My job role has changed a bit in the past year and I'm traveling and doing presentations to potential clients. The thinness of the Series 9 is awesome for traveling, as is the battery life, but I decided to ditch the dreary no-frills Samsung and for an Acer Aspire R7. I'll put up a review of that whenever (if) it becomes available from Amazon.
****ORIGINAL REVIEW****
I'm replacing my 2009 model Dell Studio XPS 1640 that died on me with a bad motherboard hard drive connector :/
I'm a consultant for several clients in San Diego and I use my laptop for EVERYTHING, so not having one meant work stoppage for several days and I needed a new one QUICK. I went to best buy, frys electronics and for whatever reason, costco. I needed to try out every model I could to make a quick, but informed decision.
I went with the Samsung Series 9, mostly because the Series 7 they had at Best Buy caught my eye and nothing else I got my hands on really compared.
The Good:
Battery Life The battery isn't nearly broken in yet, I have been downloading and installing software like crazy, and I'm getting about 7 hours with brightness set to the middle setting. (See below). I'm used to about 1 hour and 45 minutes with the XPS, so 7 hours is astonishing, and when the battery is broken in I'm sure it will be a few hours longer.
Matte screen & brightness I can actually use this thing outside! It was absolutely impossible using my XPS outside because of the gloss screen and good-for-indoors brightness. OK so I'm not joking when I say this thing is bright. On full brightness it's actually somewhat painful to look at it if you're in a dark room. It's great if you're outside at high noon on a sunny day, but I don't see myself ever going above 2/3rd brightness indoors.
Weight 3.6 pounds, sounds a little hefty until you look at it with the screen closed and how much real estate it occupies on your desk. It truly is astonishingly light.
Thickness .58" thick. That's with the screen closed. I found that it is only slightly thicker than a BIC lighter laying on it's side. When you open the screen you'll be amazed at how unbelievably thin it is. It actually makes me a little uncomfortable when I open it, thinking that my meat hooks will break it. But not to worry, it's quite strong.
Build quality It's solid. When I un-boxed it I was worried because of how thin it is and my tendency to be rough on things. But the all metal body is very, very strong.
Boot time With the SSD you can expect about 14-16 seconds.
Wake from sleep With Intel Rapid Start Technology you can expect wake time to be around 2 seconds. Yeah...2 seconds. IRST uses a partition on the SSD that is the same size as your memory, (8,192MB for this ultrabook) and caches the memory to the partition when it goes to sleep. So it's ridiculously fast.
Heat I got the chassis of the ultrabook just barely warm, and that's sitting on a pillow on my lap, downloading, installing software and charging the battery. There's a silent setting on the keyboard (FN + F11) that throttles the processors so it doesn't generate enough heat to use the fans. I couldn't get the fans to turn onto a setting high enough to hear it when I was doing regular work so I'd be hard pressed to get this thing hot enough for the fans to be audible. Bottom line, it's nice typing on a keyboard that isn't +90*F, or having sweaty legs when you're using it on your lap.
The OK:
The I5 1.7 Ghz processor & video chip is ample for my needs: I use SQL Server Management Studio, Visual Studio 2010, remote desktop and of course browsing the web. It's not great for 3d applications, I use Google Sketchup Pro fairly often to design simple wireframe furniture when I'm away from my office and finish off the design on my desktop at home. But it's acceptable, but not as good as my old XPS when it was healthy.
The keyboard. I love, love, love the keyboard on my old XPS. Keys were soft, but firm when you mashed them, always quiet, and thoughtfully placed. The keyboard on this Samsung is just ok. Somewhat noisy, but not that bad, the travel is short and when you reach the limit of it's travel it abruptly stops. Granted, the keyboard needed to be thin because you have to squeeze electronics and a battery below it, so it's not a negative, just something to be aware of if you're a keyboard snob like me.
The connector on the power cord. It's tiny and metal, a little bit smaller than a standard headphone jack, but it's hollow. I have actual fear that someone will tug on the cord (trip over it, or bump into it) and break the connector. Is it possible that there is fault protection built in so that the laptop won't short out? I hope so, but I'll just keep it charged and hope that the battery lasts most of the day so I don't have to worry about it.
The bad:
I really only have two complaints, and they're equally bad.
