Samsung Series 9 Laptop Review

Easily the most gorgeous machine on test, with a curved chassis that weighs in at just 1.3kg and measures just 19mm at its thickest. The Series 9 is made of the duralumin, same material used in fighter jets, but while the frame is impressively strong, the lid bends far too easily for our liking. However, despite frantic twisting, the 13.3-inch screen remained stoically in one piece and delivered bright, 1366×768 HD playback.

A Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor provides the grunt and performance is top-notch, multitasking like a dream and browsing the web in double-quick time. As with the MacBook Air there’s no dedicated graphics, so you’re confined to playing older games
– Theme Park inc is a classic – and running only the most basic of editing software. You can still enjoy hi-def films though, and they play smoothly enough.

There’s no space in the slender chassis for a DVD drive and the built-in solid state drive provides just 128GB of storage – again, MacBook Air owners will find this a familiar situation. That space will fill up quickly if you carry around a sizeable movie collection.

However, it does provide fast access to your data and, with no moving parts, is less susceptible to damage caused by movement than a standard hard drive. The keyboard is backlit, but the keys are slightly too shallow and not the most comfortable to type on.

The battery lasted long enough for us to watch Apocalypse Now, but not long enough for the Redux version. You can browse the web for a perfectly reasonable amount of time. The Series 9 is an excellent ultra-portable that will draw admiring glances. If pushed to choose, we’d pick the MacBook Air over this, but for slimline looks it’s by far the closest Windows 7 rival.

Pros:

Lush, ultra-thin design.
Excellent performance for the size.
Decent battery life.

Cons:

Limited storage.
No dedicated graphics.
The keyboard could be better.
Bendy lid.

Features:

Storage: A solid state drive is speedy and less likely to be damaged by travel
Measurements: At 19mm thick, this is the slimmest laptop on test
Click: The bottom corners of the touchpad can be used like mouse button
Made to travel? Slim, light and backed up by a decent battery life. It’s made to roam

What do you think of this device? Do you already had any experience using this machine?