What is it: Not much bigger than the sluggish netbooks of yore, Ultrabooks are much more powerful and a lot sexier. The Dell XPS 13 (the 13 stands for the 13” screen) is a case in point. With an aluminum top, carbon fiber bottom, backlit semi-gloss keys and incredibly thin bezel surrounding its screen, it’s about as sleek as Windows devices get.

The good: The 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M processor with 4GB of RAM offers good performance and fast boot times, meaning you can actually do real work on this machine, despite its portability (1.36kg). Whether you’re cutting a video or playing a first-person shooter, there’s not much it can’t handle.

The bad: The annoying amount of pre-loaded software attempts to bring a bit of Mac OS fluidity (and security) to the Windows environment. Instead, it just gets in the way. Then there’s the jumpy trackpad, the screen’s middling resolution (1366 x 768), and lack of SD card slot.

The verdict: This is a top option in the Ultrabooks category. But is it a MacBook Air killer? In Thailand, the 13” MacBook Air is actually priced identically (starting from B42,900) to this Dell. With a sharper screen (1440 x 900 pixels), Mac OS, and a better trackpad, we’ll take the Mac.
B42,990. Intel Core i5 1.6GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB flash storage.