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Samsung’s Series 9 Ultrabook range joined by a full HD model

by Mark Tyson on 26 March 2013, 11:23

Tags: Samsung (005935.KS), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabueb

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A new Samsung Series 9 Premium Ultrabook (NP900X3E-A03US) has been announced. The Series 9 Ultrabooks were launched nine months ago and the 13.3-inch screened model had a resolution of 1600x900 pixels. Now there’s a new Series 9 Ultrabook joining the clan with a 13.3-inch screen offering a 1920x1080 pixel display. This latest edition’s LED-backlit HD display offers “up to 40 per cent more screen content” than the previously released 13.3-inch offering.

The new laptop doesn’t replace the previous 13.3-inch Series 9 model but complements it, or even sits above it, in Samsung’s offerings. Samsung describes it as “the ultimate, ultraportable PC for mobile professionals as one of the thinnest and lightest ultrabooks on the market”. To make the screen more readable in bright lighting conditions the screen also features “SuperBright™ technology, up to 50 percent brighter than standard laptop screens, for more vivid colors”. However Samsung has not taken this opportunity to introduce a touch-enabled screen to its Series 9 Ultrabooks.

Series 9 Premium Ultrabook NP900X3E-A03US specifications

Category

 

Details

 

 

Series 9 NP900X3E-A03US

Display

 

Size

    

13.3”
 

Resolution

    

LED Full HD (1920x1080)

Battery Life

 

Battery Life*

    

Up to 8 hours

Dimensions

 

Dimensions

    

12.35” x 8.60 x 0.51”
 

Weight

    

2.56 lbs.
 

Color

    

Black

Performance

 

Operating System

    

Windows 8 Pro
 

Processor

    

Intel® Core™ i7-3517U
 

Graphics

    

Intel® HD Graphics 4000
 

System Memory**

    

4GB
 

Hard Disk Drive (Max.)**

    

256GB SSD

Mobile Broadband

 

Mobile Broadband

    

N/A

I/O Ports

 

USB Ports

    

1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0

 

Samsung reminds us of the staying power of the Series 9 Ultrabooks, which is enhanced by “an advanced Lithium-Polyester battery for a lifespan up to 1,500 cycles, extending the product’s lifespan up to three times longer than a conventional battery”. The price of the new NP900X3E-A03US is expected to be $1,899 and will be available in retail within weeks.

Samsung’s latest and greatest might be quite an improvement, with 40 per cent more screen real estate, but it’s still not approaching the likes of the MacBook Pro’s 2,560x1,600 Retina display, or the Google Pixel’s 2,560x1,700 resolution screen. This is rather surprising as, in the mobile arena, Samsung are very much at the forefront of the pixel density race in competition with Apple and Google hardware (among others).



HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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Posted by nichomach - Tue 26 Mar 2013 11:43
Honestly, I'm not sure that the pixel density matters in this context unless the machine's being used for detailed image or video editing. Anything else (office apps and so forth) aren't going to benefit from massivekly high resolutions on quite small screens. The higher resolution screens are going to have to be doing a lot of scaling to make them, or any other content, or even the GUI, usable, I'd have thought.
Posted by cptwhite_uk - Tue 26 Mar 2013 11:56
Absolutely, running older windows programs on these ultra high res displays is going to be a horrible experience. There's got to be an opening for an app which can upscale older programs more effectively than Windows 8. Even the windows 8 metro interface scales badly ….Microsoft are you listening?!
Posted by TheAnimus - Tue 26 Mar 2013 12:24
cptwhite_uk. Not sure what you mean by scaling in metro as bad? If you change the DPI to that of the display it scales quite well I've found?

As for apps, it really does depend, you can set it per process (which I do) but some are much worse than others.

nichomach, I strongly disagree with the pixel densisty as a ‘better’ for image editing, it depends what kind! If your doing photography a lot of the higher density screens have naff colours, in fact the first batch of rettina MBPs I used all had horrific colour rendition, the most recent one I was using (Oct last year) was better, but still behind their previous models.

However high res is loverly for working with text documents or programming!
Posted by Animus404 - Tue 26 Mar 2013 13:57
I bet they bundle it with a ton of crapware. From the laptops I've seen recently Samsung seem particularly bad for this.
Posted by cptwhite_uk - Tue 26 Mar 2013 18:29
The_Animus. Yeah I take your point, metro scaling is acceptable. I guess what I'd like to see though is the experience dictated also by the physical size of the device and not just the resolution, maybe even the type of device so the OS can understand how far away the screen will be viewed. So a metro standard tile scales well. I realise the answer is subjective so a sliding adjustment like a vector based graphic and text would allow would be preferable. I'm not sure of the full answer, but the current method seems crude and “make do” it could be implemented so much better if they applied greater thought to it.

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