YugaTech Christmas Gadget Guide: Laptops & Ultrabooks

Ever since Microsoft brought upon a craze of hybrid convertible notebooks to the market, it got a little harder to search for the best laptop. Most consumers are confused if they need touchscreens, if Macbooks are the right choice or even if they are safe with getting a Chromebook instead. YugaTech comes to the rescue for you guys who are looking for a laptop to purchase this Christmas, so read on!

For the budget-conscious / essentials

Let’s start with one of the recently released notebooks – the Asus VivoBook X200CA. At around Php20k, it covers all the basic things you’ll need in a Windows 8 laptop. It has an 11.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Celeron CPU, 4GB RAM, and a set of USB & HDMI ports. You can add a little more for better configurations too.

Another possible option is the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite (around Php30k). It has a touchscreen and an AMD A6-1450 1.0GHz quad-core processor paired with Radeon HD 8250 Graphics. The display is at 13.3-inches and you can add more for touch capabilities. What makes this such a good thing to set eyes on is the 128GB SSD that comes inside the sleek chassis.

Now if gaming power is what you need, then you have to spend more for the Acer Aspire E1-572G (at around Php33k). It packs a 15.6-inch 768 x 1366 display, a 4th-gen Core i3-4010U CPU, 4GB RAM and a 2GB vRAM AMD Radeon HD 8750M graphics card that won’t be such a joke when it performs.

More power!

Once you go above the still affordable Php30k ceiling for laptops, you’ll be faced with Core i5-i7 CPUs & other various configurations. That’s where you’ll spot the likes of the Asus X550 & the Acer Aspire V5. At its highest configuration (Php43k), the Asus X550 touts an Intel Core -7-4500 CPU, a 2GB vRAM Nvidia GeForce GT740M graphics card, 8GB RAM & 1TB HDD. If you don’t have that much to spend just yet, you can get the Core i5 model which is at Php37k.

The Acer Aspire V5 on the other hand offers touch capabilities instead of more power. The Acer Aspire V5-473PG model for example packs a Core i5-4200U CPU, Nvidia GT740M graphics & 4GB RAM into a fairly sleek body. That will cost you more or less Php38k. If you wish for more options, Lenovo also carries something similar in the form of the Ideapad S410p at around Php37k.

Halfway to a hundred thousand!

While we’re seeing the rise of 1080p displays on smartphones, sadly we can’t say the same for laptops – 1080 x 1920 screens still come at such a high cost! Take the multimedia laptop Asus N550JV for example. It features a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display, an insanely powerful Core i7-4700HQ CPU, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 750M GPU and an aluminum casing. It also has you covered from the backlit keyboard to the free subwoofer in the package. The official price is at Php60k.

For gamers out there, Lenovo offers something similar when it comes to the spec configuration – the IdeaPad Y510p. The only big difference is you can get several options – you can get an optical drive or better, you can get another Nvidia GeForce 750M graphics card. That will equate to dual graphics performance! It’s at a higher price tag though, somewhere near Php60k depending on the configuration. Just like the Asus N550JV, it’s still hard to look for at this point, but we’ll inform you once we get more info.

If gaming is not your bet and you just simply want a great experience, from the keyboard & trackpad to the OS & the build, then it’s a no-brainer to get the MacBook Air. The Air has a lot of configurations at this point, from 11-inch 128GB SSDs to 13-inch 256GB variants; that’s a range of Php50k to Php65k. Aside from the beautiful design & great hardware, it just got easier to consider the Air especially since Apple made its productivity suites free, not to mention the Mavericks update is free too!

The Beauties & The Beasts

If you’re looking for only the best laptop to give as a present, well you’re already in that section – our almost no-compromise notebook picks for Christmas 2013.

For Php80k, you can get the Acer Aspire S7-392, which is one of the most beautiful laptops out now. Not only is it aesthetically amazing and thin, but the internals also make it a drool-worthy laptop – from the 1080p touch display & the Core i7 Haswell CPU to the 256GB SSD.

Apple won’t leave this guide just yet too, as their Retina display packing MacBook Pros just faced a Haswell refresh and they’re shipping late November. The best configuration which packs a 15-inch Retina Display, a Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM & an Nvidia GeForce 750M GPU is hanging at a sharp Php133k. Apple has a good set of software to accompany that too, if we didn’t mention yet.

Finally, we put the Razer Blade Pro as the cherry on top of everything in this guide. In our interview with Razer CEO Min, we also managed to get a quick hold of the 14-inch variant and we’re here to say it’s no joke. It holds incredible amounts of power in such a lightweight chassis and we don’t think anything comes close.

Razer says the Blade is far from being launched locally as of today, but we scouted around the internet and you can definitely get one if you really want to. The highest configuration (17-inch 1080p, Core i7, Nvidia GTX765) can be found for no less than Php110k, while the 14-incher for around Php97k.

If you intend on making a purchase anytime soon, feel free to tell us in the comments section. Also, if you noticed, we didn’t bother including laptops packing 3rd-gen Intel Core CPUs and older – all for the simple reason that Haswell CPUs do deliver better battery life. Another last word of advice too, don’t get anything called a netbook or anything you can’t upgrade to Windows 8.

Update: We changed the price of the N550JV to reflect the recent launch of Asus.