Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

It's a good thing that it's already available right after the announcement! Let's hope for a Haswell ATIV Book 8 announcement to come soon!

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Hopefully. All of the Chronos models are seemingly permanently out of stock on Amazon. I am really hoping the refresh comes out in time for me to go to college. Was anyone able to get the magic version (8870, 16GB max RAM) in the United States? If not, and it doesn't come out, I'll just get the Canadian version, since I'm going there anyways for college.

 

I'm confused about Haswell. I thought it was supposed to be almost all about prolonging battery life but the Acer V7 has Haswell and only gets about 5 hours of battery life. Same with the Asus that was mentioned. But the Samsung gets 11 hours without Haswell? I'm not sure what we are waiting on....What am I missing in this equation?

 

A couple things:

1) all of those battery life measures are from different sources, so comparing them well tell you very little. Especially the 11 hours for the Samsung one, that's just the advertised battery life, the actual value is likely significantly lower.

2) The single most important factor which affects battery life isn't processor, it's battery size. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think the v7 only has a 45 Wh (watt-hour) battery and the Asus is more like 60 Wh. The Samsung has an whopping 90Wh battery. That's what gives it such great battery life. With Haswell it would only be better.

 

Not that significantly: many users here reported 10+ hours of battery life with light office/web browsing
I agree with all the rest though.

I was wondering... When the ATIV Book 8 is refreshed with Haswell, what integrated graphics do you think it will have? 5100? 5200?

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Yeah i skipped the early Haswell refresh laptops, as they seem to have focused on reducing form factor and weight as a benefit of Haswell better battery life. So end result is laptop that is lighter and smaller but ends up with smaller battery size and thus similar 4-6hr battery life as older Ivy Bridge processors. Hence I chose Samsung ATIV Book 8 for the 10+ hrs battery life

Samsung probably will do the same for Samsung ATIV Book 8 Haswell revisions, reduce weight to around 1.8-2.0kg but sacrifice some of the extra Haswell battery life to keep it between 9-12hrs I suppose.

 

That's a good point. Who knows, this laptop could share the same fate as the Series 7 Ultra and just never get that Haswell refresh either. That's why I'm glad that there's been more chatter about the Asus notebook lately.

 

Can we confirm the difference between the silver ativbook (np880) and the chronos (np780) is only the ram?

 

In my Country (Italy) the silver Ativ Book 8 doesn't even exist, and here the only difference between the Chronos and the ATIV (other than the colour) is RAM configuration. I don't know about other countries though

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Samsung ATIV 870Z5E-X03DE - Notebookcheck.net External Reviews

Found this. Hopefully this pans out, but I feel like this is just a pipe dream...

 

Also BLE, but maybe it's the same on the 'silver ativ book 8'

 

Well, it looks like Samsung Canada has the Mineral Ash Black version, NP880Z5E-X02CA. It has an 8870M, and comes with 8GB of RAM on-board. It's interesting that the laptop is under the "ATIV One" section of the website (all-in-one PCs). https://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/mobile-computing/ativ-one/NP880Z5E-X02CA


Samsung still has the silver version, only shown as NP780Z5E-S02CA, and it's marked "new". Only difference between these laptops is the color. The silver one also comes with 16GB from the factory.
https://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/mobile-computing/notebook/NP780Z5E-S02CA

 

True!

At this point, I'd say that differences between ATIV Book 8 and Chronos 7 vary between different regions

 

i have an 770Z5E-S01, someone has already upgrade it to 12gb ram ? which exact model of ram is really 100% ok to buy ? From the start of the original topic, I've read many opinions about that...

 

From what I know, having 4gb+8gb dual rams has little to no benefit as both rams are used identically or symmetrically by the system. so even having a higher clocked second ram will be useless as it will run on same speed as the inbuilt ram...please correct me if i am wrong

 

You're right. The faster one downclocks to the same speed as the slower one. For the benefit of asymmetrical configurations in terms of size you should ask John Ratsey. He knows what the benefits and downsides are. If I recall correctly, it does not offer a big improvement at all as you said.

