Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

No, SSD's are different from HDD in a few important ways. Some of the key ones are:

* They are considerably more expensive
* They usually have smaller capacities
* They are much, much faster

If it helps you to think about them, think of them like the old 15k RPM HDD's -- more expensive and less space, but faster. SSD's just take that to another level, being much faster than even a 15k RPM HDD.

 

In my case, I've been using a dual SSD Raid in my current laptop for the past few years, don't think I could ever go back to a slower than molasses mechanical HDD. I'd rather skip the 1TB HDD and go with a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro, hoping that might be an option on the Chronos since Samsung is the manufacturer.

Unfortunately, I doubt I will be able to transfer the Raid caddy that came with my hp envy, even though it fits in 2.5" drive bay, as it uses an Intel SATA Raid controller. (I'm guessing that is something permanently affixed to the motherboard?)

 

Sadly because of the lack of optical drive the 15 inch chronos won't have space for a second hard drive.
The 17 one with the optical drive may have the space tho but it may require some adaptaters to fix a caddy into that.
I really hope they sell a SSD version of it without the insane +300$ for a 150$ retail worth SSD. They usually do that on these kind of laptops sadly.

 

I was actually hoping to replace the primary HDD with my SSD caddy and replace the factory-installed mSATA SSD (if there is one, many thin and light laptops are shipping with 16GB mSATA SSD used as a cache for the HDD these days) with a larger capacity mSATA SSD from Newegg. But I'm not sure if it will be possible to install my caddy because of the Intel Raid controller.

 

well if this thing had an mSATA slot it would be perfect....but we all know no company will make a perfect laptop since that means that you won't be tempted to change it very soon so that means less money in their pockets. If they adopt the same solution from the previous series 7 chronos they will just solder an 8gb or 16 gb flash memory on the motherboard and be done with it. mSATA is just a beautifull beautifull dream and most likely will remain a dream.

 

Chances are very slim that there will be msata. No model I've seen on any site had more than one drive. Not even a caching drive. If it did have msata they would at least in one model put something in there and mention it because it would make their product even more attractive.

 

i dont care.. its still expensive.. just cuz ur a millionaire doesnt mean we're as lucky as u. $1600 for this?? i think they can lower it to at least $1300.

 

I also find it too expensive, not because it's not worth it but because I am on a tight budget and I really want this laptop. The only thing that comes close (not that close) in performance and mobility is the razer blade, coming at $2500. Don't forget a pls screen is expensive. In my opinion this laptop has specs never seen before while it still comes with a relatively normal price.

 

As with all new products, those with more constrained budgets have to be patient. History shows that it is unusual to find a manufacturer willing to sell their products for less than they think the first rush of customers are willing to pay. Thereafter there is a trend of reducing prices. For the new Series 7s the prices of the Ivy Bridge versions are likely to reduce when the Haswell models arrive.

John

 

If you do not plan to use the laptop for gaming, the graphics card included in this model is extreme overkill, and I would recommend looking for a different, more inexpensive model.

The only other thin, portable laptop with a decent gaming graphics card is the Razer Blade, which is thicker (0.88" compared to the Chronos 0.82" chassis), and the Razer's graphics card (660m) is significantly weaker than the Chronos 7 GPU (8870m). The price for the Razer Blade is close to $3,000.

If you want an extremely thin and portable laptop with powerful gaming graphics, you have only these two models to consider. The other option is weaker and almost double the price of the Chronos Model H. Thin, sleek design + fast gaming GPU and quad core i7 = high end, valuable and rare laptop.

EDIT: Haha, I see I was ninja'd by pranktank

 

The razer blade's screen also won't be anywhere near the quality of the chronos. The battery life won't be close either. This laptop is top notch and beats everything in its category imo. €1300/$1700 may be quite some money but you get an awful lot for your money.

 

Yes, I'm happy to pay $1700, but if it were priced higher I'd be willing to pay more for this laptop, at least as much as the Razer Blade MSRP. I suspect there are probably quite a few more consumers out there also looking for a gaming laptop that does not resemble a bulky plastic spaceship with disco lights. It's a shame hp dropped the ball on their envy line.

 

well if ur happy to pay that much then give me some money..

 

LOL I'm not a millionaire at all, and I'd like to pay <1000 euro (1300 USD) for this laptop too, but we must keep things real. As many others wrote, this laptop has very few competitors: Razer Blade, Asus U500VZ, Mac Book Retina. Samsung Chronos 7 seems to have something more than each of these competitors, and it still is the least expensive. If you have a lower budget I'd suggest not to look at the best consumer notebook on the market, at least not at its launch. In that price range you can find Asus N56 with very good performances.

On a side note, I think that a PLS display should be less expensive than an IPS, at least from what I've read on the Internet, but I can be wrong

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

I would like to pay €1000 too but I too realize that it's unreasonable for such a premium laptop. I am willing to pay the prize it comes with, even more, I just don't have it at the moment.

Yes, that is one of the advantages of PLS over IPS. Samsung (I think) developed PLS technology to be cheaper to make than LG's IPS without compromising quality.

