Until recently, the Macbook Air family was the clear leader in the market for ultra-light and powerful devices. Ultrabooks had a long way to go before they reached a level where competitors could compete, but this is already happening.
Features
As a rule, someone who appreciates compactness will choose a lightweight laptop for work. With a good battery, it will function for several hours and will allow you to work, for example, in a train or plane. Such devices can be equipped with either a conventional HDD-drive or a fast SSD hard drive, however, as a rule, they do not have a drive.
Of course, the price of powerful ultrabooks is two, or even three times more expensive than a similar device of usual weight and size: the cost of budget models starts from 80 thousand rubles. However, do not be scared, because for each price category you can find the best options, which will also be considered in the framework of this article.
Golden mean
Sometimes there is a feeling that manufacturers intentionally do not make the most convenient equipment for the end user. They can be understood, because otherwise there will be no need for such a variety of models and their constant updating. The biggest difficulty in compiling a list of light and thin laptops with a good battery would be their cost. In each price category there are pretty good options, but there is no point in comparing laptops between each other, the prices for which are several tens of thousands of rubles.
Do not be surprised why the lightest and thinnest laptops with a good battery are equipped with SSDs. The presence of such a hard drive gives a big plus to any computer, since applications run and work much faster. In addition, if there is little RAM and swap files are used (if there is not enough RAM, the system "takes" a little from the hard drive), due to the speed of the SSD-drive, the speed will not drop so much.
Most Available Options
A lightweight laptop for work, with a good battery and acceptable hardware, can be found even in the price range from 10 to 30 thousand rubles. A few years ago, netbooks occupied this niche, and they could compete in power with ordinary laptops, but the technology has gone ahead and the name "netbook" is no longer found in any computer store. However, similar devices are being manufactured now, you only need to know the models.
A device from 4GOOD CL100 with a diagonal of 10 inches will cost only 10-11 thousand rubles. For those who care about the large screen, the company produces a 14.1-inch model with the same filling, only the weight increases to one and a half kilograms, and the thickness is up to 2.8 cm. Such a laptop is available at a price of 14-15 thousand.
4GOOD Cl 100 is the best option for those who are looking for the lightest and thinnest laptops with a good battery. Customer reviews about this Chinese device are so good that there is no doubt: this is the most affordable of compact computers. The device weighs 1046 g and has a thickness of only 2 cm! It is equipped with an Intel Atom Z3735F 1.33Ghz processor, an integrated video card and 2 GB of RAM, as well as a 32 gigabyte SSD drive, the high speed and performance of which allows you to run many programs on this mini-laptop. Battery life is 7-8 hours.
Transformer
The lightest and thinnest laptop with a good battery in this price category is the Lenovo Yoga 300 11BV. The budget version of the popular laptop will cost only 25-30 thousand rubles (depending on the "filling"). This 11-inch convertible laptop, capable of turning into a tablet, weighs only 1.4 kilograms, but its most important advantage is the touch screen, the presence of which makes it easy to do without a mouse and not feel any inconvenience.
It comes in several trim levels. The differences can be in the drive (either 500 GB HDD, or 64 GB SSD), as well as in RAM (from 2 to 8 GB).
In short, the Yoga 300 11 BV models are affordable, functional, light and thin laptops with a good battery.
Photo device below.
The touch screen consumes quite a lot of energy, and although the battery is quite powerful, it lasts for 5-6 hours of battery life. For information on how to extend the battery life of Lenovo Yoga and other laptops, see the end of the article.
For artists
Designers and artists, who always carry a sketchbook and a graphic tablet with them, constantly think about how to optimize their devices and unload a bag or backpack, so the weight and dimensions of devices are especially important for them. Due to the nature of their work, such creative people are looking for comfortable light and thin laptops with a good battery. A review of touch devices like the Yoga described above offers a great idea: use them as a graphics tablet.
However, you should be aware that Adobe Photoshop does not recognize signals from a sensor that does not have a definition of pressure. Among Lenovo, such an opportunity is available in the Tablet series and some others, so when choosing a touch device of any manufacturer, you need to clarify whether it is equipped with Wacom technology. However, this only applies to Photoshop, in some free programs with the same functionality, for example in Gimp, there is no such problem, so you can safely draw with a stylus or fingers and without Wacom.