 

I remember this posts and this post from the Owner's Lounge

 

I refer people to this table (someone pointed out an error in the RAM config in the penultimate line). Asymmetric RAM gives a small performance hit but is much better than single channel (where the integrated graphics performance suffers badly).

More RAM, even if asymmetric dual channel, wins over symmetric dual channel provided the extra RAM is being used. I wouldn't go beyond 8GB unless I know from examining RAM usage in Task Manager that 8GB is not enough.

John

 

Funny how this link shows specs for the Ivy Bridge processor, and NOT the Haswell cpu.
Is Samsung going Haswell or not, with the ATIV-8 ??
Also - the photos on the site show the US keyboard, not the awful "Canadian Bilingual" one.

 

Update about on competitor, it seems the Gigabyte P35K has switched its color from silver to dark gray or black as Samsung did:

GIGABYTE - Notebook & Netbook - Notebook & Netbook - P series - P35K

 

Honestly at this point, I don't care anymore about Haswell, or a different keyboard. I'll adapt to the new keyboard, and remap some keys. All I want is this computer in black before September. If I have to buy it in Canada and deal with a weird keyboard, so be it.

I'm also not sure what's up with the backspace key on the keyboard. "Bac Space"??

( http://images.samsung.com/is/image/samsung/ca_NP880Z5E-X02CA_016_Top_black?$Download-Source$)

 

However, it's really stupid for Samsung not to update to Haswell before the "back to school" deadline. They force many of us to buy something that will be outdated after 1-2 months

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I would allow another month. They don't want to kill the current sales by pre-announcing something that won't be available until 2nd half of August.

It looks like the production line is currently busy with the new Series 9 13" and they may still be busy making Haswell and the AMD GPU to work together.

If you don't have a priority need for maximum battery run time then the Ivy Bridge CPUs will run just as fast as Haswell. Quad core Haswell CPUs will probably be expensive for the next 6 months. However, this advice only applies to those who can get their hands on the top end versions of the current line-up.

John

 

Yes, I'm just a bit frustrated because I've been waiting since May 2012 ( from the beginning of the Dell XPS 15 hype lol ), but I'll hold on until end of July. There is 99% chances that I have to go abroad on 1st September to make my Master's thesis, and I really should have a laptop by that date

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I've been searching this huge thread, but couldn't find any info on installing 2 hard drives in the 17" version (np770z7e) - Am I the only one interested in this?

Can the optical drive be swapped by a 2nd HDD

I guess there is no mSATA slot, right?

cheers

 

Hi Miguel,

Lots of members here have installed a second drive in their Series 7 and moved the HDD to the optical bay. You want to check the following threads instead:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...00z7c-s01us-laptop-i7-3615qm-650m-review.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/626915-hard-drive-caddy-series-7-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...ies-7-chronos-np700z5a-disassembly-guide.html

Your model has a similar chassis to the NP700Z7C, whereas the 15.6 inch 2013 model discussed in this thread has a completely different chassis and no optical drive.

You can use the Search Thread feature in that thread. Or you can use Google searches such as site:notebookreview.com/samsung Series 7 optical bay caddy which will search the entire Samsung forum.

BTW, nice machine you got there

 

Same here as well! Being waiting that long as well. Was feeling weird...
Dell ripped off customers and got away scot free no lawsuits or repercussions

 

It's the power of "stylish design"...

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Are you really putting your thesis on the line waiting for a laptop that's not guaranteed to arrive anytime soon!? And you don't even have a laptop to begin with!??

 

No I'm not putting my thesis on the line because of the laptop lol. I will make it during an European student exchange program (Erasmus) and the starting date doesn't depend on me I'll wait as much as I can, and if nothing happens I'll buy what there is in the market at the moment

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check out the specs and price on this one:

Acer North America Online Store - Aspire V7-482PG-9884 (Windows 8)

 

That's the main other laptop I'm looking at as well. Battery life still isn't anything near the Chronos though even though this one has Haswell. I remember a couple of other issues in some reviews I read - nothing terrible though. If anyone has tried this laptop or knows anything much about it compared to the Chronos, I'd be very interested to hear.

