There was a time when spending upwards of 70 grand on a laptop made sense only if it had a bitten apple on the lid. All that’s changed recently with two new laptops from Asus and Dell that not only push the thin-and-light envelope, but offer features that give Apple a run for its money. If a no-compromise Windows laptop is what you want, these are the two you should be eyeing.

Asus ZenBook UX305LA
I’ve been a big fan of the Asus’ ZenBook series since the UX305 launched earlier this year, and so I wondered how much Asus could change under the hood given the original had this slim all-metal construction that rivalled the MacBook Air in sleekness and finish. Turns out quite a lot — gone are the strictly mid-range internals replaced by a high-end Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory and a capacious 512GB of flash storage. The chip is fast enough to handle pretty much anything you throw at it, but it runs a bit hot and can compromise the nearly 10-hour battery life under pressure. Bear in mind, the integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics can only offer so much, so don’t expect it to be spectacular for gaming. No backlit keyboard is a shame. Yet, the biggest jump for me has to be the amazing 3,200 x 1,800 pixel matte-finish LED-backlit display — pretty much everything you do on this is just pin-sharp and Windows 10 looks gorgeous on this display. Just one hitch though — no touchscreen option, though it’s not a deal-breaker for me. Top notch hardware at a shade under a lakh (and significantly cheaper than the Dell XPS 13 and equivalent MacBook Pros) — the UX305LA has all the right ingredients.
 
Dell XPS 13
Even as I was pretty impressed with the Asus, the Dell XPS 13 is something you have to see to believe. It packs a 13.3-inch screen into a machined-aluminium form factor typical of a laptop with an 11.6-inch display, and it does so by featuring an amazingly tiny bezel around the display that gives it an edge-to-edge effect. It’s compact, and tips the scales at just under 1.2kg — but there isn’t anything missing from the laptop. A proper keyboard with full-sized keys, USB 3.0 ports, a card reader and a 13.3-inch 3,200 x 1,800-pixel touch display that’s super sharp but lacks the fancy hinge tricks that allow the screen to lean back beyond 150-degrees. The mid-range 5th Generation Core i5 and the Intel HD 5500 graphics means it gets stuff done adequately, but it’s not exceptional hardware. It runs Windows 8.1 which qualifies for a free Windows 10 upgrade, though I’d have much preferred to see it run Windows 10 from the word go. If a touchscreen and a tiny form factor is critical for you and your pockets are deep, the XPS is a pretty neat option.
Asus ZenBook UX305LA
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 97,990
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-AsusUX305LA
Dell XPS 13
♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 1.17 lakh
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-DellXPS13

Photo call

For a scrappy Chinese start-up, OnePlus has consistently impressed with its first two phones (the One and the 2), but both were a bit of a handful with their 5.5-inch screens. The OnePlus X, thus, piqued my curiosity — it took the 2014-spec innards of the OnePlus One, including the somewhat-aging-yet-still-capable Snapdragon 801 chip and 3GB of memory, and packed it into a more compact 6.9mm frame. The size cut has meant the X fits well in my hand, and I quite like the glass finish and metal frame, although there is more than a passing resemblance to the iPhone 4s of yore.

Switch it on, and the 5-inch AMOLED screen is impressive in terms of sharpness and vibrant colours. The X runs the company’s own Oxygen OS, which is very similar to vanilla Android 5.1.1, and this is both a boon and a burden. Sure, it does enable some unique features such as app permissions and screen gestures, but there are a number of rough edges that simply should have been fixed prior to release — though these can be fixed via software updates. The only major complaint was with the camera — while it takes colour accurate pictures, they lack in detail and clarity, and image noise is aplenty — a real shame for an otherwise capable device. Fix this, OnePlus and the X gets a recco from me. 
♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 16,999
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-OnePlusX

technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar