- Recommending a laptop in 2017 is always
a difficult thing to do.
What Samsung has done here with the Notebook 9
is really interesting:
Nothing.
It's a basic Ultrabook, so if you need a 4K display
or touchscreen, well, this is probably not gonna be
for you, but if you need something that is excellent
to type on and a really nice display and you're just
a productivity worker, well, this really is a great laptop.
In fact, it may be my favorite 15-inch laptop to date,
and I'll tell you why.
(intense music)
In terms of specifications, Samsung has done
a really nice job here.
This a a premium Ultrabook, make no mistake.
It is an Intel core I7 dual-core processor.
Now, it is Kaby Lake and seventh generation,
so that's a very good thing.
You also get 16 gigabytes of RAM,
and 256 gigabytes of storage.
Being Samsung, it's no surprise, they used their own
PM961 SSD there.
That's also known as a 960 Evo, it's an awesome SSD,
and I'm glad they did include it here.
In terms of GPU, that's where things get really interesting.
They did use an NVIDIA 940 MX
with two gigabytes of video memory.
Think of the 940 MX as basically a booster.
It's not a gaming PC, you can do some light gaming on this,
but it's more just to help with browsing
and launching applications.
Let's talk a little bit about the display.
Samsung actually uses a 15-inch, that is 15.0 inch display,
which makes it a little bit unusual.
I happen to like it a lot, though.
And this is a full HD LED display.
It's also non-touch.
They use HDR on this, that means it has
high contrast abilities.
This is totally optional, if you don't want to use it,
you just flick the switch and it's off.
It's also glossy, but this is Samsung, so their
glossy displays are some of the best out there,
especially if you've ever used one of their TVs.
That means it absorbs reflections very well.
So, this is actually kind of a cross between
a glossy and matte display, it makes it one of my favorites.
You're still going to get that really good color contrast,
but you're not gonna get the washed-out things
with matte displays as well.
But, your eyes will also be saved in long-term use.
Last I checked, keyboards are super important with laptops,
and luckily, Samsung does a really good job
here with theirs.
This year, what you have are silver keys instead of black.
Now, that's good and bad.
I think it looks better, but the black keys, obviously,
give better contrast.
The benefit here though, of course, they do have
backlighting this year, which is pretty awesome.
They left that off last year, and it was really
annoying for such a premium laptop.
Now, the backlight is a little weird.
It's basically green and yellow, it's not quite white,
but that helps with the contrast.
Luckily, though, the key travel and key usage here
for typing is phenomenal, it's one of my favorite keyboards.
It's a very soft keyboard, so, when you're typing on it,
it's not gonna be very loud.
You do, of course, have the homerow keys over here
on the side, which is becoming the new style.
You also have a full fingerprint scanner right below it.
I like how they basically lined all that up,
so it just matches.
It's actually one of the best fingerprint scanners
I've actually used, it works every single time,
I've never had an issue with it.
Of course, the one odd thing here is, all these keys
have now shifted down a little bit.
So, what happens is, the trackpad is slightly off-center
compared to, say, the spacebar.
You might have have noticed that until I pointed it out,
it's one of those things, you can't unsee it now.
Speaking of that trackpad, look at the size of this thing,
it is absolutely huge, it's so good.
It's a glass trackpad, and it is precision.
So, Samsung's actually been very good
about embracing precision.
I think it's one of the best trackpads I've used.
Specifically, when you click it, it's a very soft click,
it doesn't take a lot of energy.
Now, I have done what they called buried the lede
with this laptop.
Why I say that?
This thing weighs 2.7 pounds, also known as 1.24 kilograms,
for the rest of the world.
That makes it ridiculously light.
It's one of the lightest 15-inch laptops.
Now, I know the LG Gram is technically lighter,
but the LG Gram doesn't feature as much hardware
as this does, including that GPU, as well as
a precision touchpad and faster SSD.
So, actually, this is a better value,
and it just has excellent build quality.
Now, it is metal, but it's like a metal hybrid plastic,
so it's a little strange.
It doesn't feel as solid as, say, the HP Spectre,
which, 'cause it ways two pounds more.
There's no flex on the bottom, it's a very sturdy bottom,
and I had no issues there.
On the top, though, with the display, there is a little bit
of flex in the center here, but it's not bad at all.
For audio, not a huge fan here, Samsung put the speakers
on the bottom, so you have these two little ones.
But, having said that, even though I would prefer them
on top, they're very good speakers, they're a lot better
than I thought they would be.
