I purchased this laptop after my Thinkpad from 6 years ago finally gave up the ghost. What I wanted in a laptop was something that was very portable, but didn't compromise any system specifications in making it so. I decided to purchase this laptop after a little bit of thinking, since it has some really solid system specifications. Granted, it's only been a few weeks, but overall I have been quite pleased with the purchase.
Display/Speakers
The 14 inch screen is nice and bright, and has 1366x768 max resolution. For me, this resolution is perfect. Probably what I like the most about the display is the matte finish. Glossy finishes may be snazzy and shiny, for those who are attracted to shiny things, but the matte finish really makes it much easier to see the display in daylight. The speakers are pretty much what you'd expect for laptop speakers.
Keyboard/Trackpad
I have to admit that prior to purchasing this laptop I was wary of the keyboard, since the display unit in the store had a lot of keyboard flex. When I got home, however, I have been pleased to report that the flex on this computer is nearly non-existent. It took me a little bit to become accustomed to the shallow keyboard, since on my last laptop, the keyboard felt like a regular desktop keyboard. Now that I have become accustomed to the shallow profile, I've found that the keyboard is quite good. There are things that can be improved, like backlighting, and including some kind of an indicator on the hardware that you have caps lock on instead of relying on the short-lived on-screen notification. I did have to adjust the settings on the trackpad to address accidental palm touches while typing, but after making the adjustment (the manual details how to get to the necessary screen), I have no real issues. On the subject of the trackpad, it's quite large, and plenty sensitive. The trackpad is programmed by default to respond to gestures similar to what you'd expect for MacBook. While it wasn't directly discussed in the manual how to set the trackpad for scrolling based on edge input on the trackpad, I was able to get to the correct settings menu to enable this feature. The trackpad has two buttons, instead of what you see many times now with laptops where the buttons are a part of the touchpad.
Cooling
This is probably my favorite part of this computer. Historically I have not necessarily been good to my laptops when it comes to cooling. I tend to compute in bed. I suspect that a good portion of my former laptop's issues were actually because I didn't let it properly cool. Regardless, I am quite pleased with this computer's cooling system. It is completely silent. Completely. I can hear it, just barely, if I put the computer right next to my ear. It's that quiet. The cooling system uses vents that are located on the bottom and ejects the heated air into the hinge. Even then, the heated air isn't really all that hot. It's more slightly warm air. I will say that if you use the computer for hours on end, you will notice the keyboard becoming slightly warm, but in terms of warm laptops, this is not a temperature I typically concern myself with. I've been watching the internal temperature too, and I've never seen it go above 68C, most of the time being around 50C, and that's when running some processor-intense programs.
Performance/Ports/bloatware/wireless card
As far as the performance goes This is definitely the best performing machine I've ever owned, probably even the best performing that I've ever used. The SSD in combination with the quad core processor makes this a very enjoyable experience. After getting my computer set up, it took 23 seconds to completely boot up, and 6 seconds to return from sleep. This was before running a boot time optimization setting that Samsung includes with the computer. For the sake of ....ahem... research, I even ran this laptop through a grueling test the Civilization V test. The computer handled the middle-of-the-road graphics settings like a pro. I didn't try the higher-level graphics, but I wouldn't be surprised if it performed well under those circumstances as well. The computer has a smattering of ports, none of which I've had a chance to use yet save the USB ports, but I will surely be happy that they're there when I need them. The same kind of philosophy applies for the DVD drive. While I don't use it every day, I do use it for things like backups, and am happy to have the option. The wireless works flawlessly. I actually get a much better signal reading on the laptop than I do on my other devices, and that's when the devices are directly next to the laptop. I will say that I am a bit disappointed that Samsung chose to include bloatware on this otherwise fabulous machine. Luckily I was able to uninstall them, but it's frustrating nevertheless. Also, one of the big draws to this machine was the large internal hard drive. Never again will I have to be worried about a full hard drive.
