If Apple's Macbook Air is the poster-child for 'form-over-function,' and Lenovo's X300 its utilitarian cousin, Samsung's X360 falls somewhere in between on the 13.3-inch wafter-thin ultraportable family tree, serving as another solid, though somewhat underwhelming choice according to TrustedReviews' full write-up. It's hampered by a disappointing 1280 x 800 glossy screen and an under-performing 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU.

Yet, despite its undoubted excellent performance, we've agonised over our conclusions for the X360 more than most notebooks. This is because it treads an awkwardly fine middle ground in the ultra-portable market. Despite the 'lighter than air' taglines, the X360 isn't really a strict competitor to the MacBook Air. It just doesn't fit. Fine, it's 13 inches, it's slim and its light, but its good looks aren't the fashion statement that the MacBook Air's are and as such those wanting the latter probably won't look twice at the X360.

On the flip side, though it courts the executive market with features like a Trusted Platform module, docking port and fingerprint reader, the presence of a glossy screen and glossy plastic innards are things that won't endear the X360 to that more demanding market.

Instead, what Samsung seems to have produced is a sort of 'entry-level' ultra-portable - if such a concept doesn't sound too absurd. It has most of the ingredients of the more expensive efforts, but while the X360 costs less than £1,400 with a 128GB SSD, it's nigh-on impossible to find the ThinkPad X301 (the updated X300 with 128GB SSD), the MacBook Air, Toshiba's incoming Prot�g� R600 or the Sony VAIO TT for much less than £1,800 with the same storage option.