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Gamereactor's Hardware Awards 2019: Best Ultrabook

It's time to find out which sleek and effective ultrabooks were the best of 2019.

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We at Gamereactor try to cover a little bit of everything and such is the case for our hardware reviews as well. We review everything from hefty, powerful gaming setups to sleek ultrabooks at our headquarters.

These slim, sturdy and often expensive machines are the ones that consumers generally bring with them on vacation or to the office. They sit on your lap or rest on the couch or in bed on busy weekday evenings. They must be able to do it all while remaining compact and sleek at the same time. During 2019, we've tested pretty much all of the latest models on the market, and here are our absolute favourites of the year.

Winner: Microsoft Surface Laptop 13 (15")

Our winner in this category is not the cheapest, nor does it have the most horsepower housed inside its neat exterior. However, our winner is a machine that truly blew our minds in 2019.

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The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 in its 13-inch variety didn't offer a particularly impressive experience, but the 15-inch screen changed the game. The bigger machine gave room for more productivity-oriented tasks and offered the industry's best keyboard along with a responsive trackpad.

However, Microsoft seems to have stumbled into this award somehow, and despite us loving the Surface Laptop 13, we want to see clear improvements to the series of ultrabooks come next year. So far, however, the 15-inch version is slim, sturdy and perfectly designed to make you into the most productive version of yourself, and comparing the price of the machine to that of a MacBook Pro 16, then its price is rather cheap.

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Runner-up: Huawei MateBook 13

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There are various ways to get a product onto our favourites list. One might be the best when it comes to certain crucial parameters, sure, but something can also turn the market upside down with pricing so aggressive that it virtually eliminates the competition.

That's exactly what Huawei did with its MateBook 13. For all those considering a MacBook Pro, Huawei offered an i5-8265U, 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia MX250 for a decent price. This meant that the MateBook 13 essentially offered similar performance to a MacBook Pro for the price of a MacBook Air.

Yes, that was a bit of a blow for Apple.

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Runner-up: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Extreme (Gen2)

Lenovo makes quite a few neat versions of its ThinkPad laptop, but none of these versions are as extreme as the Spinal Tap-inspired.. well... Extreme, which arrived in the form of a new and improved version this year. This time, the laptop housed a GTX 1650 Max-Q within its light, robust and iconic chassis.

Yes, it's really expensive, but this laptop is powerful and versatile enough to play games on, take along to a meeting at the office, and function at -20 Celsius in northern Sweden. We adore the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Extreme.

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Runner-up: MSI PS63 Modern

MSI is known for designing notebooks in a very specific way. Sure, their laptops are fast, and sure, you get a lot for the money you spend, but it's rare that good value can be felt in its build quality. When the company revealed that it would design an ultrabook for the "creator market", we have to admit that we didn't take the claim seriously.

But we were quickly put in our place because not only did MSI manage to translate its otherwise hard-boiled design into something more understated, it did it with style and impressive attention to detail. The result is the so-called 16x16x16 laptop, i.e. 1.6kg, 16 millimetres with 16 hours of battery life.

However, what impressed us the most was the fact that MSI challenged itself and managed to create a laptop with a significantly better build quality than its previous releases, which is why the PS63 Modern is included on this year's list.

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