 

You really like trolling don't you. You're like the guy looking at a Lamborghini and saying that it's too expensive but he wants it. Ofcourse it's expensive...you get very good graphics very good screen very good processor and a huge battery life wrapped in a sweet 21mm thin aluminum chasis . Where else have you found this combination to be cheaper i ask you???? Some of us probably want a private jet but you don't hear us complaining on plane forums that it's too expensive.
If you want it and you don't have the money you either look at something less expensive or you just WORK HARDER to earn more money instead of wasting your time complaining how expensive it is

 

Anyone have some experience using a laptop with a touch panel?

Can you use a stylus for taking handwritten notes or drawing on the surface? Does it incorporate pressure sensitivity like a Wacom tablet?

 

The few times I tested a laptop with a touchscreen or saw someone using it the same things bothered me everytime:

-The screen always wobbles back and forth when you touch it or you'd have to use one hand to hold it still which is not very convenient.
-The fact that you can't open up most of these laptops 180 degrees makes it kinda awkward. Definitely when you'd try to write on it.
-The bottom part of the laptop gets in the way.
-Fingerprints.

I'd rather use a smart trackpad with swipe gestures and such than a touchscreen. A normal notebook simply has the wrong form factor for a touchscreen imho.

 

while I totally agree with u on all that you have written I can't help but think that in the following years touch will become more and more mandatory and I'd hate to pay 1400euro just to be stuck with a machine without it just because i skimped on 100 euro to not buy the touch version. Also i'm really put down by the fact that we won't be able to have ssd+hdd combination wich would be ideal

 

If the screen could turn and bend then later on the keyboard thus becoming a sort of tablet, it would be a great thing. Anyway I think I understand, reading the previous post, the screen will be wanting pls. Only doubt about this laptop is the hard drive running at 5400 rpm, I hope be replaced with an SSD. In any case it is a very good machine.

P.S. Sorry for the bad English, I'm Italian, and I have a great grasp of your language. Forgive.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9300 con Tapatalk 2

 

It just comes down to preferences. I know touch will become more and more of a standard but since I don't really like it all that much on a laptop I'd rather save the money for a (android) tablet when I really want touch later down the road. I also like matte displays so I wouldn't want to give that up.

SSD + HDD would be nice indeed but we can't complain for a 21mm thin laptop that is this powerful and has such an amazing battery life.

 

Hi guys.
For everyone wishing to have a SSD instead of the traditional HD, look at what I've found:
https://www.digitec.ch/Startseite.aspx?param=toppreise&wert=258597
(click on "details")

 

Interesting - I wonder whether that's accurate. Sometimes the details that come out before release are not accurate (as we saw with the Asus UX51). In any case, 256GB is limited space so it's a shame this one doesn't have two drive bays - e.g. one regular 2.5" and one mSATA. That would make it a great laptop.

 

I`m not talking about touch becoming standard issue...I`m afraid touch will become necessary in order to be able to navigate windows 9-10-11-etc properly. I too prefer a matte screen so right now it`s really a difficult decision for me.
Regarding SSD+HDD we`ve already seen it being done in a 20mm thin body in the asus ux51vz so it is possible

regarding the model with ssd everyone knew it was coming. you can see SSD is an option in the fishingtree advertisements but what`s surprising to mee is the price... 1800 CHF wich means 1450 euro. An acceptable price increase for a 256 gb ssd from the HDD model but i agree with the previous poster saying that this is highly unsuficient for what is designed to be a multimedia laptop

Just for curiosity what details where wrong about the UX51?

 

I think mouse and keyboard will stay available for the next few years because I just can't see that suddenly all proffesional users would use a touchscreen to do all their work with. I think they will do something about the awful combination of metro and desktop without start button because of the endless complaints.

Anyone who lives in france:
You can now preorder the np770Z5E-S01FR on amazon.

 

So samsung.com doesn't allow you to customize your laptop order with the HDD or SSD, processor, RAM, display resolution options, etc.? I was hoping for an option with Samsung 840 Pro. Tried checking out the site, but it seems they are still in the process of updating their product line at the moment.

 

Does anyone of you know whether samsung's notebook warranty is international? If I were to order this laptop from amazon.fr (france) to my home in Belgium and it breaks, could I send it to samsung Belgium for repair or do I need to send to France again?

 

The warranty is international. See the details here. However, service may be slower in countries where the product is not sold because they are unlikely to have the parts in stock.

John

 

Awesome! Thank you very much. I can't wait to order this magnificent laptop.

 

I'm pretty curious to see how the 11hours battery will actually hold up.
Hard to imagine since I've never had a laptop which survived over 5~ hours. (Which is looong enough for me).

 

Well, I've just ordered mine (along with a Samsung 840 Pro SSD, the 5400RPM hard drive in such a high end configuration is a joke) from Amazon.de. Let's hope it doesn't take too long until they have it in stock!
And, yes, I'm disassembling that thing and taking photos of the process the moment I get it

 

Nice! Can you provide a link to the Amazon.de product page?

