New Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US Laptop i7 3615QM 650m Review!

@Laetos: It should be DDR5 but as there is no news yet, so I cannot confirm.

If it will be on DDR5, it will be great. Else will be forced to go with S01US

 

I would keep an eye on this page for any data sheets if they are to arrive:
Series 7 15.6"” Notebook (NP700Z7C-S03US) | Samsung Notebooks

It's funny that the title of the page says 15.6" notebook, but in the page content it says 17.3". I guess they aren't finished with the page.

 

Is there any expected date for this model to be released?
I might just go with the S01US model as of now, i have about a month till i head off to atlanta and I need to get a laptop asap in order to see if theres no quirks or problems with it before i head off to college.

 

CRAPPY WIFI CONFIRMED

I've tested my Acer Aspire which has the Atheros wifi card with my friends system around town and the Sammy never picked up but half the networks that my Acer did. I'm going to get a vid up on youtube when I can or something so you guys can see the poor wifi signals.

 

The range of the wifi of the laptop is not that great, but it works perfectly fine around my house. I also noticed that I picked up more wifi networks on my other laptop as well (my hp laptop).

 

anybody knows if Samsung 7series chronos 17 inch has DLNA or not?

 

Thanks for this reply. Difference in price is $50 only ($1349 for S03US on Amazon and $1399 for S01US on bestbuy) and I external monitor I am going to attach has not very high resolution, so the only thing I doubt now whether additional noise and heat from 7200RPM HDD would be really annoying? Or the difference in noise level is not so huge comparing with performance boost?

 

I have no issue with my 7200RPM drive even 5400RPM is smooth for me.

Also, bestbuy price $1399 doesn't include sales tax. It will added depending upon the state. So, it will cost $1499 or more.

 

Im deciding between this and the 15in version (NP700Z5C).
Does anyone have heat or noise issues?

 

Well 1st problem with this laptop. The Webcam hardware seems to either be loose or malfunctioning. When ever I adjust the angle of the screen, I hear the windows USB plug/unplug sound. I didn't know what it was until today when I tried to use the webcam. The slightest movement of the screen knocks out the blue light and windows loses the webcam in device manager. I wonder if there is some way for me to check the connection? I'm already back in Central America with the laptop, so I won't be in the states until Oct. Anyone else have this issue? Could I have knicked something when I installed the SSD?

 

That's certainly an issue but it could just be a software issue, not likely, but possible. If its hardware you've likely just got a dud. For example on my friends sammy, the camera is showing the image backwards, probably all these systems have the camera image showing backwards horizontally.

This system has poor wifi, horrible touchpad and the vents pushing heat onto the monitor will eventually kill it just like the gateway 600 did which was a mess for the company.

 

wifi issues? @_@ sounds like the previous series 7

 

I have watched Paul's video on how to open the case. If you are replacing the internal HDD with an SSD do you need any adapter?

Would this drive, for instance, be swappable with the internal HDD?

Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT512M4SSD1 2.5" 512GB SATA III MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

It's 7mm.

 

Any standard SATA 2.5" drive would work, including 7mm SSDs.

 

Just wondering, how bad is it really when the vented heat hits the monitor? And is the wifi issue happening to all of you or just some unlucky few?


EDIT:
Ok I just rethought my wifi question. Say my ipod touch gets a decent signal around 30 feet away from the router, would the laptop be able to get the least a good signal from that length? Pretend there's around 2 walls in between.

 

Wifi works fine for me. There is only heat coming out of the vent when you are gaming or doing something hardcore on the laptop, otherwise, it is usually cool.

 

Please do these tests:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...op-i7-3615qm-650m-review-124.html#post8660026

 

I am not sure how to do that test, but on speedtest I get around 20ms ping.

 

That's not an accurate measure of network stream stability. The tests I described does show internal network stream stability (or lack thereof).

A healthy wireless network should show output similar to this:

Code:

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 65500 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=27ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=22ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=22ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=17ms TTL=64

The Samsung machine exhibited situations like this:

Code:

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 65500 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=227ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=429ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=501ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=65500 time=194ms TTL=64

To do the tests, replace 192.168.1.1 with your network's default gateway, as appropriate.

 

Hi. Bought my Sams a couple of days ago. Love it. But in BIOS I saw an empty SATA port? What is it? Did anyone find it anywhere?

 

What do you think about Asus N76 http://www.amazon.com/Asus-N76Vz-Ds71-Notebook-I7-3610Qm-2-3Ghz/dp/B007Z9EB0O
In my opinion, advantages of N76: 2 easy to get slots for RAM, free slot for second HDD, two separate audio jacks, first HDD is 7200RPM and 1TB, lower price
Disadvantages: weighs 450 grams more, lower battery capacity, video with DDRIII (not important to me)
What do you think about comparing N76 and NP700Z7?

 

I'm thinking for UK people wanting this machine... if we get it from Germany (the Blu Ray version at approx €1500 / £1250) how difficult would it be to strip down the machine enough to be able to replace the keyboard with a UK layout one?

I'm guessing with its construction it all has to come out of the bottom.

