Samsung Series 5 Ultra NP530U3B (13-inch, 500GB HDD)

Pros: Keyboard felt tactile and responsive and touchpad was responsive too. The matte screen has great horizontal viewing angles and speakers were extremely loud and clear sounding. The design felt premium with largely aluminum builds and numerous ports.

Cons: The keyboard isn't backlit and the touchpad still has individual plastic buttons like a good ol' laptop (it is multi-touch though). The battery life isn't as good as other ultrabooks and hibernate has been deleted (just like other ultrabooks).

Summary: I got the Ivy Bridge version of this ultrabook lying around and the boot-up time was fast, even with only the hybrid SSD. The i5-3317U CPU felt responsive and the matte 1366 x 768 display had excellent horizontal viewing angles but not vertical. I was quite impressed with the loud-sounding speakers and the keyboard was quite raised and comfortable though not backlit. The touchpad felt responsive and the discrete buttons, even though they felt old, helped click at times. The design with aluminum on the cover and the interior frame made this laptop feel premium at its price. The ports on this laptop were numerous and other ultrabooks felt pale in comparison in this category. There were 2 USB 2.0s, 1 USB 3.0, an Ethernet port, HDMI out, 4-in-1 card reader and a special hole for the (optional) VGA dongle and a combo headphone and microphone jack. If you want more, you'll find more in it's big brother, the 1.8 kg 14-inch Samsung NP530U4 with VGA and an optical drive. Intel HD 4000 performed well enough to handle basic and online games and even some high-end games. You'll find an NVIDIA GeForce GT card in the 14-inch version.

Summing it up, I was quite impressed with this laptop but I was a bit dissatisfied with its battery life.