Size and Weight/Aesthetics/Price
This is an ultrabook. Make no mistakes. It is thin, lightweight, looks like a real charmer, and costs about what you'd expect for an ultrabook. Actually, comparing to other machines, I'd say that for an ultrabook this is reasonably priced. Yes, it has a 14 inch screen. Yes, it's a little bit thicker than other ultrabooks on the market. Yes, it's a touch heavier than other ultrabooks on the market. But there's a trade-off between the ultimate thin and light machine and an overall robust machine. You get a heavier machine with the larger screen, with the hard drive, with the DVD drive. Would I rather skip those items to get a slightly lighter machine? No. This model is already very portable.
Summary Positive/Negatives
All in all, it's a really good machine. I had to do some configuration work out of the box. Aside from that and overall, some pretty minor complaints, this is a real gem.
Positives:
Thin, light, portable
500gb hard drive
FAST
Great cooling system
Nice 14 inch display with a matte finish
overall comfortable keyboard, minimal flex
Negatives:
-Keyboard is not backlight
-Needed to make minor adjustments to trackpad settings out of the box
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After I'd operated with a decent late 2009-vintage gaming laptop for home primary use and a netbook for my commute, and having built a gaming desktop, I found myself wanting to make some changes in how I operate my computers. I'm a systems engineer/administrator and really, really persnickity about my technology needs, and I'd already sampled the Asus Zenbook and Acer Aspire S3 completely unusable if you're a decent typist. The HP Folio 13 seems to garner high reviews, but I have serious distrust of their support and build quality, reviews aside.
In any case, I ordered the Samsung Series 5. This is a good ultrabook if you don't need it to store all the data you'll ever have the SSD is an amazing performer, but it's small after Samsung's recovery partition is set up. If you're an advanced user, you can delete it and probably have the wherewithal to do a barebones Win 7 install from the ground up. But if you're like me and want one travel notebook and don't mind not being able to play hardcore 3D games on it, you could do a lot worse in an ultrabook. 802.11n wireless networking performance over a Verizon FiOS router/modem is quite nice and USB 3.0 improved the performance of my main flash drive.
The keyboard is perfect, and Samsung chose to go with a nicely sized Elan multitouch touchpad instead of the clickpad that other ultrabooks and laptops are using to ape Mac products. I like this layout I never have to worry about resting one thumb on a button and having it impact touchpad use. Two easily-clickable buttons, a well-customizable multitouch touchpad, and a very good keyboard without the quirky sensitivity of the Zenbook means this is probably one of the best typing ultrabooks on the market today. The only drawback: it's not backlit. I'm a good typist so normal use isn't an issue, but it's been a minor fumble to adjust the brightness in the dark.
Appearance: 4 out of 5
Samsung has done a decent job of making a nice, sexy looking laptop. I dock it because the outer materials feel like plastic. I can't tell if it's metal with a plastic veneer, but it is definitely not the smooth black metallic surface of the way more expensive Series 9. However, it's not the chintzy plastic of the Toshiba Z830 or Z835. The surfaces blend well into each other and the front part of the laptop has a curve that lips upward from the bottom part. It had a lot of wow factor when I showed it to my co-workers. Moreover, Samsung proves that it knows people will be using this ultrabook in environments where lights are lit up no glossy screen here! I could clearly see the display with the sun shining behind me on the train. The 1366x768 resolution display is perfectly fine for 720p HD video, and the integrated graphics would probably have issues with real 1080p content anyway.
Portability: 5 out of 5
Okay, this should be the singular standard by which a current 13.3" ultrabook is measured. My Asus T101MT convertible netbook was 2.8lbs to the Series 5's 3.24lbs. The Asus was smaller, leading it to feel denser when it was in my light-load single-strap ergo backpack with my rooted Touchpad, papers, and small load of tech tools. I don't feel the weight difference since the Series 5's weight is well distributed for its size. I can carry it in one hand for a decent amount of time while walking around.