They're not super loud, but the audio quality is really nice
and Samsung's audio software does a really good job
of tuning it to the media you're watching.
Now, one of the great things here Samsung did was this.
You can open this one-handed, look at that.
It is beautiful, it works every time.
It's a very smooth operation.
They just did a really great job here with that hinge.
What's kind of strange, though, is you can do this.
It goes completely flat.
Now, it's not a 360 hinge, so you can't rotate it
all the way around.
They have this, basically, for conference calls
and when you're ina meeting and you want
to share something with somebody.
It's a little bit weird, but I see HP pushing this design
as well, so, hey, it's not a bad thing.
But overall, there's no wobble to it,
it's a very sturdy hinge.
But I just love how smooth it is, it's just really great
to open and close.
Normally, I skip over software when it comes to laptops,
but not this time, Samsung puts a lot of nice stuff here.
There is what they call this iSync family.
So, I won't go through all of these, but basically,
if you own a Galaxy smartphone, you can do a lot,
including sharing your camera, you can share photos,
you can message things, share your screen,
all sorts of cool little tricks you could do here.
So, pretty nice.
Now, if you don't have a Galaxy phone, don't worry.
There is this awesome app here called Samsung Settings.
It allows you to do things like auto-booting,
so when you open the display, whether it comes on
or off, you can control that.
You can also control whether or not the USB ports
come on for charging when the display is closed,
battery life extender, I really like this one,
outdoor mode, you toggle that, it goes up to over 400 nits
for when you're outside, very nice.
You can toggle the video HDR for the display,
you can even control things like block recording
for the smart camera and microphones.
My favorite, though, is privacy protection.
Look at this, security camera.
This is a really neat feature.
When you lock the device and you go to login,
if someone was to mess with your computer and, say,
type that in and watch.
'Course, I got that password wrong, you'll see this
thing here, it says security cam is running.
What just happened now is when I tried to log in,
it actually snapped my photo.
I think that's an awesome feature, kudos to Samsung
for making that happen.
In terms of performance, Samsung did a really nice job here,
it's one of the best 15-inch laptops out there,
it even beats the HP Spectre out slightly.
When you talk about raw processor, now, of course,
the XPS 15 is gonna be much more strong,
with its quad-core processor.
When it comes down to battery, they did an awesome job.
This has got a 66 watt-hour battery, which is pretty
impressive for a device that weighs 2.7 pounds.
That battery is easily going to get you about 10 hours
of real-world usage.
Now, I say that because it's hard to kill.
I go sometimes two to three days with this device
without having to recharge it.
In terms of noise, it's exceptionally quiet.
This does have two fans on the inside,
which is pretty impressive in of itself,
but they almost never come on.
Now, when you're running the GPUs, say, playing
a video game, they will, but it sounds like a whisper.
So, a very quiet laptop.
In terms of temperatures, it's never got over
102 degrees Fahrenheit or 39 degrees Celsius,
so, overall, it's very cool.
Alright, let's bring it all home.
So, this laptop is a dual-core core I7 with 16 gigs of RAM.
It goes for a price of 1399, which is actually pretty good.
Now, the HP Spectre X360, for a hundred dollars more,
gives you a 4K display and pen support,
that's not insignificant.
But, this device weighs under three pounds
and gets ridiculous battery life, has a beautiful
fingerprint scanner, keyboard and trackpad
and a really nice display, so it's gonna be
a little bit different, it's not for everybody.
But if you do a lot of riding and you just need
a mobile device that you can watch movies on
and just really enjoy using, this is a really good value.
I should also mention, there is also a version
with eight gigs of RAM and no GPU, that goes
for about 1199, so you can save some money there.
I would go for this, though, this is probably
one of my favorite 15-inch laptops right now,
at least for my job and what I need it for.
Now, in terms of availability, unfortunately,
Samsung is pretty weird here, this is only available
in the United States and South Korea at this moment.
Samsung doesn't have much presence in Europe right now
for their laptops, so you'll probably need to import it.
If you wanna read my full review, including more detail
and those benchmarks, head to Windows Central.
If you liked this video, give us a thumbs up
and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, take care everybody.
If you wanna read my full review, head to Windows-
don't wanna do my eyebrow thing/
And it keeps it very cool, it rarely gets over a hundred,
oh, (bleep), sorry, gotta pause that,
I gotta look up Celsius.
Thing to do, if we...
Oh, man.