They're not the lightest, thinnest, or most beefed up Ultrabooks we've ever seen, but the new U-Series are stylish and more affordable than most others we've seen recently, including Lenovo's original IdeaPad Ultrabook, the , which started at the incredible price of over $1500. The lower U-Series prices are due in large part to the use of a traditional hard disk drive (500GB) instead of a more expensive solid state drive. (A faster 32GB SSD is also available in the new Ultrabooks to speed up boot times).

Lenovo isn't the only one breaking the $800 price barrier. start at $769.99 for the 13.3-inch model , and Toshiba has announced a 14-inch starting at $749.

While these two laptops meet the lightweight and thinness requirements of the Ultrabook brand (under 0.8 inches thick and weight under 4 pounds), like the IdeaPad U-Series, these Ultrabooks get to the lower price point by using hybrid storage (a small SSD for the operating system and larger traditional hard drive for everything else).

Otherwise, both Ultrabooks sport aluminum casing and an array of full ports including USB 3.0 and HDMI. The Satellite U830 adds a backlit keyboard and HD display, while Sony points out the VAIO T's 7.5-hour battery life.