13.3" Samsung NP900X3C with Ivy Bridge CPU

The u100 universally sucks. Some people may have other things going on (like a defective u100 or whatever), but it doesn't change the fact that the u100 is widely regarded as one of the all-time worst performing SSDs. Have you ever owned a computer with a proper SSD drive? It is hard for me to believe that anybody who has used a proper SSD would find the X3C w/u100 acceptable.

 

Maybe Samsung wanted to make sure all of the initial deeply detailed reviews had solid performance. I notice that the NP900X3C Ivy Bridge reviews were really minor updates to the previous Sandy Bridge reviews. Almost none of the reviewers bothered to look at SSD performance.

So Samsung gets their favorable reviews and laughs all the way to the Apple bank.

 

Still looking for input on battery life. Battery is quite a bit smaller than my UX31A, but the screen also likely consumes a bit less power. How many hours are people getting with casual web browsing?

 

And if they did, boot up time/sequential were the only performance criteria of interest (cough engadget).

"It would appear, too, that its SanDisk-made solid-state drive is also faster than most. In the disk benchmark ATTO it managed top read speeds of 501 MB/s and max writes of 364 MB/s."

That was just a -poor review.

 

I get about 5 ~ 6 hours of web browsing with brightness @ level 3

 

Which is of course business as usual there, The Verge, Gizmodo, etc.

Regarding the battery life, I'll have an answer for you on the Sandy Bridge model this time next week. I don't think my NP900X3B will be here until Wednesday. Getting it setup the way I want, then running a few tests will take a little time. I think I recall the first NP900X3B I had getting around 5 hours of battery life. I'll double check this coming weekend and post some information in the NP900X3B owners thread.

I'm sure one of the Ivy Bridge owners will chime in here soon.

 

okay so my touchpad just suddently stopped working whilst i was browsing today. I have a wireless mouse and that still works fine. Also i tried "function f5" to turn on/off touchpad, nothing...

haven't restarted the laptop yet as i've been working and can use the wireless mouse just fine but what the . this really shouldn't happen. can someone advise me on how to get some sort of event log to work out exactly what went wrong and why before i reboot.

thanks

 

can anyone else confirm the memory for NP900X3C-A02UK is soldered and not upgradeable.

 

Yes... It's all over this thread. RAM is soldered and not upgradable.

 

Still haven't heard from owners if there are problems / quality control issues with the NP900X3C models, or if the only complaint is the U100 performance.

Also, for anyone who has the NP900X3C-A04 model with the i7 and 256 GB SSD, how's the battery life? Should I expect it to be noticeably worse or unchanged vs. the A01 with the i5?

I know the A04 is a higher-priced model with a smaller demographic, but why is it only sold through random online-only retailers I've never heard of? CostCentral, Seaboom.com, NeutronUSA, eCost.....These are the types of places that are actually selling the A04. No Best Buy, Amazon, etc. Why is that? I'm actually considering going the A04 route, but I'm a bit wary ordering from these online outlets I've never heard of..

 

Because it is targeted towards business customers. Remember, our discerning tastes and demands are the exception for home use - most of the home market isn't quite so demanding.

 

Used the 15" Series 9 today at BB. The keyboard travel is awful. Is the 13" also like this? I was looking to replace my UX31A with a 13" Series 9, but the keyboard seemed as bad as a Sony Z. The thin profile and light weight are nice, but now I am not sure.

 

They are nearly identical.

If you are looking for a good chiclet keyboard, you should probably wait until the ThinkPad X1 Carbon or T430U come out. X1C ETA is 8/15. T430U is October.

 

Thank you for the suggestions. I actually find the UX31A to have a pretty good keyboard compared to most of the current competition. Will definitely look into the two you mentioned.

 

I haven't used one (ASUS) but would like to try one of the new ones. The reviews indicate the trackpad is still annoying. The ELAN trackpad on the Series 9 is quite good. Some say the runner up to the Mac trackpad.

 

The trackpad is very good EXCEPT for the smart detection while typing. I didn't check too much to see if the Samsung has the same issues.

I tried installing the Samsung ELAN driver on Asus but the two finger tap for a right click would not work unless I clicked the actual trackpad. When I set a three finger tap to be a right click it worked just fine. Not sure what the issue there was for.

