Power ranger
All this is great stuff but not quite enough to stir my nerdy loins. The Samsung Series 7 Chronos’s performance in the Futuremark benchmarks was good without being class-beating, and the Powermark automated battery test suggested a fairly average battery life of 125 minutes between recharges.
Benchmark Tests
PCMark 7 results
Longer bars are better
A long battery life is supposed to be one of the Chronos’s big attractions so I don’t know why Powermark doesn’t back this up. It’s not as if much power is being wasted as heat since the computer never gets more than slightly warm after intensive use.
Samsung’s understated logo makes its competitors look vulgar
Perhaps my tweaking of the graphics drivers to stop the benchmark crashing had a side-effect of disabling some of the power-saving triggers. Certainly, every time I started a video or played a game, the fan kicked in and stayed running until I stopped the video or quit the game. The fan is not particularly noisy but it was distracting when I was playing one video after another.
Talking of noise, the speakers produce enough volume to be heard clearly in a meeting room. Yes, the sound is tinny, but all notebook speakers are tinny.
Verdict
The Samsung Series 7 Chronos is a great notebook that offers a lot of the kinds of thing I tend to harp on about, such as a big screen, a full keyboard, USB 3.0 ports and a multi-touch trackpad. With so many competitively priced notebooks around, you might baulk at paying close to a grand for a product that is not particularly thin or light, but it looks well designed, is well thought-out and well built. It is also extremely comfortable to use – and surely this is the critical buying factor for a general-purpose notebook. ®
More Notebook Reviews |
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 HP
Pavilion dv6 |
 Samsung
Series 9 900X3A |
 Asus
Zenbook UX31E |
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XPS 14z |
 Acer
Aspire S3 Ultrabook |
Samsung Series 7 Chonos 700Z5A-S01UK
COMMENTS
Guys, it's a laptop with a brushed aluminum finish. Do you all bitch about Sony copying Sharp because they both make TVs with shiny black bezels?
The other big difference it it's not designed to be thin and light at all cost like the Macbook, it's got proper ports and drives and stuff.
1600 x 900
is *not* a "generous resolution", especially for a laptop costing nearly £1K. I spotted a few Dells the other day under £700 with 1920x1080 screens. If 10 inch tablets can offer 1280x800 resolutions, with eyeball resolutions due shortly, then I expect a 15.6 inch laptop screen to give me a few more pixels than 1600x900.
It's a LOW res screen
900 in the vertical is a low resolution screen. Don't care about the horizontal resolution; it's vertical that counts.
What is it with these damn laptop manufacturers that make them always whitter on about bloody telly resolutions? A laptop is for WORK not watching telly you numskulls. Even powerpoint needs a lower aspect ratio. Then there's that poxy ribbon...
Battery comparison
The battery comparison isn't exactly fair. The Series 7 has a quad core processor, dedicated graphics and a 15" screen. The two laptops that beat it are ultra-mobiles with a smaller screen, integrated graphics and a lower clocked dual core low voltage processor. There is no way the series 7 could compete with them.
1600 x 900
I just wanted to say that having used a laptop with a 1920 x 1200 resolution for quite a few years, I can honestly say I seriously regret asking for it and would not opt for one again.
I have the Compaq 8710w which has a larger 17" screen but in my opinion is still not a large enough screen to run that resolution. I immediately noticed how much more eyeball strain / pain I got from using it.
Oh god, did I just say that. It's true...I'm, I'm getting old....nooooooo.
I'm sure I am now considerably more blinder thanks to my laptop...but I digress ;P
