Review: Samsung Series 3 Chromebook

This is technically the fifth iteration of the Google Chromebook – so long as you count Google's own CR-48 prototype.

Despite being the fifth Chromebook, the snappily-named Series 3 XE303C12 shouldn't be confused with the previous model, the Samsung Series 5 XE550C22 or even the second Chromebook, the Samsung Series 5 XE500C21.

If you know about Chrome OS already, you'll know that this laptop isn't like mainstream Windows laptops or even machines such as the Apple MacBook Air or the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

Though it struggled with HD, SD video streams play perfectly well; no downloads, though

It doesn't run a conventional operating system such as Windows 8, Mac OS X Mountain Lion or even a straight Linux distro such as Ubuntu.

Instead, it is essentially a computer that does one thing: run a web browser.

In this case, of course, the web browser in question is Google Chrome.

Deciding whether or not the new Chromebook is right for you is actually really easy. The first thing you have to know is that it's cheap. Really cheap.

The Chromebook is a great machine to take to a café to get some work done

At a launch price of £229/USD$330/AU$319, it undercuts most conventional laptops, and is cheaper even than the new iPad mini – though it's more expensive than the low-end Android tablets such as the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD.

That's only part of the decision, however.

The other – indeed, main – thing you have to consider is whether you can live with a laptop that only runs everything in a browser, and therefore, with some caveats, depends on being connected to the web at all times over Wi-Fi.

There's no doubt that this is a Chromebook – look at that huge Chrome logo on the lid!

It's not hard to decide if this is something you can live with; take a moment, close your eyes, and think whether what you mostly do on a computer is done through a browser – or could be.

Because while you can install apps from the Chrome Web Store they're not really applications or programs as most of us would recognise them.

In fact, they're little more than links that sit in your launcher and point to URLs on the web. (Actually, it's a little more complex than that; web apps can, if their developers implement it, add extra features such as using local storage on your Chromebook, rather than solely depending on storage on the servers of the companies whose services you're using.)

Regardless of the technical caveats, however, it remains true that you can't install, say, Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop Elements on a Chromebook. That's not what the Chromebook is about.

You need two hands to open the Chromebook; the hinge is reasonably stiff

It's a slim, light, cheap, long-lasting little laptop that, partly because really the only thing it does is run a web browser and isn't based on Windows, is very secure, and if you live your life in web apps such as facebook.com and Google Docs (or think you could), or especially if you are already immersed in the Google ecosystem of Docs, Gmail, Calendars and more, it's worth considering.

Some applications such as Google Docs can work offline even if there's no Wi-Fi

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Review: Samsung Series 3 NP355V5C

These days, we're surprised when a laptop that's more than 2cm thick and weighs more than a couple of kilograms comes across our desks. Ultrabooks such as the Asus Zenbook UX32A, HP Envy 4 Ultrabook and Samsung Series 5 Ultra seem to have almost completely taken over.

With all the flash behind these new designs, it's easy to overlook something such as the Samsung Series 3 NP355V5C-S01. Intel is powering the Ultrabook boom, but we've got an AMD processor in this 15.6-inch laptop. SSDs are the hot technology, but here Samsung has swapped speed for a huge hard drive.

But the Samsung Series 3 reminds us what a premium we're paying for the convenience of thin and light laptops. For £599 (about AU$938/ US$967), you get a quad-core processor from the high-end AMD A10 'Trinity' APU, with a dedicated Radeon 7670M providing some graphics grunt (though the A10 has a built-in GPU it can use to save power).

You also get a healthy 8GB of RAM, while a generous 1TB hard drive means that you'll have plenty of space to store videos.

In fact, the Samsung Series 3 looks initially like it should score a home run as a multimedia machine. But two things hold it back slightly: the 1366 x 768 screen can only display 720p HD, not 1080p; and while there's a DVD drive, there's no Blu-ray support.