I like the ASUS ELAN driver better than the Samsung for 3 finger gestures too. The three finger swipe up shows all open Windows. Quite useful. Didn't find as nice an option using the Samsung driver.

All that said, ASUS does seem to be having more issues than Samsung with quality control, and the proprietary SSD irks me. I can't upgrade my SSD with ASUS. On a Series 9 I can pop in any mSATA drive. Decisions...

 

Where are you seeing/hearing Aug 15 for the X1 Carbon? I've not seen anything regarding release dates. If this Aug 15 is reliable, I may wait because I don't need a computer until the end of August.

 

See http://www.partnerinfo.lenovo.com/p...Lenovo_TopSeller_Quick_Reference_Guide_US.pdf

 

The new SSD hasn't arrived yet, but I have a free Win 7 Pro license through school, and I already have it on a USB drive. I wonder if any of you know if all the Samsung programs will work on Win 7 Pro and with a different key than the included or if it will be some weird kind of problem?

 

Just played with the Mac Air again today and noticed the two finger scrolling on the Air is so much more responsive and smooth than that of the S9. Is there a software patch/update for the 13" S9 specifically targeting improvement to its trackpad? Where can I go to adjust the sensitivity on the trackpad? One finger navigation is fine, but two finger scrolling sucks donkey balls.

As for gaming, Just Cause 2 is playable in low settings at 1024*768 res, while NFS HP is playable at low settings at 1200*800, and SF4:AE is playable at default resolution low settings. GTA IV is unplayable at all, screen is all messed up, low settings and low res doesn't help at all. Will try Batman Arkham Asylum later.

I very much like the Series 9 form factor, head and toes above the Mac Air, especially the minimal screen bezel. The shallow keyboard takes some getting used to, but I am getting better at it.

 

You shouldn't have issues in theory. However the upgrade process can be difficult and frustrating if you don't know exactly what you're doing (or even if you do). And if you have to RMA the machine you may need to restore its original state. The real question is why you need pro? Also, I don't believe you are permitted to use the S9's windows license on another machine, but I could be wrong on the eula.

Ok, maybe the anytime upgrade is better as Thor suggests:

Solved Upgrading from home to pro - upgrade key? - Windows 7 Forums

 

First of all, Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade is trivial. It's as simple as plugging in a key and a reboot. A clean install is also trivial for anyone that has ever been through the setup process. Deleting and creating partitions is easy.

The complicated part is understanding the drivers and software developed for the machine by Samsung with no supplied guide. The best way to figure it out is to first observe and document what you see. Creating the environment DVD set with the Samsung supplied backup/recovery software is highly advised before making changes.

Last time I checked Samsung was supplying all of the drivers and software for a clean install at the support area for your model.

 

Question. I did a quick look of the thread but didn't see the topic brought up, but what I'd like to know is if there's a way to manual override the laptop's battery only profile? I notice whenever I pull the plug it will go into a power saving state where the CPU cannot throttle up at all, it is stuck to the lowest speed. This behavior is not good if and when I want to do gaming running on pure battery.

Just tried batman Arkham asylum and it runs surprising good at default res.

Thanks in advance.

 

I know the biggest complaint about the S9 is the U100 SSD. It seems though that this is only the 128 GB drive. How is the 256 GB SSD in the A04? What's its performance like?

 

I've been using the X3C-A01US for a little over the month now, and I can say that I am extremely pleased with my purchase. The build quality is excellent, and yes, you CAN get upwards of 6 hours on a single charge with moderate web browsing, word processing, and/or movie watching (even 720p content). I don't understand why people are so skeptical about the battery life rating.

The only issues I've had are as follows:

The touchpad is too sensitive. There has been a solution posted, which involves extracting an executable from the touchpad .zip file and adjusting the sensitivity in there. However, whenever I use this executable, my "Drag and Drop" settings are disabled after each restart. Haven't found a fix yet. I'm hoping that Samsung or Elan just release updated drivers.

The screen is great, but the color isn't as spectacular as the VAIO I came from. You really only notice this when you compare the same image between two screens.

The keyboard takes some getting used to, but after a month, I'm able to type pretty much at full speed. I hate to hear people complain about the depth of key presses. It's a friggin 0.5" laptop. What do you expect??