80-100 thousand rubles
Asus ZenBook UX305 with a weight of 1.17 kg is one of the leaders in the struggle for the title of "The lightest and thinnest laptop."
With a good battery and 13-inch screen, it is not only beautiful in its metal case, but also incredibly functional. With 8 GB of RAM, Intel Core M 5Y10 processor and Intel HD Graphics 5300, you can not only work with fairly powerful programs, but even run modern computer games. 256GB SSD also speeds up. Perhaps these are the most impressive features for the price of 82 thousand rubles.
Stylish and powerful
Acer Aspire S7 weighing 1.3 kg can be included in the lightest and thinnest laptops with good fillings.
Behind a beautiful snow-white case is an Intel Broadwell Core i7 processor with a frequency of 2.4 GHz, an Intel HD Graphics 5500 graphics card and 8 GB of RAM. Equipped with a fast 256 gigabyte SSD. However, Acer, like some others, such as Lenovo, installs a lot of completely unnecessary software on its machines, so if you do not want to sacrifice battery life for them, it is better to immediately remove unnecessary "generic" programs.
Fans of computer games will not appreciate the shallow key travel, but with the exception of this, for the price of 86 thousand rubles, the buyer receives a full-fledged and very light computer.
100-120 thousand rubles
The Lenovo Yoga family of laptops already mentioned is the lightest and thinnest laptop with a good battery in this price category. Yoga 900 weighs only 1.28 kg and has not only a stylish design, but also a powerful processor (Core i7-6500U) and a video card (Intel HD Graphics 520), as well as a large amount of RAM (16 GB). A truly powerful battery provides up to 9 hours of battery life in video viewing mode and up to 10 during Internet surfing with Wi-Fi connected, and the only drawback is the small keyboard, which is unlikely to appeal to gamers. This powerful device costs 118 thousand rubles.
Super lightweight
The Dell XPS 13 is a powerful and lightweight laptop for work. With a good battery and a 13-inch screen, it has a very small size due to the reduction of idle display space. It is equipped with a 256 GB SSD, a Core i5-5200 processor and an Intel HD Graphics 5500 graphics card.
To all this, the amount of RAM is 8 gigabytes, which is less than in the Yoga 900, but also very decent. Its indisputable advantages include the presence of the Full HD model - this is far from every light laptop for work. With a good battery, it will provide up to nine hours of continuous operation, and picture quality will please for a long time.
This laptop has a powerful filling that can “pull” not only any programs, but also computer games, but the device is not equipped with an Enternet port, this should be considered when buying. A laptop costs 110 thousand rubles.
How to extend battery life
However, the operating time stated by the manufacturer is not always true. As a rule, in fact, it is an order of magnitude smaller, but when optimizing energy consumption, it can be increased by 10-15%.
Regardless of how powerful the laptop’s battery is, this problem of power shortage occurs during long trips or just if you want to work sitting in the park. There are several rules that can be used to reduce power consumption and thereby increase battery life.
First of all, you should disable the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules if they are not needed, and also make sure that there is no disk in the drive. Keep as few programs as possible in the background, you can disable the antivirus for a while and firewall if you still have no Internet connection and do not use "unfamiliar" flash cards that may be infected with viruses.
Disabling System Services
Also, the shutdown of some services will extend battery life. You can do this in the Services menu in the Control Panel. Of course, you should not disconnect everything in a row, you should first read the description, and it is not necessary to select the "disabled" option, it is more rational to choose the inclusion manually. This can be done for all services associated with installed programs: it will not work continuously, but it will be launched by one or another program if necessary.
You can disable or set the “manual” parameter from system services for a fax and printer, if there are none, as well as all services associated with Hyper-V, if you do not use remote access, in addition, if there is an antivirus, the firewall is no longer needed and security center.
A complete description of the services that can be disabled can be obtained from specialists. A system optimized in this way will not only work much faster, but also consume less power.