Its size (32 x 372 x 243mm, or 1.26 x 14.65 x 9.57 inches) and weight are fairly standard for this kind of home laptop. At 2.5kg (5.5lbs) it feels a good chunk heavier than an Ultrabook, especially something such as Samsung's own Series 9, but it it's nothing unusual for a 15.6-inch laptop.

Samsung has used the extra space to squeeze in a number pad to the right of the keyboard, and has moved the trackpad over to the left, so it's in line with the space bar.

Along the sides of the machine, you'll find a reasonable array of ports: VGA, HDMI, Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports, along with the DVD drive. There's also an SD card reader tucked tidily away beneath the curve at the front of the machine.

In terms of looks, the Samsung Series 3 is simple silver and grey plastic on top, with a pattern on the lid that's faintly reminiscent of brushed metal. It's all fairly understated, and wouldn't look out of place at home or in an office.

You will notice very quickly that the shiny lid picks up a big smudge every time a finger goes anywhere near it, though.

For its price, the Samsung Series 3 355V5C-S01 offers a seemingly tantalising list of specifications. A quad-core processor, discrete graphics, lots of RAM and a hefty hard drive… what's not to like?

The processor is AMD's top-of-the-line A10 CPU, offering four cores running at 2.3GHz, though they're capable of running at up to 3.2GHz when needed.

The A10 is interesting for spec fans, because it's AMD's first Piledriver chip, which is the step after the promising but disappointing Bulldozer technology we saw from the company.

We won't go into the minutiae too much here - you can get all that from our AMD A10-4600M review - but the important thing is that it's faster than AMD's previous processors, and should bring better integrated graphics performance.

In the case of the Samsung Series 3, though, you won't be reliant on the integrated Radeon 7660G graphics for your gaming needs - there's a discrete graphics card in the shape of the Radeon 7670M.

Now, you might wonder how much of an improvement the graphics can be if the model number is only 10 better, and actually, the two graphics chips are pretty close to each other in terms of performance. However, the two are able to combine to theoretically increase performance dramatically over a single integrated graphics chip.

Naturally, this brings a larger power draw with it, but Samsung and AMD have provided power options to ensure that your computer only uses as much power as it needs when on the battery.

This is all backed up by 8GB of DDR3 RAM, which should offer plenty of headroom for multItasking or editing home movies. And it's more than enough power to run Windows 7 Home Premium.

Though there's no SSD here for instant operating, there are a few built-in software optimisers for booting the Samsung Series 3 laptop quickly and waking it from sleep rapidly.

Instead of a fast solid-state drive, you get a generous 1TB hard drive, offering plenty of space for storing music and movies. It's only a 5400rpm drive, instead of the faster 7200rpm drives you might get in a desktop, but that's standard for laptops.

Backing up and transferring files can be done very quickly with the built-in USB ports. It's a bit of a shame that only two of the four are the faster kind, but it's much better than none.

Along with the SD card slot, Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI video outs and microphone and headphone jacks, there's a good selection of ports on the side of the Samsung Series 3.

There's also the DVD drive, of course, though there's no Blu-ray support. As we mentioned, though, the screen doesn't support Full HD 1080p, so you won't be missing the Blu-ray much anyway. The widescreen display is 1366 x 768, which isn't that unusual for this price, but it's a bit of a shame.

Internet connectivity is handled via either the Ethernet port or built-in Wi-Fi adaptor, supporting up to 802.11n speeds. There's also Bluetooth 4.0 support.

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Review: Samsung Series 7 Gamer

High-end performanceGood hardware for the moneySamsung's UI has some useful optionsRuns relatively quiet and coolGaudy case lightsSamsung's UI is mostly obnoxiousNo 3D supportPage 1 of 3Overview and Specifications

With its blue backlit keyboard and i7 processor, Samsung's Series 7 Gamer laptop is a big shiny box of power. At 17 inches and 9 pounds, it's more of a semi-portable desktop replacement than a truly portable laptop. Still, this is a gaming computer, and with great power generally comes some serious bulk and a hefty down payment.

