Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook listed at US retailer for $900, 'coming soon'

[joeyl]

Looking forward to a review listing if possible:


Build

Outside build is good: there is no flex if I hold the laptop on one corner. There is no creaking from the lid when I open it, and it shuts down smoothly. The screen has some wobble when you shake the laptop while open, hopefully it does not get worse. Also the lid itself is thin so I would not rest anything on it. I have been spoiled with my all metal HP 8460P Elitebook which I would have kept if it did not weigh 5.6 pounds without the adapter.
The fit and finish looks good, there are no obvious gaps or misaligned components.
The keyboard I think it great. I can only compare to the other chiclet style keyboard on the 8460P, and while it does not have the same travel, it is responsive and nice to the touch. I have not mistyped or having to press the key twice like on the HP. The HP seemed like the contact part of the key was too small for the key so unless you hit the key dead-center, you get a lot of letters missing from your words. That drove me nuts for passwords, and since I make a living logging into servers remotely....
The Touchpad is great, I use the 2 finger tap for right click and double tap to click, and the 2 finger scroll, so I don't even have to use the 2 buttons. The physical buttons are good but they feel too flat so you have to make an effort to press them down. The feel is hard rubber, slightly draggy, and it is not as nice as the glass touchpad that I have been getting used to, so that feels like a step-back


Inside is a bit different: pieces of tape was used to hold the wires, and it looks like "hand-torn" paper masking tape. It fell off as soon as I took the back cover off.
I also don't like the ribbon connector that goes into a zif port for the hard drive, it felt like I would tear it when swapping the drive.
Also the fan is super quiet, but if you hold the laptop at an steep angle, it starts rattling because the blades are rubbing the cage I was going to return it but really you can only hear the rattle if you have your ear against the back cover or on the keyboard. I guess tiny fan that spins easy also gets out of axis easy.

I will post some pics tonight.

Battery life with light and heavy use

light use, I usually get tired of the laptop before it reaches 40% so not very scientific testing here. Under moderate office use (some word, responding to emails and running a few monitoring apps) I would say that I have seen close to 5 hours. I am using the Samsung power profile and I have a 128GB SSD instead of the spinner

Speaker quality

Speaker is clear and loud, loud enough to fill a small bedroom. Much better sound than any HP business Elitebook laptops. It does lack bass but normal for this thin and light.

Wifi range

At 40 feet from a Linksys G router, I get 30mbps from the wifi status info. Now consider that this is an old house with plaster wall and chickenwire inside. The intel card on-board is a Advanced N 6230 so it is a 2X2, I wished it had a third antenna somewhere but since the bottom is fiberglass no signal issues. I have not cracked the laptop fully open but I will soon, and will try the other card that I have which is a 6300 Ultimate

Game performance (not expecting much, but nice to know)

Sorry have not tried any games. But I have watched a few full screen HD videos and the Intel HD3000 does great on these as usual.

Keyboard quality

Thanks!

See build quality above.
Also I must say that there is not much bloatware on this. I will go in and remove a few things such as the Samsung recovery and anything that puts services in the background. Time to do some startup services cleanup

[joeyl]

Also, let us know if the notebook supports bootable USB from all ports, or if there is a specific one.

As far I have seen, it boots from all ports on USB, and they also do charge your devices even in sleep or off mode (bios option)

[joeyl]

I will also add that it does not have a Kensington lock, and I work at a school where there is a lot of people on campus coming and going so I have to lock the laptop inside the drawer if I step out. Minor incovenience though

[c_ram_run]

Hi joeyl/Bman, can you tell me what model SSD you installed in the laptop? Did you see any change in change in battery life when you installed the SSD?

[joeyl]

Hi joeyl/Bman, can you tell me what model SSD you installed in the laptop? Did you see any change in change in battery life when you installed the SSD?

I had bought this when it was on Black Friday sale, I think I got it for 165 at the time for 128GB. Now I can pair Samsung SSD with Samsung laptop

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

No clue in battery life since the spinner lived in the laptop long enough to be ghosted to the SSD. I used an image because I wanted to see all of the Samsung software and tweaks instead of a clean install. I had a key for Windows 7 Pro, and after I cloned the drive, I just used the anytime upgrade and put in that serial to bring it from Home Premium to Pro

[andersonjacob54]

Excellent review joeyl. It seems that you are pretty satisfied with your laptop and based on what you said, it seems like it would be a good replacement for me.

I appreciate you discussing your experience in the forums. Most people I know would just buy the laptop and forget about discussing it if they liked it. And it means even more when this laptop has next to none reviews.

[joeyl]

Excellent review joeyl. It seems that you are pretty satisfied with your laptop and based on what you said, it seems like it would be a good replacement for me.

I appreciate you discussing your experience in the forums. Most people I know would just buy the laptop and forget about discussing it if they liked it. And it means even more when this laptop has next to none reviews.

you're welcome. I will post more thoughts and comments as I get to use it more

[rushmore]

you're welcome. I will post more thoughts and comments as I get to use it more

Thanks here too!

[joeyl]

some pics






















size of trackpad in relation to Galaxy S cell phone


Don't like the fact that the SD card sticks out that much. It is not spring loaded like other SD readers, it just hangs in there, and it would be sure to break if you forgot it and shoved the laptop in a bag

[joeyl]

check out the hand torn tape, it looks yellow here but it is really a cream colored paper tape