It’s a definition whose meaning we expect to make stricter and stricter by the year. As brands bring out newer and more interesting models packing the latest hardware in sleeker packages, our selection process becomes even more difficult. Then again, we wouldn’t be able to tell you about the deserving winner by taking the easy way out, will we? So, which model takes home the prestigious Digit Zero1 award?
It’s finally time to pick this year’s best devices. As before, the Digit Zero1 award is presented to the devices with the best performance; other aspects like features, and most of all, price don’t matter in our testing process for these awards. Our definition of a Thin and Light is a laptop that measures no more than 1.5 centimetres in thickness and weighs no more than 1.5 kilogrammes.
It’s a definition whose meaning we expect to make stricter and stricter by the year. As brands bring out newer and more interesting models packing the latest hardware in sleeker packages, our selection process becomes even more difficult. Then again, we wouldn’t be able to tell you about the deserving winner by taking the easy way out, will we? So, which model takes home the prestigious Digit Zero1 award? The winner is…
2018 Zero1 Award Winner:
Dell XPS 13
Dell’s popular Thin and Light, the XPS 13, was first unveiled at CES in 2012. Since then it has only been getting thinner and lighter year after year, warming the cockles of its patrons’ hearts in the process with the promise of top-notch performance. The Dell XPS 13 comes with an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe solid-state drive.
Its 13.3-inch display is a solid 4K unit with content rendered by an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU. Its web camera may be set down low but its performance goals sure are up there! The 2018 Dell XPS 13 bags this year’s Digit Zero1 award for the title of Best Thin and Light Laptop due to the sheer performance metrics that it can achieve in this form factor.
Runner-up:
Lenovo IdeaPad 530S
The Lenovo IdeaPad 530S is, in theory, a mainstream laptop in a Thin and Light laptop’s clothes. What that means is that it comes with specs that could easily belong to a mainstream laptop but measures only as much as any other Thin and Light out there. We were confident the new and improved IdeaPad would bag the award, but alas! It lost points on our grading sheet in the battery department by scoring only half as much as the Dell XPS.
For a segment where the main criteria is portability, that’s a major drawback for any candidate looking to bag the top position. It’s still a very capable machine though. The IdeaPad 530S features an 8th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe solid-state drive. Graphics is taken care of by an NVIDIA GeForce MX 150 GPU with 2GB of video RAM. Due to the few shortcomings, it has as compared to the Dell XPS 13, the 2018 Lenovo IdeaPad 530S is the Zero1 runner-up for this year.
Editor’s Pick:
HP Spectre x360
A steady sub-brand of HP now, the Spectre brand was created only a couple of years ago. It now stands for the slimmest and sharpest laptops from the house of HP. The Spectre x360 offers great performance and a long battery life for the price it demands. It’s powered by an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and 16GB of DDR4 RAM.
Storage is handled by a 512GB PCIe solid-state drive. Graphics is taken care of by an integrated Intel GPU. It weighs 1.26 kilogrammes and has support for styluses like the HP Pen, which means it’s a convertible laptop at heart. This particular ability sets it apart from the other entrants in the category. We believe the HP Spectre x360 is this year’s Zero1 Editor’s Pick.
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Vignesh Giridharan
Progressively identifies more with the term ‘legacy device’ as time marches on. View Full Profile