The first thing you'll notice about the Series 7 Gamer are all the blue lights, and a silver dial on the right side, near the monitor. This lets you cycle the computer into one of four modes: Gaming, Balanced, Library and Green Mode.

With an MSRP of $1,899 (note: Amazon is currently selling it for $1,742.98/£1,349.97), the Series 7 Gamer isn't cheap, but it's also not the priciest mobile gaming solution on the market (just look at the $2500 Razer Blade). A little under two grand is pretty much par for the course with any machine that's (partially) portable and capable of running Skyrim at a respectable resolution.

Let's get down to brass tacks: how much horsepower are you getting for your money? Quite a bit, we're happy to say. Here are the hard and fast specs for the Series 7:

Intel Core i7-3610QM @ 2.3GHz

w/ 6MB L3 cache

16GB DDR3 RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M Graphics

1.5TB Hitachi Hard Drive

8GB SanDisk SSD

17.3" display with 1920x1080 resolution

The Samsung Series 7 Gamer also sports 4 USB ports (2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0), a Blu-Ray drive, 4 stereo speakers, plus built-in webcam and microphone. Our review unit had Windows 7 Home Premium installed.

The Series 7 is not customizable, this is the only configuration that Samsung currently offers.

Page 1 of 3Overview and Specifications

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Review: Samsung Series 9 S27B970D

MHL supportSolid build qualityGood viewing angles and colour accuracyGlass cover reduces image qualityPriceBy Jeremy Laird from PCFormat Issue 271  September 27th 2012

Like most PC peripherals, monitors mostly sell on price. That's because consumers are largely a feckless bunch of mouth-breathers who can't see past pricing and a small handful of headline specs. It's £125? It's 27 inches? It's shiny? It's sold.

In that context, Samsung slinging out a premium-priced 27-incher is either bold or bonkers. Samsung's own Series 8 model is around the £500 mark, and recent months have seen a glut of £200 efforts being bought from Korean eBay merchants.

Meanwhile, you can pick up a number of 30-inch alternatives for roughly the same money as this 27-inch screen. One thing is for sure - the Series 9 will have to be life-alteringly good. So what do you get?

First up is the PLS panel. It's the same type used in the Samsung Series 8 27-inch screen, which is effectively Samsung's take on IPS technology with one or two twists. So far, so good.

Next up is what you might call premium industrial design. That includes a proper metal frame, a brushed metal rear enclosure panel, soft touch controls and a general lifestyle vibe. The stand is height and tilt adjustable, which puts it somewhere between tilt-only cheapo monitors and more widely adjustable pro displays.

Then there's connectivity, which not only includes HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort, but also MHL or Mobile High-Definition Link, which allows you to hook up Android phones. And that's about it. There's no integrated TV tuner or app support. This is a pure PC monitor.

The Series 9 will therefore live or die on a combination of image quality and physical desirability. Unfortunately, we're not entirely convinced by either.

The chassis and stand are superficially sexy, but we'd rather have more adjustability and easier access to the inputs. The latter are buried in the base, which makes plugging things in tedious.

The Series 9's biggest problem involves image quality. That's not a result of a flawed LCD panel - it's lovely. The problem is that it's behind a so-called Crystal Clear Glass panel, so you can't actually see that lovely panel very well at all. It's a shame, because Samsung's PLS technology is lovely.

You get all the benefits of IPS technology, including superb viewing angles and colour accuracy, along with what certainly seems likes improved contrast and definitely involves a smoother, less sparkly anti-glare coating.

Still, the good news is that you can buy the Series 8, which has the same PLS tech, in a more unassuming but actually more ergonomic enclosure, minus the stupid panel cover. Okay, you miss out on the MHL, but it's £300 cheaper, so it's a no-brainer.

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