Putting on a display
While it looks clear and bright, the 13.3in display's 1366 x 768 resolution is the same resolution as, for example, that packed into the latest MacBook Airs with an 11in display, and I've used 12.1in Wintel PC with a 1400 x 900 screen. So, having experienced much denser screens on smaller models, I wish manufacturers would up the resolution. But for now, the market evidently thinks differently and goes with colour saturation and brightness, not pixels.
A bright, non-glossy screen but a resolution increase is in order
Performance bombs along, despite the modest 1.6GHz Intel dual Core i5-2467M. As you’d expect, the 128GB SSD gives it a formidable kick. It was slightly perturbing to see such a small heat vent, but the machine didn’t get hot. As far as graphics performance goes, it relies on the integrated Intel HD 3000 GPU, so the 3DMark6 score of 2078 was a fairly typical result.
Benchmark Tests
PCMark 7 Results
Longer bars are better
PCMark 7 Battery Life Results
Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better
The 900X3A also pumps out terrific sound – well, for a laptop – in stereo, right into your thigh. Bizarrely, the excellent speakers are mounted underneath and towards the back of the laptop. It uses SRS to mangle the audio output (officially it’s called an “Enhanced Echo Chamber”) into a more expansive sound.
Next page: Finger friendly
COMMENTS
Nice rant...
Except:
USB3 = Ubiquitous and backwards compatible, cheap peripherals
Thunderbolt = Rare, expensive peripherals.
Your magic do it all on one thunderbolt and lightening box will sadly come with a very very frightening price tag because of all the output chips needed, docking stations have never been cheap and as a result not many people own one.
Ideally of course you'd have both USB3 and Thunderbolt, but where do you draw the line, why not add Firewire, Serial, Parallel, Fibre Channel, eSATA, SAS, SCSI? The answer is because in a very tiny/slim/stylish system design choices have to be carefully balanced, compromises made, and to most of the general population a USB3 port is vastly more useful. Strange as it may seem to you most laptops are not bought by power users like us... there is a whole world full of lesser folk out there, and they like the shiny shiny too!
Re: Lets see...
"Clone in almost every respect to an air, including the price."
Not quite. The air has a faster processor (1.7 GHz vs 1.6 GHz Core i5) and a superior screen (1440x900 vs 1366 x 768 native resolution).
Really puts into perspective the "Apple is overpriced" nonsense so prevalent on this and other boards.
Samsung are late to the party and offer a product that is not as good value for money. So, par for the course then!
I love this Samsung laptop. I never ever booted the preinstalled Windows on it, but went for Ubuntu right away. Never before had a laptop that would boot up to the login screen in less than 10 seconds (takes about 8 sec from power on, and I don't mean a resume, but a real power on). I don't do much graphics, but for what I do it's super fast.
The things I like most about it:
- the display is so bright (and matte), it is easily useable in bright daylight and even sunlight (ok, resolution could be better...)
- the keyboard is awesome for a device that size. I really type a lot, and the keyboard is superb.
- it's fast, and it's silent. the fan is rarely noticeable at all (and I have seen other laptops running Linux that sound like a vacuum cleaner on an idle system - and even worse for Windows)
What's a bit annoying is that you need those dongles if you want to connect VGA or RJ45. But I bought a port replicator connected through USB, which connects all my devices. It even supports VGA over USB, which I haven't tried yet (hope I get it working for Linux as well).
Why oh pedant?
Unless there are some bizarre 5ghz only 802.11n implementations then n is a perfectly good synonym for b/g/n.
A more valid moan would be what bandwidth of n it supports. Ie 300mb/s or the lesser versions.
Get your facts straight
Thunderbolt can deliver 10W of power, more than double that of USB 3 and 4 times that of USB 2. Not that you'd likely carry a desktop port replicator around with you anyway (the point of it being to provide a single cable docking solution) but there's no reason you couldn't do all that USB 3 can and more with it. It's not even mutually exclusive, there's nothing stopping manufacturers putting both types of port on a laptop or PC.
