While the Acer S7 is the thinnest Ultrabook, the 11.6-inch Sony Vaio Pro 11 (Est. $1,150 and up) is the lightest Ultrabook you can buy at just 1.9 pounds. "There's light, and then there's crazy light," says Laptop Magazine. "Impossibly light," echoes Engadget.com's Dana Wollman, who stuffs the Sony into her backpack with her regular laptop and can't even tell it's there.

Sony packs a lot into that featherweight frame. The Vaio Pro 11 gets the same Haswell processors as the Acer S7, with a full 1,080p HD touch screen and a luxurious carbon-fiber shell. Yet its performance can't quite match the S7's, due to less RAM and a non-RAID SSD. Battery life is inconsistent in tests, ranging from 4 hours 20 minutes to nearly 7 hours. An optional sheet battery (Est. $150) doubles that, but it adds about 10 ounces.

Bottom line: The Sony Vaio Pro 11 is a fine choice if you need the lightest possible laptop. But if you can afford the extra pound, experts say you'll get more bang for your buck from the Acer S7, making it our Best Reviewed ultraportable.