Review: Samsung Series 9 NP900X4D

The Series 9 is a great machine for mobile workers, boasting up to 10 hours' battery life. The laptop is also super light and incredibly streamlined in its design, making it a pleasure to transport. With its second-generation laptop, Samsung has managed to take an already superb device and make it even better.

Samsung, ever-increasingly determined to outpace Apple, has pushed hard to produce a laptop that bridges the gap between the popular 13-inch Macbook Air and the more powerful 15-inch Macbook Pro. The Series 9 laptop offers the lightweight portability of the Air with a push towards increased performance, added features and a larger 15-inch version.

The Series 9 laptop draws on the same design elements as its predecessor: simplicity and elegance. In fact, users would be forgiven for mistaking this laptop for its predecessor based on looks alone. Under the hood, however, it's a whole different story, but more on that later.

The laptop is encased in an aluminium unibody, which offers a stylish feel with rounded hinges and bevelled edges. This, coupled with the laptop's sleek design at a miniscule 0.58cm thick, makes the laptop an undeniably sexy machine. It also weighs in at just under 1.6kg, making it a great option for people who travel a lot. This is a tad heavier than its predecessor, but the added performance is well worth the extra 300g.

Samsung's Series 9 has some great design features, including a recessed area around the keyboard to protect the screen from pressing against the keys when the laptop is closed. The bottom of the laptop is ventilated, which allows for more heat distribution.

The Series 9 comes with a well-spaced keyboard and a generous supply of ports. Samsung has thrown in an additional USB 3.0 slot, so it has two USB 3.0 slots, as well as a USB 2.0 slot.

A nice feature with the USB ports is that the Series 9 will continue to charge devices connected via these ports, even when the laptop goes to sleep. This sort of charging should only be done while the Series 9 is connected to power, but with up to 10 hours' of battery life, it should not be a disaster if users forget to disconnect their phones before going to bed.

The laptop also has a microphone input and audio output, making it great for Skype calling, even in noisy environments like the airport. The multi-slot card input also lets users transfer files from SD, SDHC, SDXC and MMC cards. While navigating around the screen is easy enough, I found I couldn't select or open files.

The track pad takes some getting used to. I found, though, that I kept getting simple left and right clicks mixed up, as the touch pad has several specially designated areas that seem to end up cross-talking if you're not careful. However, once users are aware of the designated areas - click buttons on the bottom of the track pad and multi-gestures like pinch or pull to zoom and two fingers to scroll - the Series 9 is a pleasure to use. Not having designated buttons also means a larger track pad and more room for scrolling.

Unfortunately, the Series 9's ultra-slim design has left no room for a CD or DVD drive. This means users will not be able to listen to music or watch DVDs without an external drive. However, given that most people store their music and movies on external hard drives, I don't expect consumers will be turning their noses up at the laptop because of this omission.

At less than a centimetre thick, one can't really expect great sound to emanate from the Series 9, so it's not surprising that the sound is tinny at best. That said, however, the Series 9 does have digital surround sound, so it offers a fairly decent audiovisual experience to users watching movies and series on their laptops anyway.

The Series 9 has a 15-inch screen with a 1600x900-pixel resolution. The result is a great display with sharp edges, deep blacks and brilliant colours. The matte screen also minimises on-screen shadows and makes the Series 9 suitable for use even in sunlight.

Samsung has also made the screen and speaker settings incredibly customisable. Customising these settings is also made easier thanks to predefined modes. For audio, users can select speaker settings based on the genre of music, for example jazz, rock and classical. Users watching movies can also set the screen dimensions to 16:9.

The laptop has 8GB of RAM and runs on an Intel Core i5 processor, with a processing speed of 1.70GHz, which compares to its predecessor's 1.4GHz and 4GB of RAM. This is a serious amount of processing power and means the Series 9 is lightening fast. Running programs like Word and Excel is a breeze, and the laptop will even run Photoshop without a glitch.

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip means running games with high-level graphics may be asking too much. The likes of Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies still look great, and the bigger screen will delight players used to these games on their smartphones and tablets. Throw Skyrim or Mass Effect 3 at the Series 9, however, and it may well disappoint.

That said, the Series 9 is a high-performance, ultra-portable workhorse, best suited to business executives and mobile workers. Given that hardcore gamers are likely to spend most of their days buried in the basement, this sexy machine will be wasted on them anyway.

In terms of connectivity, the Series 9 offers wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.0 and wired Ethernet LAN.

The Series 9 also sports some high-end features, including a 1.3MP Web camera and Intel Wireless Display (or WiDi), which lets users stream live HD video to any compatible monitor wirelessly.

The Series 9 runs on Windows 7 Professional as well as some software Samsung has added, such as Easy File Sharing, an Interactive Guide, Easy Settings control panel and a Software Launcher.

The Series 9 also comes with the usual bundle of extras for Windows, preinstalled but not yet licensed, for example, Norton Internet Security, Online Backup, Office 2011, MS Silverlight, Live Writer et al. One interesting new addition is Absolute Data protect, which, for a subscription fee, allows users to remotely wipe all of the information from the laptop and lock it, should it be stolen or lost.

Easy File Sharing will allow sharing of files between two Samsung laptops within range of each other. The Interactive Guide gives users a full breakdown of all the hardware features and instructions on how to use special features of the Series 9, like the built-in WiDi.

The Easy Software Manager allows for quick and painless access to software installations and knocks the socks off Windows default software manager. The feature I liked the most was the quick breakdown of what updates were available and what Windows 'essentials' were still missing.

The Software Launcher allows for quick and easy access to some key features, and is easily rearranged. Items can also be grouped according to theme, for example “Utilities”, which houses Skype, Easy Settings and Intel WiDi, or Customer Support, which sports the Software Manager, Interactive Guide and Feedback.

Easy Settings provides quick access to all the key features users might want to control, like the economy mode, which gives users feedback on their power consumption and even indicates their CO2 footprint based on their usage of the laptop. Here, users will also find the fast-boot option, which, even with a password at login, still boots up the whole machine in about 12 to 15 seconds.

I'm not usually a fan of manufacturer-added control features and software. I tend to think they usually just slow down and clutter a Windows install, but Samsung may just have persuaded me otherwise. This is because Samsung has kept its added features fairly inconspicuous and nothing it has added seems to do anything but better the operation of the machine.

According to Samsung, the Series 9 has up to 10 hours' of battery life. This is, however, with optimised settings. The user can, for example, reduce power consumption by adjusting the screen brightness, which is easy to do in the Easy Settings control panel.

The Series 9 is a mean machine. Its performance and streamlined design put it up there with most ultrabooks in terms of functionality. Of course, technically, the Series 9 is not an ultrabook because it hasn't been made to Ultrabook specs.

However, in terms of design and functionality, it fits well in this category and Samsung has also thrown in some great software and high-end features that arguably make the Series 9 a winner in this category.

Unfortunately, this performance comes with a hefty price tag, to the tune of R14 999.