CES 2012: The Second-Generation Samsung Series 9 Review
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Thin and light laptops are dish of the day at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, but Samsung has a leg-up on the competition, because it unveiled its slender Series 9 PC a year ago – like a hipster tech giant crafting MacBook Air-bothering laptops before it was cool.
The second-generation Series 9 adds some new tech, comes in both 13 and 15-inch sizes and brings a refined design. We’ve had a go with it ahead of its official launch (we think it’ll go on sale in the next few months), and we’re about to bombard you with first impressions.
Design
Although Samsung hasn’t called the Series 9 an ultrabook, there are few who would judge you unfavourably if you used that term to describe it. Extremely thin and very light, the Series 9 looks just like the ultrabook machines revealed by LG, Asus and others.
Samsung clocks the Series 9 as 12.9mm thick for the 13-inch model, and 14.9mm in the 15-inch version. Like the first one it sports a wedge-shaped chassis, where the hinge is a bit thicker than the front edge. The 13-inch laptop weighs 1.16kg, which is light indeed, and makes the Series 9 perfectly suited to jaunts about town. The 15-inch version is a heavier (but still very light) 1.59kg.
We’ve been told that the Series 9 is now completely crafted from aluminium, and we reckon this was a wise move. The construction felt very solid, and considerably less flexible than its more plasticky predecessor.
We think that makes all the difference. We’re not sure the Series 9 feels quite as polished as the painfully stylish MacBook Air, but our first impressions are certainly that it’s a classier machine than most ultrabook PCs out there.
Samsung says it has sand-blasted the Series 9, to make it less vulnerable to fingerprints. That’s certainly a relief, because the first model picked up more prints than a forensic scientist.
The hinge has been given a makeover too, making it more robust. We gave it a little test-drive, and it certainly felt sturdy. It’s worth noting that there’s no Ethernet port or optical drive, though a network adaptor cable is included and fits into a tiny port on the left of the Series 9, and you can plug an Ethernet cable into that.
Display
We were impressed with the display on show, which looked bright and colourful, pumping out good-looking images. Best of all there’s a matte finish applied to the screen, which makes the Series 9 a decent bet if you need to use it outside or in a bright room, as you won’t get as many annoying screen reflections as you would on a glossy display.
The display is what Samsung has snappily dubbed ‘HD+ SuperBright Plus’, and supposedly it boasts a very wide viewing angle. We’ll be checking this out in more detail in our full review, but at a glance the Series 9 viewing angle did indeed look impressive.
Hardware
The Series 9 comes with an array of components that are built for speed. Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors will be powering Windows, which should make these laptops more than capable of handling tasks like web browsing and HD video playback.
SSD drives are in place in either 128 or 256GB flavours. While more expensive than traditional hard drives, these solid state wonders are less likely to break if you drop them, and they’re faster too. Indeed Samsung reckons the Series 9 can wake up in 1.4 seconds.
The 15-inch model has a touted batteries life of 10 hours, though we’ll wait until we can run our punishing battery benchmarks before making any claims about this laptop’s ability to survive away from the mains.
Outlook
The Series 9 looks like a classy little laptop, and we like the new design features that Samsung’s seen fit to slap on. The last model was expensive though, so we’ll be expecting seriously good build quality and performance. Stay tuned for the full review.
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