 

Samsung 770Z5E-S01 39,6 cm Notebook titan silber: Amazon.de: Computer & Zubehör

I wonder if S02 version come with Windows 8 Pro ( this seems established) and 256GB SSD (this is just a speculation) and maybe 8GB soldered...
If 256GB SSD isn't the Samsung 840 PRO is totally useless for me...

At this point seems enough sure that touch screen version come out after 2 months from the launch of the non-touch version.

 

I hardly see why the 830 or 840 would be deal breakers ? The 830 is as fast as 840 pro and the new 840 don't have issues anymore I was informed.

 

I think 830 is out of production, maybe you can find many 830 in market, but I don't think Samsung could use in the new notebooks, between 840 and 840 PRO there is a difference in performances and 840 series have lower performances than 830 series, instead the 840 PRO series have better performances than 830 series.
There is difference even of type of memory between 840 and 840 PRO.
Moreover if I have to pay 770Z5E with included SSD more than 770Z5E with 1TB @5400rpm + 256SSD bought separately, I choose the second option, because so I have a 1TB HDD plus.

 

Great! Please let us know when they start shipping . I think I'll order it from amazon.fr since I am used to working with an AZERTY-keyboard. I was thinking to wait until it is actually available because another site might offer it earlier/cheaper. What do you guys recommend? Will amazon France run out of stock before I could order it?

 

I still believe 830 is better than 840 because it has MLC NANDS instead of TLC, so with the same usage a 830 should have a longer life than a 840. I also believe that you can hardly feel the differences in performances in real life between 830 and 840. However Samsung 830 has become expensive these days (more than base 840..guess why ) and I guess it's just about personal tastes.
On a side note, I don't think Samsung will sell the chronos with Samsung 840 Pro, because they can sell a good amount of those SSDs anyway... Maybe they will put in an 840 (non-Pro), since it's almost senseless to buy (IMHO...a good "old" Crucial m4 would be much more worth the money, wig better performances and MLC vs TLC). Or they might put in some other cheaper third-party SSDs, to keep price down.
Anyway, I think I'll buy the 1TB version and purchase a Crucial M500 later

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

From what I've read so far, I have doubts that the 660M is going to be that much weaker than the 8870M. What makes you think it will be that much better? Based purely on specs, Notebook check is putting it at about the equivalent: AMD Radeon HD 8870M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

 

Well they also said that about the 650m sli. But in reality the 650m sli outperforms the 670mx in quite a few games. They haven't got the opportunity to benchmark yet so they don't really know. They only did one or two benchmarks with its predecessor, the 7870m, which has very similar specs(slightly higher core clock, lower memory clock) so they can't really estimate the speeds of that one either.

Edit: not just very similar specs, basically the same cards with a little bit different clocks.

Edit 2: the 7870m performs about 14% more on 3Dmark11. On par with the gtx 670m.

 

Ah, I hope that's the case. It will put my debate on the Razer Blade to bed fairly easily. I was looking forward to the funky little touchpad though... lol

 

the razer blade got owned by this samsung imho. Not even taking the price into consideration.

If you really want that crazy touchpad thingy, razer sells external keyboards with that .

 

Wait, what? A 45 W card competing on equal terms with a 100W card? Holy crap, that's a good design.

Edit: My bad, appears to be a 75W card, not 100. Still very impressive.

 

I look forward to seeing some non-biased benchmark comparisons, but for the moment all we have is AMD's internal benchmark which claims 75% better performance in Skyrim and 55% better performance in BF3 compared to the 650m ( link ).

How much faster is the 660m is compared to the 650m?

 

I'd say somewhere around 15-10%

 

Basically, AMD is claiming performance, roughly speaking, between "just above the 660M" (the 20% in Crysis) and to the lawl inspiring high in Skyrim of "equal to the 675M" Averaging out their claims, it should be (in their claims) equivalent to the 670M, which is an impressive feat if true. I'd be more than satisfied if its somewhere in between the 660M and the 670M.

 

Probably between 660m and 670m is what I expect too. Still, everything around or above the 660m is very, very impressive in this form factor and price range.

 

Indeed. Its a 45 W chip competing with 75W chips. The fact that its even being mentioned in the same sentence as a 100W chip(the 675M) is ridiculous.

 

I just hope that all that power doesn't fry the laptop...

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

On a side note, has anyone seen the external power adapters for these? I'm going to miss my MBP tiny one, but I don't expect it to be as large as the crazy gaming ones.

 

That's what I'm wondering about. You can physically fit a pair of 680M's and a 100w processor into a 15" laptop, that doesn't mean it's going to work very well. Do Samsung laptops have a history of throttling and heat issues, or are the cooling systems pretty solid? This one had better be about as good as a Clevo to be able to cool 90+ watts of CPU/GPU in such a slim form factor. I'd imagine it's going to be somewhat loud with the fan(s) spooled up.

EDIT: I'm not sure how many watts the power supply is for the 770z5e, but my Sager has a 120w power supply for its 90w worth of CPU & GPU, and it's pretty big. I'd expect this one to be fairly large as well.

Here is the 90w one for the UX51.
Another shot for perspective.