It was 2022 and Intel saw a surging trend in mobile calculating, absolutely inspired by Apple's Macbook Air. Notebooks were to become thinner, batteries had to last more than, optical drives were going away, and performance, performance didn't accept to suffer too much. Moreover, manufacturers didn't seem to exist doing a whole lot to get on this tendency, then Intel pushed forward by investing $300 one thousand thousand of its own money to make information technology happen.

The start Ultrabook specification was based on the Huron River platform using the Sandy Span architecture. This specification required a minimum battery life of v hours, a resume from hibernation time of seven seconds, and the laptop'south trunk could be no more than than 18mm thick for 13.iii" models and 21mm thick for 14" models. The use of solid-state drives and unibody chassis were as well encouraged (just not office of the specification) to assist meet these criteria.

The more than modern and current Main River specification is based on Ivy Span. The battery life, resume time and dimensions remain the same, while a storage transfer rate of 80MB/s minimum has been added along with mandatory USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt support.

There are currently more than than two dozen 'Primary River' ultrabooks available from manufacturers such as Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Gigabyte. Today we are checking out the latest model from Gigabyte. The U2442F is i of many U2442 variations, though as the flagship model it's the most expensive and powerful.

Gigabyte U2442F Beginning Impressions

Gigabyte'due south 14-inch ultrabook measures 339mm wide, 233mm deep and simply 21mm thick at its widest point, while weighing just 1.69kg when fitted with an SSD, HDD and the Li-polymer (11.1V, 47.73Wh) battery.

Gigabyte U2442F fourteen" ultrabook - $1250

  • fourteen" 1600x900 LED display
  • Intel Core i7-3517U (1.nine - iii.0GHz)
  • Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2GB GDDR3
  • Intel Hard disk drive Graphics 4000
  • 8GB of DDR3 RAM
  • Crucial m4 128GB mSATA SSD
  • Toshiba 750GB HDD
  • SD menu reader
  • 2x USB iii.0, 2x USB two.0, HDMI, VGA, audio jack
  • 802.11b/g/due north, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 1.3 megapixel webcam
  • Chiclet keyboard
  • 1-button trackpad
  • 6-cell Li-Polymer battery
  • 339 x 233 x 21 mm, three.7 pounds

The lid is a mere 5mm thick, featuring a thin aluminum back that gives the screen a petty extra protection and looks great in the process. The 14" LED backlit screen sports a 1600x900 resolution and matte finish. Personally information technology makes me happy that Gigabyte didn't become with a gloss here.

The screen has an embedded 1.3M Hd webcam which blends seamlessly into the design. There is a small LED light adjacent to information technology which lights up when the camera is active. Next to the modest photographic camera lens there's also a minor pigsty for the microphone.

Moving to the keyboard, Gigabyte has included an 87 key vi-row chiclet backlit solution. Equally with most modern notebooks, at that place are function key combos to quickly enable or disable features such as wireless network, webcam, Bluetooth, trackpad and so on.

The keyboard feels great and I'd happily utilise it on a daily basis. We as well establish it easy to avoid the trackpad, which measures 95mm past 55mm. The palm rest is plastic simply feels nice to rest your hands on and doesn't mark easily.

Underneath the U2442F are various small grills to allow absurd air in, as well as 4 pocket-sized prophylactic feet that raise the laptop and end it from marking surfaces such as a desk. It isn't possible to remove the battery from the U2442F without taking the Ultrabook apart and in fact the just easily accessible component is the memory as a cover tin can exist removed exposing 2 SO-DIMM slots.

Connectivity-wise, you'll find an SD card reader, 2 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI port and a DC-input power jack on the right side. The left side includes a Gigabit Ethernet port, D-sub (VGA) port, 2 USB ii.0 ports, microphone jack, headphone jack and a Kensington lock slot.