14 DAY TRIAL // Yet another ultrabook has been launched, showing that the product type has become what netbooks were for the 2008-2010 period: the newest and “coolest” thing on the laptop market.
Gigabyte is the one launching a product this time around, one bearing the name of U2442 and featuring a more or less common hardware build, except for the graphics.
While the central processing unit (a third-generation Ivy Bridge Intel Core-series) has its integrated graphics chip present and accounted for, that is just the fallback.
The real power here, though it doesn't really compare with the discrete graphics cards of high-end gaming notebooks, is the NVIDIA discrete GPU.
Buyers of the U2442 Extreme Ultrabook will get to select between the GeForce GT 650M and GeForce GT 730M.
Between that and the dual-storage system, with a 256 GB solid-state drive (an MSATA model) and the large 750 GB or 1 TB HDD, the laptop can accomplish much.
To prove it, Gigabyte has included some benchmarking results in its official press release: 3DMark vantage returned 9,587 when the GT 650M was used and 8610 points when the 730 was present.
It might seem strange for the latter to be weaker, but it is, in the end, a rebranded board, and x30 is below x50 in power in any case.
Thus ends the performance side of the equation, but Gigabyte wasn’t exactly satisfied and implemented THX TruStudio Pro audio as well, plus a dual air vent design (one for CPU and one for GPU) and automatic light sensing tied into the backlit keyboard.
Should the light become too weak or darkness suddenly fall, the backlight will spring up and make the keys visible.
Finally, Gigabyte tossed in an HDMI 1.4 port and the Smart Switch Technology, which lets the general start-up functions be accessed from the desktop in Windows 8.
Gigabyte didn't include the price of the 1.59kg / 3.50 pound product in its press release, but it did set up a product page here.
