Lavie Z, world's lightest Ultrabook weighs 875 grams

Ultrabooks are slowly but surely getting into the notebook segment. They are emphasizing more on portability - the key aspect of a laptop, than previous generation notebooks. NEC personal computers have announced a new Ultrabook, the Lavie Z, which according to the company, is the world's lightest Ultrabook.

The Lavie Z notebook weighs just 875 grams, which is incredibly light for a laptop. The other specs of the device include a 13.3-inch display and a battery that can charge upto 80 percent in one hour. The display resolution is a cool 1600 x 900 pixels and the ultrabook comes in two variants: one with a Core i7-3517U processor and 256 GB of SSD storage; the other with a Core i5 - 3317U processor and 128 GB of SSD storage. There is 4 GB of RAM on both variants. Other features of the Lavie Z include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a 720p webcam. "Quick power on" gives you an on time of about 2 seconds. There's a 'Network Duet' feature that can share data with a second PC as well.

NEC have also underlined the initiatives they took for the weight reduction of this laptop. The company adopted what they claim is the world's first lithium magnesium alloy that makes it lightweight. They have also included a die cast magnesium housing that has given it a further 0.5mm - 0.6mm thinness. The laptop has an integrated display enclosure design and the housing is assembled directly with the components of the display contributing to a narrower frame. Next, to achieve a thinner profile, instead of using a keyboard that has to be attached to a unitized body, NEC introduced an integrated design. This design assembled the keyboard parts to the housing directly. The laptop is incredibly thin as well, with the thickest part measuring 14.9 mm. From the bunch of Ultrabooks that we have reviewed in the recent past, the Toshiba Portege is the only one that comes close to the Lavie Z with a weight of 1.12 kg. The Asus Zenbook UX31 too has an incredibly thin profile, but an extremely high price tag. It'll be interesting to see the retail cost of the Lavie Z.

The launch date of the Lavie Z laptop has been set to August 23, 2012. Its pricing and availability have not been disclosed yet. How much would you be willing to pay for a laptop so thin and light? Let us know in the comments section below.