This is my first ever review but this Samsung series 7 17.3" laptop is simply AMAZING in every way so I felt compelled to write this review. OK, I received it yesterday afternoon via UPS (wish amazon would offer FedEx as an option). My first impression was just how Beautiful and sleek it looked not to mention thin. It seems to be very sturdy and looks well built. Plus only about 1" thick and although its a 17" with the small border around the screen is almost feels like a 15 inch in my opinion. Just under 5lbs on the weight I believe.
I turned it on and the matte screen was very clear and detailed and Bright. I was a little leary about it being a matte screen as I never had one and hoped the screen wouldn't look too dark or unclear. Not an issue! Two things I Love about it is that it is full HD with a 1920x1080 screen rez/size. And secondly it has a lit keypad with an option on how bright you want it to be. Excellent! Full HD and a lit keyboard are two important options to me. The JBL sound with sub woofer is the Best sound I ever heard on a laptop.
One thing I wish it had was a simple switch on it to turn off the intergrated graphics forever as to use the GT650M all the time. I had a lenovo laptop that had that. However there is still a way to do this if desired (I believe?)using the Nividia settings.(manage 3d-> "high performance" on drop down). I read from a few that the keybooard on left side will get very warm? I will say that may be true for some. I can only say that I set it up, adjusted settings and played around with it for about 2 1/2 hours straight and the keyboard on mine remained cool and not even an issue at all. Of course I didn't do anything very demanding yet. Noise level was extremely quiet on mine. It wasn't until I turned it off almost 3 hours later that I realized ..."Hey, I didn't even notice fan noise" there but very quiet for me.
The three things that annoyed me, I do NOT like are as follows:
#1. The hard drive is Large at 1 TB. Great! but is very slow and holds it back. Samsung should have put a SSD in it. Guess they chose not to to save money. I suggest swapping out the HD and replacing it with an SSD.
#2. Pricey. The price is more then I was hoping to spend. But well worth it. You get a superior product with many features.
#3. This issue has bothered me on every amazon purchase I make. This has to deal with amazon shipping. I really wish amazon would offer an option to us buyers prior to placing an order to use FedEx instead of UPS only. I always pick 2 dsy shipping and always my purchase shows up very late (6:30pm for this laptop)or even 3 days later instead of two. But again this is not related to the laptop itself and no fault to amazon.
My conclusion: In a nutshell. I am Extremely pleased thus far with this laptop. I would buy it again and would highly recommend it if you are looking for a top of the line very nice and fast laptop. Of course all of the above is strictly my opinion and of this specific laptop I received.
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So, I just picked this bad boy up from B3st BVY. Couldn't wait for shipping as I'm on a military assignment. Going to jot down a review of the things that I like and a few things that stuck out to me. These will be in thought bubble format:
Painful to upgrade. Rather harrowing experience but there are guides online for the previous gen 17" that work well.
SSD upgrade a must. 1tb very slow.
Ivy Bridge + Keplar have lived up to their names. Very powerful, very energy efficient.
No room for RAM upgrade. Wish it had 4 slots.
Keplar GPU + intel 4000 make a really neat combo.
GPU does all modern games i've seen at med to high ( 1080p ) with some tweaking.
Very light for a 17".
Long battery life for a 17" ( 2 3 hours with med to heay use roughly )
Nice keyboard and backlight.
Very attractive case. Well put together.
Minimal flex in Display, considering it's a 17"
Very, Very sharp and crisp LED display. Looks amazing.
Very generous touchpad.
4 USB ports 2@ 3.0 and 2@ 2.0. USB 3.0 is amazing ( I use an external SSD for system backups )
Meh DVD drive. Slot loaded. makes noise.
Only 1 hard drive slot.
Built in 8gb SSD cache is interesting. Not useful, just interesting.
Nice, clear sound.
Overall I am very pleased with this laptop. It delivers the almost-mac experience without the mac-esque price. A very sleek, attractive, useful laptop that is intended to be portable power for anyone who needs it. For the price range there are very few competitors, and most of them have design flaws. That being said, if you're looking at doing mostly gaming and don't mind something about 3x thicker the ASUS G75VW is also a very good buy and delivers better gaming performance (and has 4 RAM slots and two hard drive slots).
But if you're an adult who doesn't want a computer that looks like a spaceship, and also don't want to tear open a shoulder joint carrying your laptop this is the way to go.
Best Deals for Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silver)
Purchased this machine expecting Samsung quality, fell short due to FATAL flaws. The biggest deal breaker is the absolutely atrocious wireless N performance and stability. Since this is a laptop/notebook, wireless N is crucial to the machine; I cannot be expected to carry around an external wireless adapter or a very long Ethernet cord. The Wi-Fi would have random latency spikes and packet drops (can be seen if you run continuous ping test) when any continuous streaming activity was initiated (such as video streaming, and gaming). This would happen as soon as you are one wall or more away from the router (ASUS RT-N56U). The other devices in my household on Wireless N do not have this issue and are connected to the same router on the same band. In fact, the HP Envy 17 I purchased to replace the Samsung machine has the same Wireless card (Intel 6235) as the Samsung and it does not have this problem. Wireless G on the Samsung machine seems okay, but I paid for a Wireless N laptop.
