New laptops with extended battery life are hitting store shelves.
What these laptops have in common are microprocessors that belong to a new family of Intel chips called Haswell. The chips consume less power than previous generations and promise a 50 percent boost in battery life for watching video. The improvements extend to word processing, Web surfing and other computing tasks as well.
Put another way, you can unplug your laptop in the morning and go a full day without a charge, with some breaks for meals, exercise and errands. The 13-inch MacBook Air, for instance, promises up to 12 hours of battery life. Three Windows machines I tried promise seven to nine hours. For students, that’s a full day of cutting classes — and more. For business travelers, that’s a cross-country flight including delays.
The catch: Slim, lightweight laptops with Haswell chips cost more than $1,000. Cheaper laptops will be heavier or come with older chips.
I reviewed Apple’s MacBook Air and Dell, Sony and Acer computers running Microsoft’s Windows 8. Samsung and other PC makers are just coming out with Haswell laptops, so you should expect even more choices by the holidays.
Here are the four Haswell laptops I tried, starting with the cheapest:
• MacBook Air from Apple Inc. Starts at $1,099 for 13-inch model.
With a screen measuring 13.3 inches diagonally, the larger model weighs 2.96 pounds and costs $1,099. An even lighter, 11.6-inch version is available for $999, but promised battery life is just nine hours. Spend the extra $100 for three additional hours and a larger screen if you can afford it.
It’s odd that the Air is the cheapest of the four I reviewed, as Apple’s computers are traditionally pricier than their Windows counterparts. But in this case, the Windows laptops I tested all come with touch screens, something Apple has avoided in laptops on the premise that people don’t want to lift their hands off the keyboard to use touch controls. The base model of the Air also has a slightly slower processor — at 1.3 gigahertz, compared with 1.6 gigahertz for the three Windows laptops.
• XPS 12 from Dell Inc. Starts at $1,200.
The XPS 12 is part of a category called ultrabooks — slim and light laptops, much like MacBook Airs, except they run Windows. The XPS 12 is also a convertible. The screen spins like a pig roasting on a spit. In one position, you get a laptop. Spin it 180 degrees, close the lid, and you have yourself a tablet. Magic.
Unfortunately, the XPS 12 is on the heavy side. The base model is 3.35 pounds. On paper, it’s less than a half-pound heavier than the Air. But in practice, it feels heavy — especially as a tablet, at more than double the 1.44 pounds for the full-size iPad. The XPS 12 is alone in lacking an SD card slot, and its 12.5-inch screen is the smallest. But it is also the only one to have physical volume buttons on the side, and it’s more affordable than the other two Windows laptops I reviewed.
• Vaio Pro 13 from Sony Corp. Starts at $1,250.
The Pro is an ultrabook that’s light. The 13.3-inch laptop weighs just 2.34 pounds, only 60 percent more than an iPad. Sony uses carbon fiber to keep it light. It feels to me like cheap plastic that’s about to break because it bends. But Sony assures me that it’s more durable than aluminum. And Sony says the fact that it bends isn’t a sign of weakness but a characteristic that lets it absorb shock. The base model starts at $1,250, though you can save $100 with an 11.6-inch Vaio Pro 11 instead.
• Aspire S7 from Acer Inc. Starts at $1,450.
The Aspire has what I want in a laptop, except for the price. The laptop’s aluminum body is covered on one side with glossy white glass. It reminds me of a refrigerator, but I came to appreciate the durability it brings once I started lugging it around. It’s also fairly light, at 2.87 pounds.
My advice is to check return policies in case you run into trouble. The MacBook Air worked well out of the box, but the three Windows machines all required software adjustments.