As close to an Ultrabook as you can get without technically being one, weighs about 5 pounds or less, it's less than an inch thick when closed, and has very good battery life -- 3-6 hours depending on what's being used. Plus you get 15.5" display and a CD/DVD drive.
The bottom panel & cover, internal skeletal frame and main body top plate (the plate around the keyboard & touchpad, are thin stiff magnesium alloy metal. The top of the lid is too but the bezel seems to
be plastic. the bezel is the same brushed aluminum color so some might find it somewhat distracting. Everything is designed to save weight so think thin. Can't tell yet if that means less sturdy; I've had some pretty bulky, heavy laptops that had weak hinges, lids, bottom panels, etc.
Screen is a matte finish so no distracting reflections but not quite as sharp and intense a picture as a glossy screen.
The IPS screen has even backlighting and good brightness and picture quality over a wide viewing angle horizontal and vertical, plenty wide enough for laptop use anyway. Colors are a bit weird:  the green pixels tend towards lime and the red ones towards orange, even after fine tuning calibrations with a SypderPro. This lime/orange shift in phosphor colors makes for very nice skin tones in photos and videos but "pure" tone graphics look a bit odd until you learn to ignore the color shifts.
The so-called "fast boot" relies on hybrid standby; the best or worst of both worlds depending on your taste-- not as fast as regular standby but not as slow as hibernation; and uses more power than true hibernation, which uses none.
The speakers are small, so they are not capable of producing sound as well as, e.g., Toshibas, which tend to use larger speakers. If you want really good sound, though, you're crazy to rely on those little things in laptops--if you're serious about sound quality, get some good earphones or headphones regardless of what laptop you have.
The cooling fan vent is in the center of the back of the main body. The lid when tilted back is partially in front of the vent, however even during some intense and prolonged operations, fan output was never great enough that the lid was appreciably obstructing air flow. However, half the vent opening is pointed downward and that portion of the vent is covered by the sheet battery when that extra battery is installed. If you’re concerned you could cut away a small bit if the sheet battery plate that covers the lower vent opening. I never experienced an overheating issue. The most heat came from the hard disk during several hours of constant disk activity, but using the SMART disk sensors, the drive temp never got out of a healthy range. This machine does not appear to have any heat problems, which goes hand in hand with long battery times. The fan never became noticeably loud although one can set it for cooling priority instead of temp control priority. I don’t see a need to change it.
 
the hard disk is only a 5400 RPM drive.  The unit would perform much faster with a 7200 RPM hard drive or with an SSD or a hybrid, although this would shorten battery time.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 800
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50