First off, the track pad is AWFUL. It's quite large for whatever reason. It means that your palm will touch it whenever you're typing and if you're not paying attention you'll be typing somewhere you didn't intend. So it's not only horrible when you're typing, it's awful to use! As far as I can tell from using it so far, there is no pressure sensitivity setting for clicking. If you want to move the cursor around, all of a sudden you'll notice that you're dragging a selection box, or moving icons around for no reason. I probably need more time to get used to it. I have gotten better but it's still an issue. Maybe they'll come up with driver updates...
UPDATE: Been using this for a few weeks now, still not used to it. I'm better at using it, but not great, I use a USB mouse whenever possible.
UPDATE 7/28/2012: There is a driver update out for the track pad! It allows you to turn off some features that cause all the problems (tap to drag, double tap to execute). That means they allow you to take away functionality to fix a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's now easier to type without causing you to accidentally click the mouse, but you lose some of the features every other laptop on the planet has. I neither added nor removed a star for this.
And next is the screen. Yes, it's bright, yes it's matte. But the contrast ratio is ABYSMAL (I can't find the site that actually told me the value but 175:1 comes to mind). Hard number's aside, you don't need them to realize that EVERYTHING is washed out. Some website backgrounds and text (such as Samsung's drivers page) is so faint that you can barely see them on this screen. It almost looks like a watermark... It is this reason, and this reason alone that I might consider returning this ultrabook. I'm going to give it a few days of use at work and see if I even notice, after all this is a work laptop and I'm only using it to write code.
UPDATE: I just played around with the display settings and got it to look not so horrible: Right click on desktop and go to Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel > Graphics Properties... Change it to Advanced Mode. General Settings > Color Enhancement Change the Color drop down menu to All Colors, adjust the Contrast and Gamma settings until a photo looks as normal as possible. My settings are:
Brightness: 31
Contrast: 40
Gamma: .7
Hue: 0
Saturation: 5
I'm sure I'll be playing with this as I go on, but for now it doesn't look absolutely awful, just mostly bad.
Dan brought up the keyboard backlight, if you need to look at the keys to type be aware that the backlight is a green color and is ridiculously dim. There are 4 adjustment settings, the first 3 are just about worthless, the 4th (brightest) looks like it should be the 1st or 2nd dimmest setting. It doesn't bother me much since I know the keyboards backwards and forward.
Other thoughts:
I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate almost immediately after it's first boot. The drivers on the samsung website all installed without a hitch if you install them in the proper order: Chipset first, everything else on the Samsung drivers page, but save IRST and HECI for last. Getting IRST to actually work after doing a fresh windows install is actually a pain, and I haven't been successful getting it to work yet. Copy and paste this into a Google search for a guide on notebookreview: "660222-samsung-series-9-np900x3b-np900x4b-guide-intel-rapid-start-technology"
Apparently amazon doesn't allow you to link to external websites so you'll have to search for it.
UPDATE: I got IRST working finally. I enabled UFEI in the BIOS, restarted, opened Easy Software Manager and it actually started working. Installed Rapid Start software automatically, restarted and voila! The 8.3 GB partition created automatically and no more error saying IRST not enabled. So it Is now safe to upgrade to any version of Windows 7 and retain use of all the Samsung software. As such I am upgrading my rating from 2 to 4 stars. (It really should only be 3.5...)
It comes with a 128SSD, but has partitions that you can't see (21.7 GB for recovery, 8.3 GB for IRST) so you're looking at usable disk space of 89.2 GB. I have just about all the software I use installed and it's only occupying ~40 GB. If you want to get that space back you'll have to delete the recovery partition, but you might have trouble returning the laptop if you choose to do so.
Windows Experience Index Ratings:
Processor: 6.9
RAM: 7.6
Graphics: 6.4
Gaming graphics: 6.4
Primary Hard Disk: 7.5
Bottom line: It's no desktop replacement, but it's adequate for my needs. Being unplugged for 7+ hours is ridiculously awesome. I can't wait for taking a day off to sit at a park, cafe or beach and working on both business, and my tan, that sounds sexy enough to keep this thing around. I'll be updating this review as I use it.
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First of all, I want to address some common criticisms of the 15 inch Series 9 (NP900X4C-A01US) in other reviews:Screen. Several have said the screen is "horrible" with very poor contrast and limited viewing angles. Perhaps Samsung has made some improvements but mine is just fine even with the out-of-the-box default settings. Yes it's sensitive to viewing angle in the vertical direction but you just adjust the angle of the screen and it looks quite good. Pictures, movies, and any combination of text and background colors I've yet seen all look reasonably good. The screen is better, overall, than a few Dells I have. Like any mat (vs glossy) screen the blacks are not as black but I prefer that over lots of annoying glare and reflections.