This might be better than getting the US version, as with chiclet keys the US key shapes in the frame will be wrong?

 

Does anyone know of a way to get the internal 8GB memory to show up in the Bios? I have 'not connected' under SATA port 2. I have an SSD and the 1 TB in place of the optical btw.

I thought it would be kinda neat to put an installation of Ubuntu on that drive because it only needs about 4 GB. I formatted the internal 8 GB to EXT4, allowed the Ubuntu installer to assign that drive to create a boot sector.... everything went well. Install completed.

Only thing is, once I rebooted, I was hoping to see the formatted iSSD in the bios. I really want this thing to show up in my Boot priority menu!!!!!

I think I'm up sh*t creek.. but if anyone disagrees, let me know.

BTW: pressing Delete on boot to have OS options still only shows Win 7

Update: I was able to get grub running by using Easy BCD to update my boot settings, however, once grub is running, it faces the same problem. When attempting to load the kernel, it only seems to have access to my SSD and HDD, both of which are listed in the bios main screen.

The annoying part is, when installing Linux from disk, it certainly sees the internal 8 GB memory (obviously)... so it all comes back to the bios again.

My last resort is just partitioning the 1 TB and putting it there, but I really wanted to do something useful with this damn 8 GB

 

Some additional thoughts about importing to the UK - I read that Dutch laptops use a US keyboard layout. I've just searched for np700z7c-s01nl and it has a US type keyboard but European layout, i.e. big Return key..

But the few Dutch web shops seem to show that the np700z7c-s01nl is discontinued

 

Quick question here.. does anyone use the battery extender software that caps the battery life to 80%? I'm mostly plugged in lately and wondering how many Series 7 owners use this feature.

 

You might be fine if only using wifi at home and I stress might, but if you want to use wifi at a coffee shop or hotel, etc, then you are going to cry a river like I'm doing right now as I type this. I love the design and the sound of this system but that's where the good stuff ends.

I'm lucky this is my friends system and hes going to keep it but just to use at home on a wired network.

Heres what the ping looks like at this hotel I'm at now.

Pinging 10.0.0.1 with 500 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=500 time=85ms TTL=64
Request timed out.
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=500 time=64ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 10.0.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 64ms, Maximum = 85ms, Average = 74ms


Its back and forth, the wifi is too doggy, I lose connection just moving the laptop in the wrong spot.
Worst performing wifi I've seen lately.

 

Those experiencing the wifi issues, does disabling the 11n help? It seems like this intel chip has issues right now with 11n. The driver and/or firmware has bugs.

 

Disabling N was the first thing I did, didn't help at all. It wouldn't matter anyway because this is a hardware issue, not software, although the software for the touchpad is a joke. Like one of the other guys said, the wifi is sporadic and unstable.

Samsung won on the design but failed miserably on the wifi with the crappy centrino wifi. If I can get my friend to open his laptop again, I will see if the wifi card is replaceable, but it looks like its on the other side of the motherboard which would certainly be a design failure.

***Update***
The wireless card is beside one of the friggen fans, FAIL!!!! But it can be easily replaced, so I'll see if we can replace it with an atheros card and note the change if any, looks like hope, but those antennas are still wired poorly. Even worse, that particular wifi card supplies bluetooth and wireless display, so finding an alternative card might not be so easy.

Side note: Disabling bluetooth seemed to increase performance of wifi by about 35% which is significant, still sucks because now you have no bluetooth or N, sigh.

 

I've been using this on my Series 9 and I recommend you use it unless you need the benefit of the full 100% of the battery capacity. Topping up to the full 100% is a key contributor to the battery wear. If I know that I'm going to be travelling away from a power socket then I temporarily disable the battery life extender.

John

 

Hi.

I have a small problem with the optimus driver or something.

I have tried reinstalling both the windows 7 on my samsung SSD and the Nvidia drivers a few times and offcourse everything else needed for the laptop to work.

What is strange is that when i put back the original HDD back in the laptop and install the same game everything works fine so there is hopefully nothing wrong with my laptop.

I uploaded a picture off an add from a newspaper, all webpages looks and the game looks like that btw.

Does anyone of you have a clue to what could be wrong here ?

 

I just got one of these awesome laptops from Best Buy on Saturday. I had a 2006 MacBook Pro 15. It was a great machine but I wanted an update. The new MacBooks are too costly and so I went looking for a 17 with all the bells and whistles of the MB Pro. This Sammy is certainly a great replacement. I added an SSD and it boots Windows 7 in 8 seconds. Unbelievable! No heat issues, but I don't game. No WiFi issues issues so far. Everything is great. Still trying to decide if I want to pull the ODD but with USB 3 I think I might just carry an external drive and plug it in when needed.
Oh, I had no problems getting it apart to put the SSD in but I have experience with tearing laptops apart and putting them together.

 

Didn't someone already try replacing the wifi card? And it seems to be more of an antenna problem than a card problem? Confirm?
My experience is that the wifi is a little weak compared to my last machine (dell) but not awful. But this is very subjective as I've not run the tests.
I'm still infatuated with this thing. Lover 'er so much. Why can't I marry a machine?

