A closer look at 15-inch Samsung Series 9

Samsung Series 9 were there just before when we meet the Ultrabooks when it arrived on the scene last year, measuring .64 inches thick, weighing 2.8 pounds and packing a blazing SSD. As Series 9 turns out, it was great and memorable even but not without flaws. It was be short of an SD slot, the trackpad was jumpy and the display resolution topped out at a humdrum 1366 x 768.

Now Samsung is back again, with a second generation laptop that promises to correct all of these shortcomings, and commencing with a more thinner and more lighter design. This 15-inch Series 9 will commence with a price tag $1,500 when it ships at the end of this month. Ultimately, then, are the Series 9′s elegant aluminum design and 1600 x 900 matte display enough to justify the premium you’ll pay over other Ultrabooks? Let’s check it out with an eagle eye.

Look and feel

This laptop’s thin shape, rock-solid build, bright display and clean design speak for themselves, and the result is not only sexy, but eminently tasteful, too. The thing which makes it most notable notebook is it thinness, measuring .58 inches thick. The problem with being this lean, though, is that without any love handles there isn’t room for all the ports you’d expect to find on a 15-inch laptop. You won’t find an Ethernet jack, and there’s no full-sized HDMI port. You will find a micro-HDMI socket and miniature VGA /LAN ports, along with an included Ethernet adapter, though that’s not quite as convenient, is it? On the brighter side, it is bearing two USB 3.0 ports, along with one of the 2.0 variety. There’s also a pooled headphone /mic jack and a 4-in-1 memory card reader, located underneath a door hidden on the laptop’s right side. And it seems like they have entertained your SD card Slot complaint.

Keyboard and trackpad

On The keyboard the keys are well-spaced with a smooth, pleasant finish. The arrow buttons, too, are a bit larger than what you’ll find on smaller-screened Ultrabooks, and should be easy to tap without looking away from the screen. The problem with the keys isn’t that the keys aren’t cushy enough, but that they’re sticky, and sometimes fail to register key presses. The keyboard only glows if the computer’s ambient light sensor determines you’re parked in a dim enough room.

Again, Samsung went with a extensive clickpad for the Series 9, leaving plenty of room for multi-touch gestures. Samsung released a driver update mid-way through testing that noticeably improved the tracking precision and made pinch to zoom and two-finger scrolls easier to pull off. Still, you can expect a learning curve here. The pad often mistakes left clicks for right ones and vice versa — a complaint we have about many touchpads with built-in buttons

Display

With the exception of a major jump in resolution (1600 x 900, up from 1366 x 768), this is the same 400-nit SuperBright Plus panel crowning last year’s Series 9 laptop. The screen has a matte finish, which means you can say goodbye to nasty glare from overhead lights. The Series 9 incorporates the second generation of Intel Wireless Display, which allows users to wirelessly stream 1080p video to an HDTV or monitor and the streaming is fluid, so long as you’ve got a strong WiFi connection at the ready.

Performance

The 15-inch Series 9 bears a single configuration, a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor, integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics and a 128GB solid-state drive. Unlike other Ultras it possesses twice the RAM in them: eight gigs. Samsung claims that with its FastStart technology it should boot in less than 20 seconds which is so quicker.

Battery life

In a standard battery rundown test, which involves looping a movie off the disk with WiFi on and the brightness fixed at 65 percent, it managed seven hours and 29 minutes? It’s clear that the Series 9 makes up for its larger size with longer runtime, and the best part is that its extra “heft” isn’t much of an inconvenience anyway.

Software

All things considered, Samsung barely saddled the Series 9 with any bloatware. On board, you’ll find CyberLink’s YouCam software, a common webcam console, along with Skype 4.2, Windows Live Essentials 2011 and, of course, Microsoft Office Starter Edition. Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton Online Backup round are not on the list.

Well above and far from anything, the 15-inch Series 9 makes us capricious about what laptops will look like a year from now. After all, if the original Series 9 foretold a market full of skinny Ultrabooks, might this machine be a harbinger for other larger-screened Ultrabooks with fast performance and extra long battery life? The Series 9 is impressive in its own right, though not quite the magic bullet we thought it would be. Aside imperfections, though, it’s a solid laptop that keeps most of it promises as a luxury machine