I believe it has only a HDD and no solid state HD. I'd be interested in hearing other differences though.

 

I'm afraid but Acer has to work A LOT to earn my trust. At the moment I don't even consider it an option

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I'm hoping Samsung isn't too distracted by their smartphone and ultrabook/tablet market to forget about the good ol' notebooks. They're already getting new competition from more manufacturers in thin, but powerful (gaming) notebooks.

 

^ they're absolutely distracted. i've said it in the first place; these notebooks get little to no priority because they are not the moneymakers for the company. the galaxy line and the new ATIVs are samsung's main focus right now. we'll be lucky to see anythin by september.

 

i think its HDD plus small SSD cache drive

 

totally, and the fact that we have to be reliant on their driver support for video drivers especially has me concerned.

 

Why? Just curious?

 

Hi all,

I'm looking into buying the black version (NP880Z5E-X02CA), and was quoted a price of about $2000 Canadian (including taxes). I'm balking at ordering at that price, but I'd like to have it before the end of August...

 

Mainly for building quality and quality control: an Acer notebook always feels very cheap, and often it doesn't last a long time, and after sale support is bad. Besides, fitting a lot of CPU and graphic power into a slim notebook is not simple at all, and Acer just can't do it at the moment. To be honest, only Samsung and Gigabyte (and MAYBE Asus, for the UX51) seem to be able to do it properly, since even MBP is a cooking machine with heavy throttling problems

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If I can help push customers away from Acer, here are my two cents . I bought two acer laptops a looooong time ago, it was the first time we bought laptops. They had a bunch of hardware and design problems, the hard drive failed on both of them and whenever I took them to warranty service, they took weeks (sometimes months) to give them back and all they ever did was format the hard drive. One time I picked the laptop from warranty and it failed again on the very same day, for the very same reason. I had to change the whole motherboard through a third-party vendor (because warranty wouldn't do it) to actually have a working laptop, and I was told that the hard drive was not only defective, but it had the wrong format! It was formatted as FAT32 instead of NTFS. The baffling thing is that both laptops were equal and both had the exact same problems, which is why it's so obvious to me that they were design problems.

I would never buy anything from acer ever again, no matter what they do. Granted, it was a long time ago, but first impressions work like that

 

speaking of gigabyte, i have these on my radar too:

U35F

Gigabyte reveals prices, availability for NVIDIA-equipped U-Series Haswell notebooks

P34G

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4636#kf

waiting for this batch of laptops to be releases (gigabyte, aspire, asus, etc.... and hear reviews to make a decision....

 

Me too, nwhidden. Please let me know if you hear of any issues with any of these. May come down to what is available in the US too, unfortunately. If Samsung would just release this laptop here, I'd buy it and be done!

 

How about the asus n550jv? I think it looks like a good contender too. I have the gigabyte under the radar too. My current laptops a asus gaming laptop and the build quality is pretty good never had a problem. I think the only thing holding me back would be the superb battery life on the samsungs.

 

The battery life on Samsung is why I'm willing to do it without Haswell.

 

I have a question. Are these Samsung laptops business laptops or consumer laptops?

 

High-end consumer laptops.

 

It depends on your definition of "business". Possible factors are:

(i) Pro version of Windows some versions may be sold with this
(ii) TPM with finger print sensor there may be a TPM in there - some versions offer the Absolute software anti-theft, but there's no fingerprint sensor
(iii) Non-glossy screen the NP770Z5E has a matte screen, the NP780Z5E is glossy
(iv) Metal construction it is part metal part plastic but quite robust
(iv) Impressive battery life >90Whr capacity means all day operation under light usage could be feasible
(vi) Swappable battery the battery is internal
(vii) Easily serviceable not easy - officially the bottom should not be removed (but people have done it)

John

 

Thanks for the replies. All I really want to know is whether or not these Samsung laptops are generally reliable.

 

I use it for business.