I can't speak to the performance of the U100 SSD, since I immediately swapped out for the MyDigitalSSD 256GB Smart Series. In hindsight, I probably should have saved some cash and gone with the Crucial M4. I doubt I'd notice a difference.

No visible LED when the lid is closed! Have to open lid to see if the battery is charged. Not a big deal, but kind of a "double-U tee eff?" kind of thing. (edit: apparently this forum blocks the three-letter acronym I originally used...haha)

Some other PROS:

The sound quality from the headphone jack is well above average for a laptop. I'd say it sounds almost as nice as my iRiver.

The resolution is perfect, and I have excellent vision. The fact that the screen isn't 1080p is NOT a con. I wouldn't want to use any current version of Windows on a 13.3" 1080p screen. I know many applications scale well at 125%, however, many do not. 100% scaling is pretty much unusable unless you plan on zooming in on all web/document text. Take a look at 1600x900 on a 13.3" screen, and I doubt you'll want to go to smaller (text- and UI element-wise).

Feel free to shoot me any questions regarding specific features, etc. Just don't ask me to benchmark any games.

-Mitch

 

On another note, I'm looking to pick up an extra A/C adapter. Anyone find a good site to purchase them? I'd like to get a hold of the newer, angled version, but I haven't seen them for sale.

 

Correction:

The 900X3C from Amazon was a total of $1099.

$100 instant rebate + $100 giftcard. So you actually pay $1199, but you also get a gift card, for a total of $1099.

The deal ended on Sunday, but be on the look out if you're interested in purchasing this unit. $1,100 is a great price IMHO.

 

I've been looking for the right-angled Rev 1.5 X4C power adapter too!

If anyone finds them for sale, please put a linky on here!

 

Great write-up, thanks! Good to hear you haven't been having any real problems.

As of right now I'd say I'm leaning toward the Series 9, probably the A04 because I'd like the extra storage. I'd been looking at a few different computers but they've all fallen off the radar for different reasons: the Vizio for its apparently poor keyboard, trackpad, and battery life, and the Zenbook for its plethora of quality issues.

The only thing that could sway me is if I see a Vaio Z, X230, or X1 Carbon in person and like either more than the Series 9.

I have two questions hopefully someone can help answer:

1) It sounds like both review sites and NBR users are consistently getting 5-6 hours of battery life from the A01s. Should I expect battery life to be appreciably different on the A04 with the i7 and 256 GB SSD?

2) I've never purchased a laptop from Samsung before. Is there any way to purchase an extended factory warranty? Or would you recommend just going with something like SquareTrade? I need this computer for 3 years of law school and definitely don't want to run into problems.

 

Check the terms of your credit card. You might get an additional year depending on your terms. My Visa extends warranty by up to a year, so long as I buy it with that card. Useful!

 

noob question: how difficult is it to swap out the hard drive? i'm not a complete mechanical incompetent, but i've never changed a hard drive before.

 

Start by reading this thread. It's an mSATA SSD, not a hard disk.

John

 

ok, thanks.

 

Had a chat yesterday with a Samsung rep that claimed the mini VGA port on the right hand side can push 2560x1600. Does anyone have experience with the mini VGA port? What about past 1080P?

After the conversation, I ordered the Samsung dongle in a moment of exuberance, with visions of driving a 27" PLS, however, it's probably a pipe dream.

 

A link would be very much appreciated. The listing I found on Amazon is $1289.
EDIT- Please disregard, I misread the post.

 

This probably doesn't help you directly but thought I would share with others that my A04US came with the right-angled version.

 

My A04US shipped with a Liteon. I've been very pleased with the performance - feels much snappier compared to the U100.

 

Let us know when you have that working.

 

I think VGA has always supported higher resolutions and probably will work but usually get all the visual artifacts associated with it. Hopefully the monitor auto-adjust will be able to do most of the setup for you.

A lot of motherboards say max. resolution 2048 x 1536 @ 75 Hz via RGB/VGA. They should have used DisplayPort though. Good luck.

 

Could you please post the full Samsung part number for your power adapter?

Thanks!

