Ultrabook

Hexa-core power. After an impressive showing with the XPS 13 7390 2-in-1, the original XPS 13 clamshell deserves some love, too. Dell is putting the XPS 13 back in the spotlight with the Intel Comet Lake-U Core i7-10710U to be one of the first subnotebooks shipping with a full-fledged hexa-core ULV CPU.

Dynamic do-over. The Tecra is back under a new name. The Dynabook Tecra X50 retains much of the Tecra flair for thinness but ultimately falls flat. While the X50 is a competent machine overall, it is priced far too high for what it offers.

Ice to meet you. Razer has jumped in on the 10 nm Ice Lake bandwagon to exploit the new power-efficient Intel Iris Plus GPU. While the resulting performance is where we expect it to be, the $1500 starting price makes this a tough buy when the less expensive Blade Stealth GeForce MX150 version is the better gaming machine.

Ice Lake Yoga. Lenovo wants to bring its premium Yoga convertible to the next level, with the help of the latest Ice Lake CPUs from Intel. Compared with the predecessor, Lenovo has not changed much and instead has opted to work on a few weak-points. In our review, this strategy certainly pays off!

Elite convertible with a matte SureView screen. Convertibles offer more flexibility than regular clamshell notebooks. Business convertibles like the HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 offer even more flexibility than consumer devices. With plenty of features & high-quality components, the HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 is a successful convertible, as there are barely any weak points to this HP laptop.

The Intel Athena Poster Child. With mobile AMD Ryzen finally catching up to Intel's long-running ULV Core U series, all eyes have been on Ice Lake and Comet Lake-U to see how Intel would respond. Pressure has been on Dell to knock it out of the park with its second generation XPS 13 2-in-1 especially since it is the first to ship with the Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7. The flagship convertible mostly succeeds with a few caveats.

Still top? Apple has provided its beloved MacBook Pro 13 with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, an updated processor, as well as a revised Butterfly keyboard. But is that enough to keep playing in the subnotebook upper league in 2019?

Ultrabook-gaming hybrid. The Zenbook 15 is one of the very few laptops equipped with an Intel U-series CPU and a GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU for an impressive level of gaming performance relative to the compact chassis size. It strikes an excellent balance between the portability and long runtimes of a traditional Ultrabook while offering enough GPU power to play the latest games at 1080p. ScreenPad 2.0 looks crisper and feels smoother than before, but its associated price premium remains a tough sell.