Touchpad. Some have said the touchpad is a problem. Again, I've had no issues with mine. The cursor doesn't randomly jump around, I didn't have to turn off the gestures or upgrade the driver, and it generally does what I want it to do. Again, it works vastly better than the multi-touch pad in my newest Dell. It's made by Elan.
WiFi. A few have complained the WiFi performs poorly. Granted I have a great WiFi router, but the Series 9 has equal or better signal strength anywhere in the house compared to my other laptops and devices. It's always 4 or 5 bars.
Upgrade Options. One negative review here complains the SSD can't be upgraded without voiding the warranty. I'm not sure that person is aware that most Ultrabooks, the Macbooks, etc. have the same issue and often use proprietary OEM SSD boards (as the this one does) rather than regular 2.5" drives. Sometimes the SSD is part of the motherboard. Laptops designed to use only an OEM SSD can be made thinner and lighter. If you want to pop the bottom off and upgrade components, get a regular laptop not an Ultrabook.
STRENGTHS:
Thin & Light. Samsung says it's the thinnest 15 inch laptop made and it's one of the lightest. The charger is also small and light. In a backpack you really notice the difference. It's nearly as powerful as a 15 inch Macbook Pro but far thinner, lighter, and cheaper.
Cool & Quiet. The fan almost never comes on and it has a silent mode if you manage to get it to come on. It also doesn't make any squeels, whines, chirps, or other noises that some laptops (even with an SSD) make.
Amazing Battery Life. I managed over 8 hours of constant use with the screen up fairly bright and heavily using the WiFi even on the first charge of the battery (it should improve further). With a full charge the time remaining estimate is often over 10 hours. For such a thin and light laptop with a fast CPU this is as good as it gets.
15 Inch Screen. A rare Ultrabook feature and Samsung wisely chose not to cram full HD 1920 into only 15 inches.
Well Done Industrial Design. Samsung is really giving Apple lots to worry about. This Ultrabook is every bit as sexy as any Apple laptop. The non-glossy dark charcoal metal finish isn't a fingerprint magnet like so many other laptops these days. The nearly all metal chassis is very rigid and well executed. The indicator LED's are very small, blue, and tastefully dim rather than blindlingly bright. There are many nicely done details.
Fast Boot & Wake Up. The SSD and fast i5 CPU really help here but Samsung has added their own fast wake up technology and it really works. Almost by the time you swing the screen fully open the logon screen is there and even a full "cold boot" is very speedy.
Lighted Keyboard. Many Ultrabooks don't have one including the 15 inch Vizio.
WEAKNESSES:
Sharp-ish Front Edge. There's a large palm rest area, and as long as you use it, the Samsung is comfortable to type on. But if you have big hands and like to rest against the front edge of the laptop, the metal edge there (just like all of Apple's current laptops) is a bit sharp and only slightly beveled.
Keyboard. For an island/chiclet style keyboard it's as good as any I've used and I like it better than the Macbook Air keyboard. The layout is great. But the keys have limited travel and my fingers don't naturally fall into place as readily as with more conventional older style keyboards. It's unfortunate Apple started this fashion trend and nearly all companies, including Samsung, have followed.
Upgradeability. As mentioned above, Ultrabooks are generally difficult or impossible to upgrade as they don't have any extra room in them. This isn't specific to this Samsung, it's true of most Ultrabooks. You should buy the model you need to begin with. At least with 8GB of RAM you shouldn't need to add memory.
SanDisk U100 SSD. Some NP900X4C-A01US laptops apparently ship with a Samsung SSD but mine has a Sandisk U100 128GB drive. So far it's plenty fast but the reviews of the U100 indicate it's a bit slower than a lot of newer SSDs. At least SanDisk knows a lot of about flash memory and it should be reliable.
Display. It's a normal TN LCD which means it has limited viewing angles--especially vertically. If you're doing critical graphics design, photo editing, etc. you may want a laptop with an IPS or otherwise better display. But for everything else, I think the display is fine.
