Back in October we caught sight of the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix, an 11.6-inch slate Ultrabook with a dockable keyboard. Now, as CES begins, Lenovo has made the thus far elusive unit official, including the starting price ($1499) and release date (late February).

I’m testing the Lenovo Yoga 13 right now. It’s a great Ultrabook but not such a great tablet. Maybe that’s why Lenovo have just launched the Ideapad Yoga 11S with a “new low power lineup from Intel”. Could this be one of the new low-power Core CPUs? Update: Yes. See this article.

We’re expecting a number of Ultrabook refreshes over the CES 2013 week and here’s the first of them. The Lenovo U310 and U410 are getting a touchscreen upgrade. Liliputing reports a fairly straightforward refresh with 1366×768 touchscreens on both the Lenovo U310 and U410 and starting prices of $779 and $850 respectively. There will be an optional Nvidia GeForce module on the U410. Availability is said to be March. We’re assuming all CES info is for the US market only so other markets may get different timescales.

Thanks to guest poster Ef Jay (@efjay01) we’ve got an owner review of the Asus Vivo Tab, the Clovertrail based Windows 8 Tablet. The Asus Vivo Tab is another entrant in the Clovertrail-powered range of Windows 8 hybrid tablet devices designed to offer an experience that covers productivity use with “legacy inch Windows 7 x86 programs and the new Modern style apps from the Windows store while offering the long battery life advantages of ARM devices. I’ve been using it for over a month and here is my review.

As Pocket-Link points out, just before CES Samsung has announced an addition to their Series 7 lineup, the Series 7 Ultra — an Ultrabook targeted toward professionals who need performance, battery life, and mobility.

OK, maybe this post is a bit late as tech journalists count down the last few hours to press day at CES 2013 but it was something I put together last night as I thought about what Ultrabook i’d like to have if I had been there this year. I wonder how many bloggers and journos are already using Ultrabooks at CES. It would be very interesting to walk through the press rooms and take a straw poll. If you’re reporting from CES 2013 and have 30 seconds, let us […]

  This ground-breaking integration of Windows 8 and PC hardware will change the way you use a PC and it’s likely to be an Ultrabook-exclusive for much of 2013 and 2014. Connected Standby is ‘on’ for Windows 8 apps when the PC is ‘off.’ It means you can run Windows 8 applications like Skype to provide voice and video services when your PC is in your bag, and much more.

The HP Elitebook Folio has been getting some good reviews. I had some hands-on last September and I was impressed at the build and pro-level features. A 54Wh battery and additional slate battery give it some good adaptor-free flexibility too but it was disappointing to see a 1366×768 on such a device. That problem should be solved soon though as HP are going to offer a 1600×900 options soon.