Samsung 9 Series Laptop – Thinner, Lighter & More Powerful Than A MacBook Air
Written by Rob Nichols on January 9, 2011 · Filed under Tech
The MacBook Air has for a while now been the lone competitor in the market for super light, super slim laptops. I mean, there are a sprinkling of others, such as the Dell Adamo or the painfully named, and even more excruciatingly priced, Sony VAIO VPCZ128GX, but for one reason or another, they just don’t stack up.
This one, though, from Samsung could be a different story. To put it into context, the 9 Series laptop weighs in at 2.89 pounds, which is actually 0.01 pounds lighter than the MacBook Air. Of course, this could be down to a simple difference in the rounding of the two figures, but as it is, we can only assume it’s lighter.
Similarly, it has a profile of 0.64 inches compared to the MacBook Air’s 0.68. Again, there’s not much in it, but despite it being only slightly more mobile, this becomes even more surprising when you consider the power it packs.
The Samsung 9 Series features a second-generation Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.4GHz, with Intel’s latest, and much-improved, integrated graphics. On top of that you’re looking at a full 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD, USB 3.0 and for the US, built in WiMax 4G. This is even more impressive considering the form factor as well as the 6.5 hours of battery life.
The 9 Series’ display measures at 13.3-inches, again pitting it right alongside the MacBook Air, however it is LED backlit and features Samsung’s SuperBright Plus technology with 400- nit brightness. Samsung do like their displays bright, don’t they? The resolution is an unsurprising 1366×768, which is neither disappointing nor as overwhelming as some of the other specs on show.
But, exactly how do they achieve the feat of building such a lightweight as well as powerful, machine? Well, it all gets a bit technical, but the bottom line is they have crafted it from a material known as Duralumin, before unknown to the computing world, but quite accustomed to advanced aircrafts and the likes. It claims to be twice as durable as aluminium, a more popular choice of manufacturers these days.
Clearly, this amount of incredible, mind-blowing engineering is going to set you back a few pennies. It’s set to be launched in February in the States with what I think is a quite reasonable, price tag of $1600.
Aesthetically there obviously isn’t a lot to the 9 Series, however the lid and similarly the base surrounding the chiclet keyboard and spacious trackpad, is a black brushed metal effect. To be honest, it looks gorgeous.
Running Windows 7, it is seemingly the perfect rival for the Air, but can it be successful, or will it just be an incredible flop? I mean, the high price means that accepting a bit more weight certainly means you could get a bit more bang for your buck, but for the on-the-go users who don’t expect too much performance from a machine, and of course are fairly wealthy, this could be the perfect option.
So, what do you think of the Samsung 9 Series? Better or worse than the Macbook Air?
Via – Inspect-a-Gadget