Samsung Branding. The default Samsung-specific screen backgrounds, user icon, etc. are not all that visually pleasing but everything is easily changed. It's kind of odd Samsung did such a great job on the physical design and then made poor choices for the "soft" stuff.
WHY THE 15 INCH SERIES 9?
I did quite a bit of Ultrabook research and ended up with this one because:
15 inch screen with 1600 pixel resolution. Some 15 inch laptops run at 1920 x 1080 (full HD) and you end up with really tiny eye straining text or you have to increase the text size or lower the resolution creating fuzzy re-scaled text. And the 13 and 14 inch Ultrabooks suffer from either not enough screen real estate (i.e. 1366 screens or 1600 jammed into too little area).
Thin and light chassis. Samsung claims this is the thinnest 15 inch laptop made and it's one of the lightest (take that Apple!). The nearly all metal chassis also makes it durable, attractive and solid.
SD multi card reader. You would think this would be in all Ultrabooks but it's not. Even the new 15 inch Vizio leaves it out for anyone with a camera or wanting an easy way to take desktop files with you it's nearly a must have.
Bright screen. Ever tried to use a laptop outdoors even in the shade on a sunny day? You can actually do it with this one.
8 GB of RAM. A lot of Ultrabooks at this price and under only have 4GB of ram and many are not easily upgradeable due to their thin designs. 4 GB isn't enough if you want to run virtual machines or like to have lots of windows/apps open at once.
2nd gen i5 Sandy Bridge CPU. This is an ideal CPU for an Ultrabook. It runs cool and offers amazing (10+ hour!) battery life yet it's plenty fast for anything except hardcore gaming. Faster CPUs just make make more heat which means fan noise and a hot lap. Slower processors don't help battery life much. The i5 is the sweet spot.
No Power Hungry ATI/nVidia Graphics. A few ultra portable laptops use a dedicated graphics controller but, unless you're a gamer, you just don't need one and they seriously shorten battery life, run hot, require noisy fan cooling, etc. The Intel 4000 graphics in the Samsung work great for watching even HD video while not using any unwanted power.
Value. This isn't a cheap laptop but, compared to other Ultrabooks, you get a lot for your money. The 15 inch Vizio is perhaps the closest competition and it doesn't even have an SD card slot to view pics from your camera.
USB 3.0. In my opinion it's a must have for faster USB storage access and future expansion options. Contrary to some specs, it has 2 USB 3 ports.
Gigabit Ethernet. Some Ultrabooks, and the Macbook Air, lack a wired ethernet port. Not everyone needs one, but if you need to move large amounts of data, even the best WiFi is far slower than a gigabit wired connection. A wired connection is also far less prone to glitching HD movie playback.
128GB SSD. Some think 128 GB is too small, but my last ultra portable laptop had only a 40 GB SSD and I made that work just fine with Windows 7. I'd MUCH rather have an SSD than a noisy, fragile, error prone conventional larger drive. If you have huge amounts of video, movies, etc. throw them on a 32 GB or even 64 GB SD card or small USB 3 thumbdrive. If you need even more storage, use a USB 3 external 2.5" portable drive. You can get a terrabyte for around a hundred bucks.
Industrial Design. As mentioned above, Samsung is one of the few companies challenging Apple with their product design. The Asus Zenbook is another but it only comes with much smaller screens and has other drawbacks.
HDMI + VGA. Some Ultrabooks leave off one or the other or even both. A lot of projectors (especially the ones built into meeting rooms) only accept VGA.
Minimal Bloatare. Some manufactures load up their Ultrabooks with so much trialware and other unwanted software they take 4+ times longer boot than this Samsung and you lose a lot of drive space. The companies are paid to put all that junk on there and some of it gets left behind even if you try to uninstall everything. Samsung was far more restrained than most and out of the box the Series 9 boots very quickly. I only removed the games and Norton apps.
CONCLUSION:
Everyone's needs differ, but I'm really happy with the Series 9 so far. And I'm somewhat puzzled by some of the negative comments. Either Samsung has poor quality control (unlikely), they've made running improvements (more likely), or some here have chosen to unfairly critize it as they favor another brand or have unrealistic expectations (perhaps most likely). Mine is an Amazon verified purchased and I can only comment on my Series 9.