Functionality: 4 out of 5
This is a beastly performer of a laptop, I won't lie. I timed it over three cold boots and it went from no power whatsoever to a usable Windows desktop services and startup applications launched and running on an average of 17.375 seconds. This is phenomenal for any machine; I've only gotten close to that on my homebuilt PC when it was fresh, and that boots off a Kingston SSD. I'm told no direct means to confirm yet that the SSD itself is Samsung components, as is its controller. It loses points, though, for battery life: with wireless on and connected, a hi10p h.264 MKV video playing, 9 Google Chrome tabs open (one of which is Google Docs and the other is a Java IRC session) with the screen at medium brightness, it projects battery life at 100% charge to be 4 hours, 15 minutes. While that's better than my netbook, which had a lower-voltage processor, I was hoping that throttling down to "Silent mode" would increase battery life. Also, it has noticeable heat on the bottom left hand part of the laptop. It's not as bad as it could be, but I wish there was more of a spaced-out means of letting the heat venilate. It felt OK on my leg, though, but sitting on a memory-foam sleeve caused it to heat up noticeably.
Software/bloatware: 3 out of 5
There's a lot of crap on this laptop. If you're Joe Consumer, it's safe for you to uninstall Norton Antivirus and use the free, effective Microsoft Security Essentials. If you're an IT professional, you're going to tear your hair out over how much Samsung-proprietary crap is required to get basic usage out of the laptop. The brightness, volume, and wireless network switches are all function keys that won't just do their job with a driver no, you have to keep a Samsung utility installed. Really frustrating. It's not as bad as HP, though, and probably better than Dell's future ultrabook offering. If you know what you're doing you can extend the life of this ultrabook greatly by removing the junk.
Overall, I can't instantly recommend this ultrabook. I really would have liked to have tried an HP Folio 13 after cleaning off the bloatware, or better yet the Dell XPS 13 coming down the pipe soon. For $1100, though about $200 more than the Folio I think I can rest easy with this ultrabook. I may get the Folio and return whichever falls within the Amazon return period, but this is one hell of a machine that has really launched a missile at the Macbook Air in terms of design, usability, portability, and sexiness.
Also, just an FYI when I stopped playing the video and just typed this review, my battery life jumped to 5 hours 21 minutes with 86% remaining. That's with wireless on and display at medium. This is really on or close to Samsung's approximate 6 hour life span and, to me, way impressive. This is a real keeper of a machine!
Edit: (2/29/12) Added a note about the keyboard not being backlit.
Edit: (6/18/12) The speakers have been giving me constant problems. The right speaker simply stops working and restores itself after indeterminate and different amounts of time five minutes, three or so days, etc. It's covered under the warranty but I don't have a portable enough laptop to use for work. I'm really not happy with this issue and would urge future Series 5 Ultra buyers to beware.
Edit (8/28/12) I make this edit after traumatic experiences with Samsung support. Based on the failures I've encountered I've lost a lot of trust in Samsung as a company and am extremely, EXTREMELY wary about buying any other products.
After the speaker issue above persisted, the trackpad simply failed to recognize any input on August 4th. I work in IT so I was able to do all the basics uninstall/reinstall drivers, test external mice, play around with sensitivity, etc. When I called 1-800-SAMSUNG the rep on the phone at least didn't make me jump through hoops. He set up a repair at a depot, and while it was about 20 miles away, their hours didn't jive with my work schedule. I sent the laptop in for service on August 6th.
On August 16, it came back, but no better for the wear. The sound and trackpad are fine, but whoever put it back together did so with a small divot pushing UP FROM THE INSIDE OF THE PALMREST. As in there was about a 1-cm raised pimple-like protrusion coming upwards. Moreover, the wireless network card was degraded to uselessness I only got two bars when I was three feet from my router with clear line of sight (my wife was two rooms away and had four). I performed the usual troubleshooting, called Samsung back, and got a new ticket to send it back in, and I send it in on 8/17. On 8/20, the Samsung repair tracker shows that the laptop was received and service was again in progress.
Another week passes or so passes. Yesterday (8/28) it comes back. I open it up and push the power button nothing. Okay, maybe it's just fully discharged. I plug it in to AC power and instead of the usual orange charging light, I get a green light. Uh-oh.
Powering it on, it boots normally, but the battery indicator shows "no battery connected" and if I disconnect AC power... off it goes. Since it's an ultrabook, the battery is sealed inside the unit and it isn't the kind of laptop that you can take apart without a service manual which, of course, isn't anywhere to be found online.
