My problems with mostly budget and some premium Samsung Notebooks

I have had loads of Samsung notebook and netbooks over the years 10+ from £400 to £1000, and i have been recommending them to friends and family, i love the new live audio with the auto volume leveling, but i have listed some problems below.

I also have an Samsung galaxy s3 and a galaxy note 10.1 tablet so i am pro samsung.

I bought an Intel i3 ivy-bridge and an AMD A10 based notebooks one after the other was returned , both completely different motherboards, on Intel and one AMD , so why did they have the same problems, listed below.

A clicking popping sound from the speakers, realtek audio on both, latest drivers, if i disabled the realtek audio manger from starting up the popping stops.

A random whiny increasing feedback high pitched sound that starts low and increases, sometimes disabling the speaker stops it, sometimes it does not, even with the mic`s disabled.

The cooling fan stays off, until the cpu temp hits 54c approx and then starts with a vengeance, until the temperature goes down and then it goes off, until next time, so it`s on, off, on, off and it was driving me mad, my new lenovo keeps the fan on very low so you dont get that sudden fan noise it just runs faster when needed.

The bluetooth icon appears on the taskbar even though disabled once booted and then disappears, not a big problem, but why not disable it in the bios my lenovo does this and i can toggle it off and on in windows.

Also the wifi/bluetooth enable disable Fn key seems broken, it does not work correctly, it appears and disappears in a second.

Also inadeaquete ventilation on the bottom of the notebook, so the notebook got hot very quickly approx 95c for the cpu and slightly lower for the cpu and this was with the back of the notebook raised up, and even a notebook cooler made very little difference this was a premium i7 with an 650m GT £900

My last samsung notebook was a budget i3 ivy-bridge and the track pad buttons were wobbly and went too far down on the left and right side unless you pressed them in the middle.

I now have a Lenovo Z580 and it only cost £360 and the build quality is amazing for the price, metal everywhere except the bottom of the notebook and it runs cool and quiet, it idles at approx 30c and this is an i5-3210M the Samsung i3 i had idled at around 45-50c so even opening the browser took the temp over the 54c and the fan kicked it.

Does anybody else recognize these problems.

 

A funny thing is the samsung i3 notebook i got has Windows 8 on it, so no licence key on the bottom, but what they had done was put the small Windows 8 sticker on the bottom of the case where the licence would normaly be instead of on the parmrest where is should have been put.

John.

 

It seems that people don't recognise these problems. Perhaps you have an unwanted skill of picking lemons.

I wonder how many of these issues are fixable with BIOS, software and driver updates although 95C CPU temperature suggests a badly mounted heatsink or maybe an inadequate cooling system (my Lenovo T420s can reach 95C under sustained load for the latter reason).

Regarding the Z580 idling at 30C, does it achieve that by keeping the fan running continuously? Personally I'm happy to have the CPU idling at 55C so the amount of thermal cycling is reduced.

John

 

Yeah the Z580 keeps the fan running so low it is virtually slient, I have two Z580`s and they are they both get the same temps, also you have one large access cover on the bottom of the notebook, giving access to the normal ram, hdd, wifi, but the best is you get access to the cooling system fan blades so it will easy to clean it, also the service manual is right beside the user manual on the Lenovo website.

I decided to get two Z580`s , I bought one, i was so happy with the build quality and it`s perfomance i bought another, I made sure i bought the Win7 version, as Win8 is a pain at the moment, and i can buy the £15 upgrade if i want.

As i keeps saying i have had 30+ notebook and a few netbooks over the years, and i have never bought two the same notebooks before, I just bought the basic Z580 i5 with Intel HD4000 it is enough for me and it was cheap.

EDIT : I am glad nobody else seems to be have any of my problems, i am very hard to please when it comes to notebooks that is why i have had so many, and i am very good at spotting faults.

John

 

Other than adaquate ventilation the majority of issue seem either driver or bios fixable. Not to say either will happen, just they could be fixed. Nothing can be done about the physical design without sever modification............