Lenovo Just Unveiled the Lightest 13-Inch Laptop Ever
Lenovo has just unveiled the lightest 13-inch laptop in the world, and it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Called the LaVie Z HZ550, the notebook weighs just 1.72 pounds. That’s far lighter than Apple’s famously lightweight 13-inch MacBook Air, which weighs 2.96 pounds.
I use an Air 13-inch as my regular work laptop, and when a Lenovo representative handed me the LaVie Z, I swore he just passed me the shell of a notebook with no guts inside. But then I turned it on, saw that it was a working laptop, and was genuinely dumbstruck by how little this thing weighed.
Seriously, I easily held it up with just my pointer finger and thumb.
Still, I thought, the company had to have cut some corners to get the LaVie Z’s weight down, right? Wrong. This thing packs Intel’s new fifth-generation Core-series processor, 4 GB of RAM, and up to a fast 128 GB solid-state drive. All of that is to say that the LaVie Z should prove to be a match for the MacBook Air in terms of performance.
What’s more, the LaVie Z will be available with a 1080p resolution display, something the MacBook Air is currently lacking.
How did Lenovo get the LaVie Z to be so lightweight? By using a special material called magnesium lithium that the company says is 50 percent lighter than aluminum, and just as strong as the standard magnesium used on laptops today.
There is, however, one downside to the LaVie Z, and that’s its price. The standard laptop version of the system will start at roughly $1,299 when it launches in the U.S. in May. A laptop-tablet convertible version of the LaVie Z will cost $1,499.
Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air, on the other hand, starts at $999. That’s a pretty big price difference. And there’s also the fact that Apple is rumored to be working on an improved version of its Air laptop, which should be lighter than the current model.
For now, though, based on the short amount of time I spent with the LaVie Z, Lenovo looks to have, at the very least, the lightest 13-inch laptop in the world. Is it the best? You’ll have to wait for my review to find out.
Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley or on Google+ here.