I called 1-800-SAMSUNG, gave them my ticket numbers, and requested that they advance-exchange the laptop: send me a new one, I send back the continually defective one. I'm given a transaction number and am sent to Executive Customer Relations. There, I'm told that their policy forbids any action on a defective laptop unless it's evaluated by a Samsung tech... the same techs who made things less useful each time I've sent it in.
They can make no offers of a rental in the meantime, no offer to see what can be done. I ask to speak to a manager, and after a few minutes, none are found and they ask my info for a call back the next day.
At noon the next day, rounding out a month without a laptop, I call back and am told again no supervisor is available. "They may be talking to other people or unable to assist," I'm told. "They're very busy." Not as busy as I've had to be, catching up on work due to lost time since my laptop is, well, not portable or usable anymore after each repair visit. It's out of the timeframe for me to file a chargeback on my credit card and Amazon doesn't have any options to put pressure on Samsung.
I sent my story to Consumerist in hopes that it might get some kind of response. Failing that, my only real option is to start mass-mailing Samsung execs and Cc the media in hopes of prodding them into action. This laptop performed great until it had the gall to require basic repair. Don't even waste the $800 they now charge not worth the hassle.
Best Deals for Samsung Series 5 NP530U3B-A02US 13.3-Inch Ultrabook (Silver)
I bought this laptop for my wife at best buy.
She wanted a thin and light laptop preferably with a dvd drive (although personally I think a dvd drive is not really essential anymore these days)
I looked at a lot of "ultrabooks", including the acer s3, the asus zenbook, and so on.
This Samsung sticks out for 3 reasons:
1. it has a dvd drive
2. its 14 inches instead of 11 or 13,3 inches like most "ultrabooks
3. and most importantly it has a matte screen (more about that later)
While Samsung likes to call this an ultrabook (when you start up the first time, you even get a pop-up with the word Ultrabook and the Intel logo), this laptop does not qualify the Intel standards of an ultrabook. While its light, its heavier then the other ultrabooks (the dvd drive and the 14 inch screen are to blame).
Something what I found very nice is the adapter that comes with the laptop. While they are normally very bulky and heavy, the power adapter is very small (about 1/4 of my Sony Vaio adapter) and light. An extra benefit for when you are carrying this laptop with you.
This laptop comes equipped with a 500gb hard drive and a 16gb ssd from Sandisk for the booting and waking up. This makes that the laptop boots rather fast (20 to 30 seconds) but all other tasks go on normal speed (because of the normal hard drive). The fact that it doesn't have a full pledge ssd drive has it advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side you have more storage (500 gb), on the min side, its less fast.
The biggest plus and the main reason to choose this "ultrabook" is the fact that it has a matte screen. Samsung seems to be the only laptop manufacturer for the moment that understands the need for this kind of laptop to have a non reflective screen. The whole idea of making laptops more portable is so you can bring them everywhere and use whenever and wherever you want. Now you can also do this in daylight. The viewing angles are also very good.
I did have a problem with the Wifi on this model. This is however not Samsung's fault but with the intel wireless card. I had to change a setting in my verizon router (disable the qos) for it to make a stable connection with my network (took me a while to figure this out), but luckily there is google and other people with similar problems :-)
overall this is a very good laptop. the build quality is very nice. Its heavier then other ultrabooks. If you want a lighter more portable one, I suggest you look at the 13,3 inch version of this model (you do loose the dvd drive)
One last thing. On the forum here on Amazon there was some confusion about the graphics. Some press releases by Samsung mention that this model comes equipped with a separate graphics card (also mentioned in the Amazon description), this is however not the case. It has the intel shared graphics. Its more then enough for the daily stuff, but you will not be playing the latest games with this machine (the bottleneck for the Windows rating was the graphics, by the way)
Honest reviews on Samsung Series 5 NP530U3B-A02US 13.3-Inch Ultrabook (Silver)
I bought the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook 14Inch a few weeks after its release. I was extremely excited to use it as soon as I got it. This ultrabook is promising and gives a lot of the things it mentions, but one thing I do not like about this notebook is the heating system. The vent is in the bottom of the laptop, and another one is located in between the speaker, allowing the heat to release above. I was worried that it may overheat, so I bought a cooling pad. My predictions were true. This laptop ONLY overheats when you charge it while in use. I recommend you turn off your laptop when you decide to charge it, because it gets extremely hot. But after you've finished charging, you can take off the plug, and use it normally. The heat stays neutral and you cant feel the hotness anymore.
