Samsung Series 9 Ultra Portable

It’s pretty, it’s fast. But don’t push it too hard; there’s only so much load 4 MB of RAM can bear

Samsung’s second generation Series 9 is here. It runs on an Intel Core i7 processor and has a 13.3 inch LED display. The machine has a 256 GB solid state drive (SSD), 4 GB of RAM and weighs only 1.16 kg. Impressed? Well, its specs are good but not mind blowing. You may want to pick it up because it is pretty.

Samsung calls it the thinnest laptop around. This may be true for now; thinner models have been announced. But that does not take away the fact that Samsung has put a lot of effort into this model—roughly 33,000 man hours, says the Korean company. And it was effort well spent: its keyboard is comfortable and the screen is bright both indoors and outdoors. Boot-up time is  less than 9 seconds (thanks to the SSD) and it wakes up from sleep mode in under 2 seconds.

The machine is pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit, and has another layer of software running on top of Windows, which groups all the applications. The battery life is rated at 9 hours but I can’t verify this because I had very little time with the demo machine.

It has a lot of connectivity options, but you may need to buy extra hardware to use all of them. For example: there is an Ethernet port for wired connectivity, but you need to have a dongle to use this facility. The VGA port also needs a dongle.

All the standard ports are there. It has a USB 3.0 port (which is becoming a standard port now) and a Micro HDMI port too. For wireless connectivity, it has Wi-Fi (both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 and WiDi.

Its audio is not too impressive. The built-in speakers are a letdown.

The machine is designed for general use, and is not suited for demanding activities like gaming or HD video editing. I would have loved to have an option with at least 8 GB RAM on the base unit. But regardless of all that, the machine is nice and slim for day-long portability.

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Gagandeep Singh Sapra