Samsung ATIV Book 9 2014 : Too biggg on everything !!!

Samsung ATIV Book 9 (2014) : Review

                                     A whole library of Ultrabooks in our laptop world,But  no one with a 15-inch screen. The ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition is an update to the 15-inch Series 9 laptop from 2012. Like the original, it's insanely thin and light for a machine with this screen size, except now, it graduates to a full HD touchscreen, longer battery life and updated processors. The thing is, even for a flagship it's pretty expensive, It has one of the highest starting prices  and there are plenty of similarly specced machines that cost less. That raises an interesting question, Should you really buy this?

                        The new Book 9 is made of smooth aluminum done up in a "Mineral Ash Black" shade that actually looks blue in certain light. It's elegant in much the same way the MacBook Air is, except that dark color means it shows fingerprints more easily. What's nice is that Samsung has scrubbed the Book 9's palm rest of any branding , unlike the ATIV Book 9 Plus which had  logos for its SideSync and HomeSync software. Gladly, Samsung  kept things simple here.

                       After looking at this one can surely tell that after Apple there is another pioneer in building extra-thin Ultrabooks . In fact, thanks to its new touchscreen, the ATIV Book 9 is thicker and heavier than it used to be. That said, it's still super light for a 15-inch laptop, weighing in at just 3.92 pounds and 0.63 inch thick. There aren't many 15-inch Ultrabooks nowadays, and most aren't this thin or light. After that, your next lightest options are machines like the Dell XPS 15 and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, which measure 0.7 inch thick and weigh 4.44 and 4.46 pounds, respectively.

                           There's actually a benefit to the 15-inch Book 9 being slightly thicker than it used to be, it had little more room when figuring out which ports to include. The machine features full-sized HDMI output, a step up from the micro-HDMI socket . There are three USB connections (two of them 3.0), a mini-VGA port, a headphone/mic jack, a lock slot and an SD card reader. There's also an RJ-45 Ethernet port, but it's not a proper full-sized socket, so you'll need a dongle (not included) to get a wired connection.

Keyboard and trackpad

                           Always a thing with Samsung laptops is that hey tend to have fairly flat keyboards on their laptops. Unfortunately ,the ATIV Book 9 is no exception to this legacy .Still it has least made some subtle changes that make the typing experience more comfortable. To begin with, the keycaps now have a slight contour, making them more finger-friendly. They're also coated in some sort of soft finish -- not rubbery, exactly, but soft.
                        The same can be said of the trackpad. The ATIV Book 9 has one spacious pad, and to Samsung's credit, it's much more precise now. Once in a while, I'll struggle with single-finger navigation, but for the most part, tracking is precise, even when I'm selecting small items on the desktop. Ditto for two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom both feel remarkably controlled most of the time.

Display

                          The panel here measures 15.6 inches diagonally. That's a slight bump over the 15-inch panel on the last-gen model, and it's a big leap over standard 13-inch Ultrabooks. For what it's worth, it's a fairly high-quality panel, too: The colors are vibrant, and between the 300-nit brightness level and the low-reflective panel,.
                      But how can it be perfect ,the problem is, though the screen is indeed higher-res than its predecessor (1,920 x 1,080 vs. 1,600 x 900), it's still relatively low-res compared to most other Ultrabooks. While At 1080p is  now a standard for flagship Ultrabooks,even who have a smaller screen size. Even mid-range 13-inch systems have a higher pixel density and, in many cases, are noticeably sharper. So, while you do indeed get more screen real estate here, you otherwise can get as good a screen or better on any number of cheaper machines.

Performance and battery life

                You will never believe just blink and it's missed. The ATIV Book 9 boots into the desktop in just five seconds.It slightly beats some other machines in benchmark tests, including a few that run on the same dual-core Core i5-4200U processor. The thing is, even with 8GB of RAM, it doesn't significantly outperform machines we tested with the same CPU and four gigs of memory. And while the Samsung-made SSD delivers solid read speeds of 551 MB/s, its peak write speeds tapped out at around 141 MB/s -- on the slow side for a machine of this caliber.

              The ATIV Book 9's 62Wh battery can last up to 8.8 hours on a charge.  Even with a 1080p movie, the Book 9 managed nine hours and 34 minutes of runtime. Either way, that's a big improvement over Samsung's last-gen 15-inch Ultrabook, which died out after around seven and a haThe Book 9's runtime is also a clear step over most ultraportables .Then again, there are many 13-inch models that come within about an hour of the ATIV Book 9. I have to wonder if the battery life gains here are big enough to justify the extra weight and higher price.


WRAP-UP
                   

                  The ATIV Book 9  is indeed a  good Ultrabook in its own way. It's well-designed and thin and light for its size, with solid performance, long battery life and a comfortable keyboard-trackpad combo. It's also a clear improvement over its predecessor, and so it deserves an even better score. The battery life is only modestly longer than what smaller models are capable of, and the screen is decidedly less pixel-dense, to boot. Everything said, the only things really distinguishing this from the competition are its unusually big screen and its awful price tag. 

SPECIFICATIONS : 

• OS

  Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

• CPU

  Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 4200U

• LCD SIZE

  15.6"

• SYSTEM MEMORY

  8GB

• STORAGE CAPACITY

  128GB

• CHIPSET

  Intel® HD Graphics 4400

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF IT , comment below?

See full specs @ Samsung

SHARE