So, this is the only thing I absolutely HATE about this laptop, is the cooling vent, because it's located in the bottom & becomes hot when you use your laptop as the same time you charge it.
--Edit
After owning this laptop for approximately 6months, I believe the heating had gotten worse, to the point where it had melted a portion of my video card chip set. A few minutes of using this laptop, the pictures & colors becomes disoriented and I always had to restart it to get its original colors back. There are also times when it fully turns white for a couple of minutes which has got to be the most frustrating thing ever, since I'd have to wait for the screen to load back. These started to happen two weeks ago. It has a one year warranty so I'm getting it checked up, but hopefully it doesn't happen to any of you. I shall provide pictures of it below.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Samsung Series 5 NP530U3B-A02US 13.3-Inch Ultrabook (Silver)
I did a lot of kicking around for a lot of the so-called ultrabooks. I know...some wouldn't consider this an ultrabook, but nevermind that. What I wanted was a lightweight laptop with a good battery life. I chose the Samsung Series 5 Ultra because it offered all of that, and still gave me a decent sized hard drive (I got the version with the 500Gig). Peformance wise, the SSD cache drive really makes a major impact over a traditional hard drive. You won't notice it initially...but after using it for a few days, the system seems to cache out the files I use the most and it really makes an impact on load times for your favorite apps (email, twitter, web browser, Lightroom, etc). Of course at a later date, i can always upgrade the hard drive (confirmed by Samsung) when the SSD drives are more economical and a bit larger. But that's neither here nor there.
I really like the keyboard. Coming from a more traditional laptop keyboard, the island design and the short travel of the keys took some getting used to. But it has a better more tactile feel than I'm used to, and it's really accurate. I type really fast and have no experienced any problems with the keyboard. My only complaint about the keyboard is that I wish I had dedicated page up, page down, home and end buttons (you have to do a key-combination with the 'Fn' button). albeit, there's not a lot of real-estate for such keys...but even so. I also wish the wifi button was mapped to just turn the wifi off/on...instead it pulls up the configuration manager, so that's an extra step.
The track pad is a really good quality track pad. It suppors multi-touch, and so things like zooming and scrolling are very easy (two finger slide down to scroll, pinch to zoom, etc). It's also very large with makes for easy use. However, it does take some getting used to. The upper edge is very close to the keys, and so I find myself lazily resting one of my fingers on the upper-right corner of the pad, which means when I'm trying to move with my other finger, I'm actually pinch-zooming, which is kinda annoying. But that's habitual and nothing necessarily wrong with the laptop. Besides, I shouldn't be resting my hands on the laptop in that way anyhow (bad posture). EDIT: One minor annoyance...if you start typing, or if you are holding a keyboard button, the trackpad locks up. I believe this is by design to prevent palm clicks or redirects, but there doesn't seem to be an option to change this behavior. Fro my needs, it's fine. But when it comes to gaming, this would limit the playability factor.
Let's talk battery life. By default, many of the battery saving settings are not enabled. So the first few days I thought the battery was mediocre...3-4 hours at best, and I was somewhat disappointed (and besides, I admit I never read the manual at the time). Then I discovered all of the battery saving features such as the power profiles (learn these, tweak these and use them) and some of the other tweaks. Now I'm getting 6 hours of battery life consistently. A bonus feature that I appreciate is that you can enable an option that preserves the longevity of the battery. It prevents the charger from charging the battery past 80%. Sure, you lose some battery time o the short term, but such a charging technique has been proven to increase the overall life of the battery. So I enable it, and I recommend that you should too. Side note about the charger it's small, very small. More than half the size of my old laptops "brick". Bonus.
Overall, it's a great laptop and I would recommend it to anyone. It has a few shortcomings for those of you who need a bit more performance, but this laptop (nor any of the ultrabooks) is designed for super high-performance. But I do really push this guy beyond limits. I use Photoshop and Photoshop lightroom regularly, I do play my fair share of games. And I love it.
