I am not even sure what i want :) Ultraportable device

[zsolt_93]

As the title says i am having problems deciding what device would suit my needs better. I am debating things since half a year and a lot of things have changed, mainly with teh Baytrail-M chips for notebooks opposed to Baytrail-I for tablets. currently have a 15.6 Laptop (i7+GT525M) + the PC in the specs. I need something lighter to use when i am travelling or i am at the university. And i would like to stay in touch with the current trends and go for touchscreen/tablet device. The budget is not really great so i can't really think about going for MS Surface Lenovo Yoga Pro or things like that, those are totally out of my ballpark mainly because of the screen and CPU. I am going for 1080p max and something like an i3/i5 maximum. There are a few choices most from the Lenovo Yoga series which have a really nice design in my oppinion, as i am not a fan of round corners Hp/Dell devices.
There is the last gen Yoga11s with i5 42xxY that is like at the top of my budget at 3800RON(~870Euros). Then there is the Yoga 2 11 incher with Baytrail Pentium for much less around 2/3 of the price, too bad it comes with conventional HDD. Then there are the 10 inchers from Asus/Lenovo with Atoms or half the price. I feel like 10 inches is too small for the occasional programming at the university. And i wouldnt go for 14 inches either as that would be almost the same with my current laptop.
I can't really choose a device as there is not a large variety in Romania, only like 1 model gets here from the whole range so i cant choose different Storage/CPU/Mem combos. I am stuck with what they offer. I am not sure if Baytrail would suffice on the Graphics side of things for some ocasional 3d loads.

The choices i came up with basically are:

Yoga11s: i5 42xxY/4GB/128GB
Yoga 2 11entium N3530/4GB/500GB
HP Slate 13: i3 40xx/4GB/128GB
Asus Transformer 10": Z3770/2GB/32(64)GB
Lenovo Miix 2 10":Z3770D/2GB/64GB but it has huge screen resolution

The requirements would be that it should be found in the Romanian market an under around the 650Euro mark, have a 11-12-13 screen(almost every one has touch now) and be reasonably light. I really liked the design and 360 hinges on the Yoga, and the fact that it has a full size keyboard and touchpad but i may sacrifice them for performance. I am open to better suggestions from people who bought this kind of devices as i am worried if i stick with my decision to go Baytrail i will regret it very soon, i would upgrade to a SSD when warranty expires.

 

[tokyoduong]

If you're looking into the Yoga, The Surface 3 should be on your list as well ( if it's available). The Surface comes with an SSD.

I don't know about the Yoga2 but I know my friend's Yoga fell apart pretty easy and it's kind of buggy in general. I liked the Yoga2 that's in store demos but I don't know if it will hold up. However, the screen is really nice.

Your other choice is maybe a Macbook Air with bootcamp or parallel.

 

[zsolt_93]

The thing is, that a Mac is too pricey the same about the Surface. I dont see the need of 4k/Retina displays on such small devices. If only i could find Yoga 2 Pro without 4k display it would be amazing.

 

[krusha03]

Have you looked at Sony VAIO Tap 11 (similar to surface pro) or Acer S7-191 (similar to macbook air 11)?. Also what is you primary goal? You mentioned 3d load, is that games or something else? What about battery life? Also is there any website where we can see what's available in romania?

I have bought recently an Acer V5-131 with a pentium 1007u and 6 cell battery for about 300e and I can even hook it up to a full hd screen and do CAD on it with the integrated graphics and barely carry around my work station anymore. Ofcourse rendering takes forever but I only need to do that once the design is finished and I can ran that back on the workstation. Furthermore when unplugged i can do office tasks / watching movies for 5-6 hours which was also important for me. The only thing I am missing is a mSATA port (asking too much at that price point) so I can have hdd + ssd for os since 500GB SSD is too expensive for me atm and 250GB is on the borderline of the space I require

 

[zsolt_93]

I found the little Acer yesterday, the thing that worries me is the build quality at that price point. The graphics are certainly better in this one. For 3d i mean ocasional games like LoL or something at a maximum of Medium details, maybe AutoCad occasionally for the university and Matlab.

 

[krusha03]

I found the little Acer yesterday, the thing that worries me is the build quality at that price point. The graphics are certainly better in this one. For 3d i mean ocasional games like LoL or something at a maximum of Medium details, maybe AutoCad occasionally for the university and Matlab.

The build quality is decent. I am carrying it around every day and have no problems. The keyboard / touchpad could be better but I wouldn't type long documents on a 11" laptop anyway and i always use a mouse so that's not a problem for me. LoL should work but probably at lower settings. I have run games like WoW, Torchlight, XCOM EU on low and it works. Compared to n3520, it will be faster in single threaded but slower in multi threaded applications. To get the best performance for the gpu add a second stick of ram to get dual channel

 

[zsolt_93]

Well... a month has passed and i still haven't bought anything. The list has narrowed down as some of the models don't seem to be available anymore.

http://www.pcgarage.ro/ultrabook/le...ntium-2129y-11ghz-4gb-128gb-ssd-win-8-orange/
http://www.pcgarage.ro/ultrabook/le...z-4gb-500gb-plus-8gb-ssd-win-81-light-silver/
http://www.pcgarage.ro/tablete-busi...uetooth-dual-webcam-tastatura-inclusa-win-81/

The Miix i can get it cheaper from another place i just put the links for the specs. The other two have the same prices in every shop i checked. I have read reviews apart from the 11s, as the Pentium version has not been reviewed. The i3 has the perormance advantage, but people say it is throttling(consumption related, not temperature) and has a fixed screen angle with the dock. The Bay Trail i feel misses out in graphics performance even in comparison to the Ivy Pentium. SSD is a non issue as it can be replaced. I dont really want to go above 3k RON as that would be the price of a really good 15 incher with i7+dedicated GPU.

 

[lastcalaveras]

Go with the Miix for with the 1080p screen and the i3 performance. As much as the yoga is great to handle the gimmick of the 360 hinge isn't for everyone.

 

[zsolt_93]

Just pulled the trigger yesterday on a first gen Surface Pro. Cheaper than any of the above, and more performance than the Y series Haswell. 128GB one too. I think its a good deal, but i am worried a bit about the support with it being EOL in the US and no official microsfot stores in Romania, after warranty expires. The 2 Pro would cost like 3 times as much ) ~1500Eu and the 3 pro is nowhere. Have to get a separate keyboard though, that will add up to a price around what the yoga goes for right now. Things like this are so expensive around here. There are Asus RT tablets going for more than this, and at the same store the Surface RT is around half of this, in the pricerange of Android tablets. I hope it arrives tomorrow.
It should have the pen included, right? That would be another win for it. Closest tablets with digitizers are Clovertrail or Baytrail Atoms. Mostly Clovertrail though excepting the Vivotab Note 8. Hoping to get a deal later for a miniDP to dvi/vga adapter as that is the only thing i consider as drawback of these devices with most displays and projectors still having analog inputs and these ultrathin devices lack them.