Toshiba Portege Z835-P330

With a full 128GB SSD at a great price and a thin, light design, the Toshiba Portege Z835 is one of the best deals in Ultrabook-style laptops to date.To cut costs, you get knocked down to a Core i3 CPU, and the shrimpy keyboard is tough to type on.Another entry in the MacBook Air clone wars, the Toshiba Portege Z835 offers great bang for the buck in some areas, but also looks and feels a bit cheap.After this review was published, Best Buy decided to offer the specific retail-exclusive configuration reviewed here for $799, which is $100 less than the original price.Another Ultrabook contender enters the fray with the arrival of the Toshiba Portege Z835. Following in the footsteps of the Acer S3, Lenovo U300s, and Asus Zenbook, this system aims to provide Windows users with a clear alternative to Apple's popular MacBook Air.Unlike some of the other Ultrabooks we've seen, the Z835 wisely comes in under $1,000. Our configuration runs $899, and includes a full 128GB SSD (the similarly priced Acer S3 had a 20GB SSD coupled with a traditional platter drive), but cuts a pretty serious corner by dropping the CPU to an Intel Core i3. Most of the other Ultrabook-style laptops we've seen have Core i5 or even Core i7 CPUs. For everyday use it won't make too much of a difference, but our benchmark tests show a definite advantage to having a Core i5.