 

Just wanted to thank the community for answers to my questions about getting rid of the recovery partition, particular thanks to John R for his link to his post on proper sequencing of getting rid and later reinstalling the IRST, as well as Nickscott for the great suggestion to use the Minitool partition software, that made things very easy and was easier than a paid version I used years before.

A few comments after several more weeks of using X3C:

> I have the Sandisk U100. On my desktops I have two Crucial SSDs installed, which of course test much faster. But as someone else said here, if you're not running a benchmark you'll find this SSD fast enough, probably just some instances where you write a big video file would you get annoyed.I had originally viewed the Sandisk as a big negative before I bought the S9, but now I think not, it's a small negative
> I am getting more used to the keyboard ... but it's still not a great keyboard. I had originally leaned towards the HP Spectre XT due to assumption they'd have a good keyboard (I have yet to see and test one but tested the other HP ultrabooks). I think now I'm likely still happier with the S9 b/c it's even more gorgeous after owning it for a while and lugging it around then I had thought when seeing the X3B in the store
> I presumed I'd hate the battery life, but it's been much better than I expected, seemingly better than X3B based on reviews at least. I get good work usage of 5+ hours when the battery starts at 100%. I have the screen dimmed a bit, but even then it's brighter than the Toshibas and Lenovo's of my colleagues/clients! So this was a pleasant surprise.
> The trackpad I found fine. I turned off the single click and that solved most problems for me. I still err in not left-clicking at times (I hit the trackpad too close to centre bottom than centre-left). Overall found it better than an old Lenovo I had before
> For those asking about gaming, the HD4000 does allow some playing of Diablo 3 to my surprise, something I was told the HD2500 could not handle

A few odd things:
> I originally used a bluetooth mouse. But I find that after a while (I think maybe after it sleeps or after certain programs are run), the mouse becomes very laggy, can't really be used. So now I have to use a wired mouse
> Perhaps a similar problem, but sometimes inputs becomes very laggy too, as if the memory is all occuppied. Each time I check and it seems there shouldn't be excessive memory usage, so not sure why. My old Lenovo also had 4G memory and never had this problem. I multitask Firefox (which I know can hog memory, but I have kept Addons to a min), Word and Powerpoint often, but not more than that

Thanks again forum members for all the help. I did indeed hit this often as I narrowed down my options

 

Thanks for the update. A couple of points.

1. I have recently used a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse which worked better than other Bluetooth mice I have used in previous years.
2. I suspect that your last observation is the due to the Sandisk U100. It chokes on the multiple concurrent input-output when Windows is trying to dump RAM to the swap file while loading another program. Note that the Performance tab in Task Manager gives a more honest view of RAM usage than the Processes tab. i suspect that what you thought was empty RAM was being used for something.

John

 

As John has already explained, this is the main issue with the u100. Swapping the u100 out with a Crucial M4 completely eliminated the issue for me.

 

My apologies for repeating myself but I would really like to find out....

Is there a way to run the CPU at it's maximum potential when gaming on battery? Intel's turbo boost indicator indicates it will not throttle up at all, it's stuck at default 1.7ghz when on battery mode and gaming under such speed is unplayable. Thanks.

 

Ed and John, can you both confirm you had this specific sluggishness in input responsiveness? Ugh, I had thought getting rid of the hibernation partition was enough to deal with the SSD 128 limitation, given I had thought the U100 slowness was not a big deal, but if it is indeed causing the occasional lag, then I may need to 'go all the way' and replace the SSD. I had even gone the route of getting a fast SD card to use to hold any possible extra stuff too!

 

Is anybody using WiDi with their HD TV? It'd be nice to know how well that works.

 

Have you already disabled the battery saver processor setting in the bios?

 

Is there any advantage to enabling UEFI boot support? I assume you would need to reinstall windows.

 

I don't have S9, mine is asus UX31E, same SSD- Sandisk U100, I think there is something wrong with your SSD, here are a screen shoot of my SSD speed

 

Best bluetooth mouse I have found is the Connectland and they almost give them away on Amazon..works absolutely perfect, instantly reconnects on resume and has great battery life..in fact I have never replaced them once in 6 months and I use the laptop constantly. BTW, I replaced my MS with this.

Amazon.com: Connectland CL-MOU23014 Bluetooth Wireless Optical Mouse: Electronics