LG still managed to grab our attention with the LG Z330 and LG Z430, which the company has dubbed “Super Ultrabooks”—you know, because they’re better than the rest. The LG Z430 takes its little brother up to 14 inches, throws in a HDD option (to sit alongside a SSD - up to 500GB) but does add a second or two to the boot time.
The Design
LG Z430 is around 5mm to the waistline and almost 300g to the weight. Still Ultra? Just about, according to LG. Sure, it might not be as exciting as the LG Z330, but it's still an Ultrabook and that's what counts. Both of these LG Ultrabooks should be shipping world wide in the second quarter of 2012.
When it comes to PCs, CES and 2012 in general, it looks like the Ultrabook will be dominant . With just a handful of the super slim devices going live in 2011 there are estimates that we're going to be hit by hundreds this year. With that in mind, LG has played its opening gambit quickly by declaring a couple of Ultrabook PCs that it is going to show off at CES next week: the LG Z330 and the LG Z430.
Just like with supermodel catwalks, it's all about being skinny in the Ultrabook world so it's only right that we kick off with the Z330 as it's one of the thinnest notebooks that we've heard of, with a waistline of just 14.7mm. That's not just its thinnest point either, that's a constant. It weighs in at just 1.21kg too. Over 100g less than the 13.3-inch MacBook Air.
The Display
The Z430 sports a 14-inch screen, but because of a 4.5-millimetre thin bezel, the laptop actually feels much closer to a typical 13-inch laptop. Unfortunately, you only get 1366 x 768-pixels of virtual desktop real estate, though, in our opinion, a 14-inch screen should offer at least 1680 x 1050 pixels. In comparison, the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air gives you 1440 x 900 pixels with which you can play.
The quick boot-up time: 10 seconds from dead or 2 seconds from sleep. Its engine room is packing an Intel i7 chip and there's a SATA3 SSD on board too. The Z430 takes it up to 14 inches, throws in a HDD option but does add a second or two to the boot time, around 5mm to the waistline and almost 300g to the weight.
As we’ve come to expect from most Ultrabooks, the design takes heavy cues from Apple’s MacBook Air, but the Z430 does have its own distinct identity, and it’s hard not to fall in love with the brushed metal frame and the unit’s clean lines and minimalistic design. The touchpad almost looks like it’s one with the chassis, and the backlit keyboard felt comfortable to write on during our limited encounter with it.
As well as the Ultrabooks, LG is also going to be displaying a couple of 3D ready laptops at the big Vegas expo including a glasses-free model: the LG A540, which also packs 4.1 channel 3D sound. This is joined by the glasses-required P535, which is a 15.6-inch notebook packing the latest Nvidia GeForce GT 630M graphics card.
Engine Room
The device will be powered by either a 1.6 GHz Core i5-2467M or a 1.7 GHz Core i7-2637M processor, giving you plenty of oomph for those everyday tasks. Unlike most other ultrabooks, the Z430 supports up to 8GB of memory, which should be more than enough to get Windows 7 and all your programs to run smoothly.
The built-in Intel HD 3000 graphics chip will not run the latest batch of 3D games, but if that is at all important to you, you shouldn't even consider purchasing an Ultrabook in the first place.
Booting time is approximately 12 seconds, a tad longer than that of most competitors, but that’s apparently because the extra HDD needs to initialize at boot up. After waking up from standby mode, the Z430 was ready to use in fewer than two seconds, and overall, the laptop felt zippy and eager to execute our every command.
Storage
LG will offer the Z430 with up to 500GB of extra storage, allowing you to use the HDD for music, photos, and videos without worrying about running out of that costly SDD space. It looks like there will be SSD options ranging from 16 GB to 256 GB, but you’d have a hard time squeezing anything but Windows into a mere 16GB of space.
Connectivity
The laptop accommodates a full range of ports, so you don’t have to worry about carrying around multiple adapters. You get a full-size 10/100 Ethernet port, 1x USB 3.0 port, and 2x USB 2.0 ports along with HDMI out and a 4-in-1 card reader, which for some reason sits on the back of the machine. We’re thinking, though, that it might become a bit annoying to have to reach around the laptop and fumble about each and every time you want to transfer pictures from an SD card. On the wireless side, you get Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.
Battery
LG says the Z430 will offer more than six hours of battery life, which is not fantastic but still very decent, and should allow you to head out the door without the charger and not worry too much about running out of juice. Obviously, we didn’t have the chance to test the battery life during our preview, but we’ll investigate further in our final review.
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