The best ultraportable, ultra-flexible hybrids

Ultraportable laptops with 11.6-inch displays are common enough, but there's been a surprising number this year that double as touchscreen tablets. Keeping costs well under $500, these models all feature variations on the fold-back hinge originally made popular by the Lenovo Yoga line, combined with Intel Atom, Celeron, or Pentium CPUs.

The Dell Inspiron 11 3000 takes the expensive XPS 11 and strips it back to just essentials for a decent price, but without sacrificing the 360-degree hinges for its laptop-to-tablet-and-back-again design. While currently unavailable on Dell's UK site, you can pick up certain configurations in Australia for AU$600. A good keyboard and large touchpad make it one of our favorites in this category.

HP's version of the fold-back hinge starts at $400 (£330 in the UK; AU$600 in Australia), which means it runs Intel Pentium chips, rather than the more mainstream Core i-series CPUs. The design and build quality are good for the price, but the dim screen has poor off-axis viewing angles.

This unusual system combines several laptop trends, offering a fold-back hinge in the Yoga style, a touch screen, and Google's Chrome operating system. It's a clever idea, but note that the chassis is especially heavy, as this is designed to be rugged for school use.

Like the recent 13-inch Yoga 2, this version keeps the 360-degree fold-back hinge from previous-gen Yogas, but cuts some of the higher-end features. It's still reasonably thin and light for a budget ultraportable, so of the less expensive models here, this one has our favorite design.

The N20p has an 11.6-inch 1,366x768 display, and adds a touchscreen, a feature found on only a handful of Chromebooks (such as the Acer C720p and Lenovo's own Thinkpad Yoga 11e).  The hinge is similar to the one used on the IdeaPad Flex line. That means the display can fold back up to 300 degrees, so it's not exactly a Yoga-style system, but it's close.