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LAS VEGAS -- If you're coming to CES, bring a cool ultrabook or innovative tablet or don't bother stepping off the plane. They're the hottest things at the show.
Ultrabooks are poised to disrupt the traditional notebook space, and with good reason. They're thin, they're light, and they're loaded with panache, making traditional business notebooks and desktops look like relics. And since they use solid-state storage, ultrabooks boot up almost instantaneously, a feature that could convert critics who wonder why anyone would pay the big money these sleek, aesthetic dream machines command.
And then there are the tablets, which dare to challenge the Kindle Fire and almighty iPad. We're seeing tablets with Super AMOLED screens, lower prices and a bevy of form factors. Hell, we even found a waterproof tablet.
We expected to see a lot of quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 tablets, as well as tablets that run Ice Cream Sandwich. We were not disappointed.
One of the most interesting tablets we've run across is the ASUS MeMO 370T, which offers both those killer features in a 7-inch form factor for $250. We covered the 370T in our Nvidia report, but Asus' PR people dropped the ball on getting us a chance to photograph it so we haven't included it here.
Here are the 11 coolest ultrabooks and tablets we've seen at CES. Yes, there are a lot of Samsung products on the list, but they're killing it this year, and deserve the recognition.
HP Envy Spectre
Ultrabooks are meant to be a premium product, packing top-of-the-line specs into an impossibly thin frame. Here at CES, the HP Envy Spectre epitomizes that definition. This is one cool bit of kit, but it’ll cost you. The Envy Spectre will set you back $1,400 when it goes on sale in the United States on Feb. 8. So what makes this ultrabook so fancy? Where do we start? The Envy Spectre features a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass chassis and squeezes a 14-inch 1600x900 Radiance Display onto a 13.3-inch frame thanks to its attractive, super-slim bezel. The glass looks great — if you like the look of the iPhone 4 and 4S, you’ll love the Spectre. The top is completely flat, with rounded corners. It's got built-in Beats audio for discerning audiophiles. It uses HP's CoolSense technology to keep things, well, cool. And it even has an NFC chip on the palm rest so you can quickly and easily share URLs from your smartphone browser. This area is (somewhat oddly, aesthetically speaking) covered with still more Gorilla Glass. It looks and feels a bit unusual for a notebook. The Spectre also has several ports, including an Ethernet port that, interestingly, is kept slimmer by the bottom portion of the port being comprised of a mechanical flap. Rounding out the specs, it’s got a Core i5 CPU, 4 or 8GB of RAM and a 128 or 256GB SSD. The HP Envy Spectre is said to run nine hours on a charge. Dimensions are 0.79 inches thin and a hefty (for an ultrabook) 3.79 pounds. — Christina BonningtonPhotos: Wired Photo Staff
