Samsung 9 Series Laptop - MacBook Air Killer
Who is Samsung?
Samsung was founded by, Lee Byung-chull in In 1938.
The Samsung Group:is a Korean multinational conglomerate corporation with offices in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. By revenue, Samsung is the world's second largest conglomerate. As of 2008 it's posted an annual revenue of US $173.4 billion.
The Samsung Group comprises numerous international affiliated businesses. These include:
- Samsung Electronics
- Samsung Heavy Industries
- Samsung Engineering
- Samsung C&T (this is the holding company)
- Samsung Life Insurance
- Samsung Everland (a theme park)
- Samsung Securities
Samsung Computers
Samsung has been building and marketing computing devices for a couple of decades in Asia and Europe. It has recently decided to start marketing machines here in the United States. The 9 Series is one of it's best examples.
9 Series Notebook
The Samsung 9 Series is a thin and light laptop by design. It is clearly intended as a head-to-head competitor to the MacBook Air Series of computers by Apple. It features the Superbright Plus display with a sleek, elegant design style.
Some of the most notable features are it's durable design and long battery life. It is clearly meant as a serious business centric laptop computer that is light and thin yet powerful in processing. The outer shell is made of Duralumin, a material typically used in advanced aircraft design. It is said to be twice as strong as aluminum.
Ultra Vivid Display
The 9 Series display is thirteen point three (13.3") inch diagonal with an LED/TFT backlit display. This display claims a 100,000:1 contrast ratio with 400 nit1 brightness. The display can present sixteen million (16,000,000 ) colors to the eye. The Ultra Vivid Display also has a very wide viewing angle of one hundred sixty (160) degrees. The Series 9 also has an ambient light sensor to adjust display brightness depending on external light sources. The keyboard back-lighting is also adjusted this way.
Internals
The 9 Series runs the Intel® CoreTM i5 Processor 2537M (1.40 GHz, 3MB; turbo up to 2.3 GHz). The graphics processor is the Intel HD graphics card which supports 1080p high-definition playback. Storage is provided by a one hundred twenty eight (128Gb) Gigabyte SSD2 drive. This means all storage is electronic; not relying on disc drives. This also means boot up and data access times will be very short indeed.
The battery is rated at up to six and one half (6.5) hours with Lithium polymer cells. Samsung projects up to 1,000 charging cycles with no drop in performance with this battery design. The 9 Series also supports a number of charging settings, like a "Battery Life Extender Mode" and "Express Charging Mode."
Connectivity includes USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0 (stereo enabled), built-in WiMax and supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
FormFactors
Samsung 9 Series will be available in both an eleven (11") inch and thirteen (13") inch model.
Samsung Series 9
| |
|---|---|
Manufacturer
| Samsung
|
Operating System
| Windows 7 Home Premium
|
Central Processing Unit
| Intel Core i5 dual-core processor 2.3GHz
|
Graphics Processor
| Intel HD GT2
|
Screen
| 13.3" TFT/LED (1366 x 768 resolution)
|
Storage
| 128Gb SSD
|
Speakers
| Stereo (2 x 1.5 Watt + 1.5 Watt Subwoofer)
|
Input
| laptop sized keyboard
|
tracpad with "buttons" left and right
| |
single microphone
| |
ambient light sensor
| |
Connectivity
| WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
|
BlueTooth 3.0 (stereo)
| |
USB 3.0
| |
GPS
| Unknown
|
FormFactor
| Laptop
|
Weight
| 2.89 lbs (65 g)
|
Battery
| 800 milli-amp hour Li-Ion
|
Availability
March 16, 2011
The Samsung Series 9 is now available on the Samsung site and will also start showing up in big box stores tomorrow. The Samsung site has them listed at $1,624.99 which is considerably cheaper than the equivalent MacBook Air.
You can find it here;
http://datavis.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?key=NP900X3A-A03US&x=46&y=8
Coda
Clearly this is a laptop meant to go head-to-head with the MacBook Air. The form-factor, functionality and even the prices are a direct threat to Apple.
The most notable features, for the author at least, are the fast processor, super-bright screen, and the all flash memory for storage. This means the Series 9 will be fast, light, and pleasing for both the eye and the hand to use.
Footnotes
1 Nit: a unit of luminance equivalent to one candela per square meter
2 SSD: solid state drive; a device that acts like a disc drive, but relies on memory cards instead.
Disclaimer
The author was not compensated in any way, either monetarily, with discounts, or freebies by any of the companies mentioned.
Though the author does make a small profit for the word count of this article none of that comes directly from the manufacturers mentioned. The author also stands to make a small profit from advertising attached to this article.
The author has no control over either the advertising or the contents of those ads.
