Samsung Ativ Q

Man the barricades -- Samsung's newest Windows 8 laptops have landed on UK shores, and are currently working their way into British shops.

The Ativ Book 9 Lite is on sale in the UK today, available to snap up from Currys and PC World, as well as John Lewis and Samsung's own-brand shop in London's Westfield Stratford.

The Lite has a 13.3-inch touchscreen with a 1,366x768-pixel display, a quad-core processor clocked at up to 1.4GHz, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. You can opt for a version without a touchscreen if you want, but Windows 8 is definitely designed with finger-prodding in mind.

Samsung pegs battery life at 8.5 hours for the no-touchscreen version, but expect power to be sapped faster if you're watching video or performing other intensive tasks.

If the Lite doesn't sound exciting enough for you, Samsung promises that its big brother -- the Ativ Book 9 Plus -- will be on sale from the end of August.

This souped-up model has the same-sized screen, but gets you a blistering 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, as well as an Intel Core i5 processor. It's lighter and slimmer than the Lite model too, though expect to pay considerably more for the privilege.

Samsung reckons the Plus model will last 12 hours before crying out for its charging cable, but again, expect that to dwindle if you start getting involved with more intensive computing.

To see both laptops in action, check out the hands-on video below, and let me know which is your favourite -- and whether you're keen on Windows 8 -- by way of the comments or our Facebook wall.