Netbooks vs UMPC vs Ultraportable Laptops

In Small Mini Laptops, we cover every laptop computers that are 13-inch or below in size. We generally call them mini laptops, but in fact, they can be further categorized into 3 main groups: netbook, UMPC, and ultraportable laptops. In this post, we will briefly explain the definition and differences between these 3 laptop categories.


Netbook is a new term in laptop industry that's becoming popular in recent years. It's a small and low-cost computer that is primarily designed for web browsing and e-mailing, and is relying heavily on the Internet for remote access to web-based applications. Compare to standard-size laptops, netbook has lower processing power (generally run on Intel Atom CPU), lower battery capacity, and lack of certain standard features in normal-size laptop such as optical/CDs/DVDs drive. Apparently, the most attractive characteristic of a netbook is the low-price which generally falls below $500, and can go as low as $200+. Size wise, netbook normally comes with either 8.9-inch or 10-inch screen. Some of the popular netbooks in today's market includes Asus Eee PC, Acer Aspire One, Samsung NC10, and MSI Wind.


UMPC stands for Ultra-Mobile PC. It was originated from project Origami launched by Microsoft, Intel, Samsung, and a few others in 2006. The form factor for UMPC is defined as touchscreen mini-tablet smaller than eight inches with a resolution of at least 800 pixels wide. Due to their tiny size, many UMPCs comes with on-screen virtual keyboard instead of physical keyboard. Some UMPCs feature Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, webcams, fingerprint readers, stereo speakers, TV tuners, and memory card readers. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and WWAN connections are sometimes included as well.


Ultraportable laptop is basically a full-featured laptop, but with smaller size -- normally less than 14 inches screen, and weigh less than 2 kg (4.4 lbs). Other than size, an ultraportable laptop will have similar processing power and features as other standard laptops. Examples of ultraportable laptops includes the 13-inch Dell XPS, and the SR series, Z series, and TT series of Sony VAIO.

And that basically cover the 3 major categories of mini laptop that will be the main focus of this blog. Hope you get a clearer picture for each categories of mini laptop now after reading this post!