Aside from Wireless N issues, this machine has many other problems (as listed below in the Cons section). For one, Battlefield 3 at Medium-low settings is enough to push this machine to its thermal and power limits and the GPU/CPU aren't even at absolute full load yet. Some people may argue that this machine isn't "designed for games" and "excessive load applications" etc, but I expect to be able to use what I paid for, otherwise, why bother putting in high-end components (CPU, GPU powerhouse) into this machine which would be like putting a Jet engine in a compact-sized car only for showing off?
Pros:
+17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) screen
+Powerful 3rd gen i7 quad-core (Core i7 3615QM)
+Decently powered mobile graphics (NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M w/ GDDR5)
+8 GB DDR3 1600 RAM
+Heat sources are towards the center-right of the machine, away from WASD keys
+Decent speakers for a laptop
+Trackpad is reasonably responsive
+Sleek look, better than Macbook Pro
+6.3 lbs, very lightweight for a 17" notebook
Cons:
-Poor wireless N performance and stability (guessing due to the full aluminum lid and palm rest creating a partial Faraday cage)
-Only above average TN panel LCD screen
-Bevelled screen appearance near / above the Samsung logo (maybe I just got a bad one?)
-Runs at near thermal limits of the machine's components
-Hot air exhausts upwards, directly onto the lower edge screen (can't be good for longevity of the screen or the material holding the screen to the chassis)
-90W power adapter is not enough to run the machine at full speed (CPU is 45W, GPU is also 45W, rest of the system ~20W, that means 110W minimum), results in power throttling on CPU and GPU
-Very slow hard drive (5200 RPM 1 TB)
-8 GB ExpressCache has little to no effect on improving system performance
-Painful to upgrade anything other than the one stick of RAM exposed (have to open the back cover which is made entirely of flimsy plastic, held by 10+ screws, and numerous fragile plastic tabs)
-The other 4 GB of RAM is soldered directly onto the board, cannot be upgraded
Other thoughts:
Samsung might have put a 90W power brick in the machine on purpose; they probably knew the beautiful chassis and cooling system could not handle the two power-hungry components (CPU and GPU) so they intentionally did this to keep the machine's full potential from being unleashed.
I am very disappointed by this Samsung notebook because of these fatal flaws that simply cannot be overlooked especially when purchasing a high-end product; the laptop deserves 2 stars because of its sleek look, weight, and specs. Amazon's great service convinced me to give another star.
Honest reviews on Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silver)
I made this purchase about two weeks ago and really wanted to test drive it before writing a review. I will be brief.
First off the look and feel of this machine is truly awesome. The keyboard (backlit) is responsive and quiet, though a some rare occasions, I have noted what others have where a very occasional keystroke is not registered. The Touchpad is great though I confess I still prefer a mouse so that is what I generally use. The screen is bright and adjusts to ambient light. The speakers are awesome there is actually some real bass (a subwoofer is located underneath it). My last laptop was a Gateway P-7805u, three years old but is still kicking but these speakers are like a night and day difference, these JBL's really sound nice. Granted the Gateway has a higher Def screen than this one (1920x1200), but this is enough for my work (which is how this will be primarily used). Windows 7's Scores are very high, all except the Hard Drive (the weakest link in the Notebook) Though is packs a 1tb HD, it spins and only 5400RPM slowing some things up considerably. From what I read the next versions will have a 750gb HD but will run at 7200RPM. The good news is that it also has an 8gb SSD drive on the motherboard that makes boot times and 'everyday programs' launch very quickly. The Laptop is light for a 17 inch and of course the i7 Processor and Nvidia Video Card are truly awesome. While you can switch the Video Card to remain permanently on the Nvidia Chip (from the Nvidia Control Panel), power consumption will lag if you do. For most tasks, the onboard Intel Video is just fine.
Gripes: Yes I do not some. First off upgrading this thing is going to be difficult as the entire bottom of the Chassis has to come off no small compartments for HD or wireless replacements or upgrades. Second the Battery is not replaceable at (this time). Samsung Claims this battery will last 1500 cycles and still go strong. Me, I am rather skeptical but have employed the special Samsung Battery Life Extender Which sets the full charge at 80%. I still get a good 4+ hours of life with light to moderate usage. So until the battery croaks, I have no complaints. My hope is that they will eventually sell a replacement battery online in a couple of years as I plan on keeping this notebook until it dies on me. FYI I still have an old Dell Inspiron I bought in 2005, so Yes, I do hang on to my old computers and don't have a problem plopping down a hundred bucks every three years or so to get a new battery. BTW, I did query Samsung via email about a replacement battery on their site about this but never got an answer back.
