Cheap Samsung Series 7 14" Core i5 1TB HDD Laptop

Customer Ratings:

I bought this computer because I couldn't find another laptop this size (14in screen) which could match its specs and price. Specifically I liked its large hard drive (1 tb), high resolution (1600x900), matte screen with very good battery life (>6 hrs). I also really like its looks, very thin and relatively light with brushed metal top and palm rest, and large track pad. The reason for the less than perfect score is the plastic bottom and inability to remove the bottom or even the access panel for the memory. I like to be able to replace the hard drive, memory and wireless card as better/upgrade components become available. Because the bottom is plastic when I removed the screws and tried to take both the memory access cover and/or the bottom off, neither would budge and I was afraid if I kept prying I would break the plastic. Anyway if you're not interested in replacing components than this is a great laptop, looks nice and performs well. I'd would definitely recommend it.

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I was able to snap this up for $800 at the Microsoft store though they no longer have it in stock. This Amazon version looks to be the same and I think even for $1100 is a pretty competitive laptop. On pros and cons I won't repeat the specs much since you can read those elsewhere...I'll just note my experiences in the first 2 weeks of ownership.

Pros:

Relatively thin and light considering it packs a DVD drive and discrete graphics card

14 inch screen in a 13 inch laptop form factor

Nice screen, though viewing angles could be a bit better but are definitely acceptable unless you are super nitpicky on this.

Keyboard is nice and backlighting works well

Matte screen and brushed aluminum minimizes fingerprints

Seems pretty fast though I haven't run any benchmarks. Most programs launch fairly quickly though surprisingly Samsung's EasySettings program takes a good 10-15 seconds to launch.

Battery life is reasonable, though not exceptional (probably averaging around 4 hours, using Samsung's recommended battery lifetime extending 80% charge setting.

Fast boot time....about 25-30 seconds and about 2 seconds resume from sleep. Ironically, resume from hibernate seems to take as long...maybe longer than a complete boot.

WiFi seems good. Have read other complaints of this but have no issues.

Cons:

Most annoying is the Samsung software suite that launches at startup...this is fine if you're using an admin account but if you run as a standard user it gives you 3 or 4 Windows UAC prompts at startup so these programs will run. I finally had to remove these from startup using Task Scheduler to avoid this annoyance.

Volume, keyboard brightness and screen brightness are controlled via function keys but require toggling them on using the Fn button. There is a Fn Lock button but this must be reset at every restart. Also when function keys are locked, the delete key becomes the DVD eject key. Fine until you happen to be text editing...then it is annoying to have to toggle this back off.

Some have complained about the Elan touchpad. I find it to be acceptable, though I wouldn't call it stellar. For me the only real issue is that without the physical click buttons it is easy to sometimes right click when wanting to left click.

Bottom plastic seems a little flimsy. Not really problematic but a bit out of step with the notebook's overall quality.

Too many stupid stickers to peel off including some that are paper based and have to betaken off with alcohol.

Mine was a "Microsoft Signature PC" since it was bought from Microsoft, so essentially this means it was pretty much bloat ware free. I can't speak to the Amazon version.

Also one final note on the fan. Typically it is very unobtrusive but tonight I watched a few hours of video and it did cycle on fairly loudly for a few minutes every 10 minutes or so.

Conclusion: a nicely designed, good looking, relatively thin and lit feature packed PC. I don't think you will go wrong with this if you bear in mind the few "cons" above.

Best Deals for Samsung Series 7 14" Core i5 1TB HDD Laptop

This laptop is "almost there" is so many ways. The resolution of the screen is truly high definition, but the viewing angle is very limited before detail and color becomes distorted.

The "easy settings" have many features and presets, but it seems to be a common problem that the user defined settings are not initially kept after shutdown.

There is no number pad! There is not even an option to use the common "Fn+alt" to modify alphabet keys to function as a keypad. You must use an external keypad for alt codes /ascii characters, and there are only two usb ports on this laptop, on the left side. and one of those is constantly occupied by my usb wifi adapter that replaces the inferior internal broadcom adapter.

At the time of this writing, this laptop still does not have a support page on Samsung's website. The laptop has been available for purchase for over 6 months.

The solid pros about this laptop are the battery life and the speed. The claim of 9 hours of battery time under in conservative use settings is genuine, and it really does take less than 2 seconds to wake up from sleep mode. The only time this computer started to slow down was when I gave the norton software that was bundled with it a chance. Uninstall that immediately.