Best Lightweight Laptops for Back To School Discussion

[Jerry Jackson]

It's back to school shopping season again, and this year we're here to help you find the perfect lightweight notebook.

Read the full content of this Article: Best Lightweight Laptops for Back To School

[DuffMcShank]

You should recommend NP900X3C instead of NP900X3B.

[ZaZ]

I would think someone willing to lug around a 15" wants a higher resolution screen, which would make the Sony Vaio SE perhaps a better choice than the Sleekbook. It's lighter and has a better 1080p LCD.

[Jerry Jackson]

I would think someone willing to lug around a 15" wants a higher resolution screen, which would make the Sony Vaio SE perhaps a better choice than the Sleekbook. It's lighter and has a better 1080p LCD.

True, the Vaio SE has a much better screen ... but it's also more expensive than the HP ENVY Sleekbook.

[ZaZ]

True, but the Sony also has better parts and it's lighter. I think the Sony starts at $850 I believe, that's with the i5 and 1080p LCD while I think the i5 Sleekbook starts at $800. The better parts and lighter weight are worth $50 for most people.

Side note, how did you get 7.5 hours from the 15" AMD Sleekbook? I had the 14" Intel version, which I understand uses a four-cell like the 15". I don't know if the batteries were the same wattage, but I was only able to a little over four hours from the 14".

[Jerry Jackson]

Screen brightness setting and usage makes a big difference in terms of battery life (as does the system configuration). Our battery life exhaustion test is based on what our staff calls a "casual web browsing" usage model -- screen brightness set to 70%, Wi-Fi on, power profile set to never allow the screen to turn off or computer to enter sleep mode, and refreshing a webpage in Firefox every 60 seconds until the notebook automatically shuts down. We also have a battery monitoring application running during the test that also consumes a small portion of power (but it's similar to the power draw of running Microsoft Word).

This gives readers what we consider to be a "best case scenario" for battery life. That said, for every reader who says our battery life test is too generous because they get worse battery life, there is a reader who says our battery test is too stressful because they get better battery life and we should lower the screen brightness or reduce the frequency of loading webpages because most people aren't loading a page every 60 seconds nonstop.

Our battery test is not quite as liberal as the battery tests most manufacturers use (which in almost every case involves using the notebook in low power mode, screen brightness at or near the minimum setting, and "if" Wi-Fi is turned on they don't actively load/refresh new pages so the Wi-Fi card is essentially in sleep mode and not drawing much power). We considered a range of battery exhaustion tests similar to a couple of our competitors -- such as DVD playback or video transcoding until the battery is dead -- but those are arguably closer to a "worst case scenario" because those tasks involve much higher power consumption. We want to give readers an idea of the battery life they might get if they just sit down at Starbucks for an afternoon and browse the web.

[JKnows]

Side note, how did you get 7.5 hours from the 15" AMD Sleekbook? I had the 14" Intel version, which I understand uses a four-cell like the 15". I don't know if the batteries were the same wattage, but I was only able to a little over four hours from the 14".

I have this Sleekbook 6z with A6 and to tell it is unbeatable for the price. I do not how but this 17W APU use about half power as Intel 17W, which explain why you can see so crazy battery life.

[kahles]

Thank you for this. I need a portable laptop for my school and work but also want something that can game. I came to the conclusion not so long ago that these two things are on the opposite ends of the laptop spectrum so have decided that a light "cheap" laptop will be bought for school/work and then a big 17 incher will be bought for my gaming needs.

[andrecole]

Thank you for this. I need a portable laptop for my school and work but also want something that can game. I came to the conclusion not so long ago that these two things are on the opposite ends of the laptop spectrum so have decided that a light "cheap" laptop will be bought for school/work and then a big 17 incher will be bought for my gaming needs.

so true mate, at the end of the day, i'd go with gaming, its gonna have all d features the lightweight wud have, but the lightweight may end up leaving some features in the aim of portability.