Second gripe, I understand that there is only one HD bay (though I have not opened up the Chassis to find out). That kind of sucks because a second bay could easily make the HD speed issue moot. Just add another drive. The good news with this PC is that unlike many others, they actually put in a Real Live complete recovery DVD. I am glad because I know I will need it one day.
Third Gripe. For many this may not seem important but it is for me. Samsung does not support Linux. I have run the Live CD with Ubuntu 11.04, 12.04 and the latest version of Bridge Linux (based on Arch). The Ubuntu flavors gave me grief whereas the Arch Linux version ran smooth and was most responsive. However in none of the Linux versions did the backlight on the keyboard work. I have yet to take some time out and actually install it for real and probably won't for some time. Frankly I purchased this because I wanted to get one before Windows 8 comes and Linux versions get locked out because of UEFI secure boot. It was the primary reason I bought it now.
Overall, I am most happy with the purchase. I am not a Windows fan but will 'suffer' under it until I have a couple of days to spend setting up A good stable Linux partition to run along side Windows.
Five Weeks Later
Still in love with this machine. I have finally made the system Dual boot and am now using Linux Mint. Most things work. What does not work with Mint are
1) The Keyboard backlit does work, but appears to have settings in the bios that allow the lights to come on only if they were left on when you booted out of windows.
2) Wireless networking works until you put it to sleep, then it will not reconnect no matter how hard you try. This is a common problem with the New Intel systems and Linux. Workaround I have a small USB wireless card that works fine, unplug and then replug it in and all is well.
3) The Subwoofer: It does not work in Linux; two main speakers are fine... but no bass.
4) Some of the hot keys (alongside of the Function keys) do not work.
5) Nvidia does not support Optiums in LInux so you are stuck with Intel integrated graphics. Unless you are gaming or doing some heavy video editing, you will not notice a difference.
6) The 8GB internal SSD drive is for Windows only. Linux does not recognize it and its features are not available.
But you can still do most things. Clearly this box was made to be primarily a windows machine. The the disappointing support for Linux is starting to be a trend with many hardware makers.
If there is any other gripe I can level at this is the lack of multi-media keys. With a machine this nice it would be nice to have play/pause/back/forward keys. There is certainly plenty of room around the keyboard and palm-rest for them.
I can say that I have had no issues with it, it is fast, no lockups and no issues with the video card (as was reported with earlier ATI models) and when our power went out during the recent DC storm, I had about 8 hours of 'play time' with the battery.
Again, you cannot go wrong with this. It is a very fine system. The newer ones appear to have a smaller but faster spinning hard drive (750gb). I just don't think anyone looking for a Macbook like system can go wrong with this computer.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silver)
There are many 17" laptops out there, but few that pack the specs of this Samsung Series 7 without gaudy "gamer" looks. The new Chronos 17" features the latest 3rd gen Core i7 processor, the new Geforce GT 650M (2GB), 8GB ram, and a slow 1TB HDD (5400 RPM). The price is higher than an Asus or Toshiba (and those have slightly better specs), but you are getting a beautiful, well designed machine that rivals Apple's product offering.
The laptop comes minimally packed, with little more than a manual, AC plug, and restore disc, but Samsung loads their machines with easy to use software that guides you through updating drivers and configurating your machine with ease. There is minimal bloatwarea games suite and some annoying Norton popups, but for the most part you're ready to go.
Performance is great. The laptop has a quick-wake feature which boots virtually instantly from sleep mode. If you prefer to shut your machine down, the startup times are incredibleliterally 1/4 of the time compared to my old machine and my work laptop (running Windows 7/Vista). The keyboard is chiclet styled, and I find myself making some mistakes on it because I am too fast for the keys, but it is well spaced and includes a number pad. The backlight is tastefully done, and allows you to pick how bright it is. The machine is not silent, but the JBL speakers will overpower the fans, and they sound awesomea huge leap over any other laptop I've owned.
Although the laptop is powerful, I am not sure it's right for gamers. I have put about 15 hours into Diablo 3 on this machine with great results (the game runs with max settings minus shadows and hits around 40-60 FPS), but the center of the unit gets very warm and the fans don't seem to do a very good job keeping it cool. I purchased a Cooler Master notebook cooler to help out, since I am nervous about the long term with this unit overheating. There are not a lot of vents on the machine and it is very thin, maybe I'm just worrying but I don't know what long term effects heavy gaming would have on the internals.
The screen is mind blowingit's matte, so initially it will not look as vivid as a glossy screen, but the colors are beautiful and it's bright and very sharp. Samsung has different video profiles that will shift color temps according to what programs you are running. The screen opens and closes with little flex, and the rest of the laptop feels very well made and durable.
Overall it's a great machine, you're paying a little more for the style, but you're not paying $1000+ more like you would be with a Macbook. I like how they included a restore disc, but do not like that they only put in a 5400 RPM HDD and a CD/DVD burner instead of a BD ROM drive.