Best Deals for Samsung Series 9 NP900X4C-A01US 15.0-Inch Ultrabook (Ash Black)
I had the np900x3b (2012 non-ivybridge 13.3" series 9) since it was released and have loved it. Loved everything except the 4gB RAM. Being a Chrome user who likes to have 100s of tabs open, I couldn't do much else other than 'browse' the web.The np900x4c, while significantly heavier-feeling than its younger brother, is still extremely lightweight and sexy (3.5 pounds).
The 8gB of RAM is user-upgradeable//replaceable, and the 10 hours of battery life is awesome (note: I have not tested it yet. Windows reported that I would have about 6+ hours with a full charge while running High Performance mode with maximum brightness).
Pros:
8gB RAM
ivy-bridge processor
graphics are excellent it can play Diablo 3 without a problem
micro-HDMI out so you can watch Netflix on your TV with ease
good number of ports (2xUSB 3.0, micro ethernet, 1xUSB 2.0, micro HDMI, SD slot)
excellent build quality (very sturdy duralumin)
15" screen
touchpad worked well out of the box (very impressed with that :)
Cons:
feels kind of heavy compared to other ultrabooks
the enter key is not the furthest right key (makes it harder to press quickly/easily/at night without a day of getting used to)
128gB SANDISK mSata SSD still 440 mB/s read/write speeds but not as fast or as high quality as the Samsung SSD found in the np900x3b
SD card sticks out thus cannot be left inside the laptop (which would be nice because you can get a 64gB//128gB SD relatively cheap, effectively doubling the storage capacity of the machine)
Honest reviews on Samsung Series 9 NP900X4C-A01US 15.0-Inch Ultrabook (Ash Black)
It's a gorgeous piece of hardware and I liked the computer a lot but...I purchased this machine (From ANTOnline don't do that, they have a 30% restocking fee). Only to discover that the 128 GB SSD only has 60GB available after OS install. It's 90GB before OS install as they use 8GB for hibernation partiion and 25GB for recovery partition. 60 GB is utterly unusable for me. So I thought i'd just upgrade it, but Samsung (pulling an Apple) decided that the SSD isn't user accessible so your stuck with the memory and SSD size.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Samsung Series 9 NP900X4C-A01US 15.0-Inch Ultrabook (Ash Black)
I first heard about the 15" Samsung Series 9 back in early 2012; I wanted it as soon as I saw it but it was $1,500. Definitely not worth it back then. Fast forward to January 2013 and the price dropped to $1,019 on Amazon for the Windows 7 version, i.e. trigger pulling time. (I immediately upgraded to Windows 8 for $15 through the Windows Update Offer when I received the laptop).I bought the Samsung with the knowledge of the other reviewer's gripes with the screen and trackpad as the main caveats. In general I agree, the screen is not quite up to par. It looks decent from one specific viewing angle, but if you move your head at any variation from the sweet spot the picture will look washed out. Viewing angles are just bad. However, after making adjustments with the Color Enhancement from the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel, I got a much better looking picture that doesn't look quite so washed out:
Brightness -1
Contrast 48
Gamma 0.8
Hue 0
Saturation 1
The track pad is decent enough though, you just have to be hyper aware to not let your palms rest on it so that the mouse pointer doesn't spaz out. Multi-touch gestures on Windows 8 are quite responsive. Keyboard is so-so, again I'm still getting used to hovering my palms up in the air all the time.
In terms of performance, this thing is plenty quick with the SSD and 8 gbs of Ram. No noticeable slow downs. Memory was extremely tight with only 50gbs or so of usable space, which is ridiculous. I would recommend deleting the 21 gb Samsung Recovery partition in the C: drive and using that as additional storage. This probably would make returning the laptop impossible though.
All in all, comparing the Samsung to the newest generation Macbook Air that I've had for 5 months, i would say the screen, keyboard, and the trackpad are far superior on the Macbook Air. The only advantages the Samsung enjoys over the Macbook Air is that it looks more stylish (in my opinion), is slightly thinner, and has much longer battery life.
In terms of recommending the Samsung, I'm on the fence. 2013 will probably release a slew of Windows 8 convertibles/laptops with 1920 x 1080 screens for about the same $1,000 price point. There's also rumors of the Samsung Series 9 being upgraded to a 1080 screen later on this year, but of course you'd probably be paying around $1,500 when that version comes out. In summary, this laptop is a decent buy at around $1,000, but if you have the patience or don't need a laptop right away you should wait it out and get a newer 2013 laptop with much better specs for the same price point. In your face.
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