 

Yes, to get stable enough connection for continuous streaming I had to disable 802.11N and Bluetooth. Even then it wasn't perfect.

I found out it's not the Intel 6235's problem; it's in fact the antenna placement.

The way the Wi-Fi antenna is placed in the machine is effectively 75% shielded by aluminum (perhaps resulting in a partial Faraday cage?). Disabling 802.11N reverts to "G" mode, which isn't affected by bad signal as much as N. This explains the poor Wireless N performance.

All in all, if stable and consistent Wi-Fi for constant usage is important for you, avoid the Samsung Series 7 machine at all costs.

If all you do is browse the web (e.g. Facebook, Youtube) you may not notice any Wi-Fi problems at all. But think about it this way: if you EVER want to do any kind of constant streaming activity like gaming, the laptop will fail you, unless you are literally in the same room as the router.

"OC-Freak" tried replacing the card with a known working card and the terrible Wi-Fi situation did not change one bit. So it does seem like an antenna issue (as I mentioned above).

 

Thanks for confirming! Yup. Seems like the weakest part of an otherwise wonderful machine.
Since you seem to know a bit about wifi (I don't) is there any chance that driver updates will improve the situation? Sounds like a purely hardware/placement issue from what you write.
Let us know how your 'incoming' Envy turns out. If it competes. I tried out the 15" and was terribly disappointed. Heavy. Horrible graphics (one level below on the card) and obnoxiously dim and glossy screen.

 

Gah, I just wish Samsung will get on with it and release this in the UK!

 

I to can confirm the wifi sucks. Did try the standard WIfi pinging my air port extreme router that was 2m away, i was llosing packages and having carpy results all over. While switching to Asus USB-N10 network card in the laptop everything wenth smooth with an avg ping of 0ms while the standard wifi card gave an avg of 5ms with one loss in 245packages.

What laptop should i go with if wifi and screen quality is the things im looking for? Im thinking about Dell 17r special ed with the 3d display since i heard that should be the best?

 

Picked up my NP700Z7C yesterday at Best Buy in the states (I'm from Canada).

I love this laptop, much better than my previous one, granted it was a 6 year old acer that died lol so pretty much anything will be awesome.

WIFI issues are present as with other people, hopefully we can find a fix to this issue. The WIFI issue from me was not horrible however by my router i get my 1.6 mb/s max speed and in bedroom ~40 - 50 ft away and 2 walls (opposite end of apartment) it drops to about 300-400 mb/s wth some speed drops reaching 50 mb/s.

So not an issue for me really. At school wifi seems to be okay get good signal and decent speed for university wifi.

Rest of laptop is awesome though, it feels nice, runs fast and looks sexy lol
I really like the features and I have not noticed a track pad issue as other have mentioned however I am not privy to the Apple trackpad goldstandard. The multi-touch gestures are nice, I really like them)

Keyboard is very responsive feels nice to type and the key backlights are awesome.

oh and did I mention the screen? IT IS AMAZING, super bright and the high resolution is awesome.

I will be replacing the HDD with and SSD in the next few months as I think that's the only upgrade this needs.

All in-all 4-4.5 out of 5 due to wifi issues and HDD, but I love this laptop so far.

 

Well... for the record. I haven't had a single issue with wifi on mine. I've run all the test that machater mentioned and everything went ok with my series 7.

Makes me wonder if its a router compatibility issue

...im connecting to apple airport extreme in "n mode" at the full 300Mbps ...which then gets to the internet via a 2wire ATT uverse router. I'm able to stream 16 gig movie files flawlessly from a external HDD connected to the airport.

pinged router with 65500 bytes ....with times of 17ms to 20ms no data loss.

I've also been playing BF3 online a bit with zero wifi issues. *shrugs*

 

I installed an wifi repeater in my bedroom to avoid the wifi issue.

Disablin n functionality didn't help me (my router is g only anyway).

Beside he wifi the machine is awesome. I really love the keyboard on this thing, and screen and sound.

 

on a software specific note...Crysis crashes a whole lot with this graphics card....specifically on the later levels in the game...it just boots me to the desktop. dont know if the graphics card is getting to hot or what.

but i haven't had any issues with any other modern games for the most part. I will continue to avoid metro 2033. lol.

 

So if I'm the type who almost never games online, preferring to instead to do some regular browsing, the wifi issues shouldn't get in the way right? How's the connection behind, say 2 walls and and around 30 ft away?

 

So, what was all the talk about the July 4 sale? I haven't seen anything on that. I want to do a pricematch and get some cash back from BB.

 

I've used it all over my home...im getting a strong signal through walls...floors...30 ft plus...there are going to be others here that say differently...but i personally can connect to my neighbors wifi network across the street when i switch to "g" mode.

I'd say if u like the laptop...go for it...and if you have wifi issues...return it. I just wanted to speak for the people who haven't had any issues. the wifi issue is not a blanket assessment for this laptop. it just works for me...even better than my old macbook pro that i replaced with this laptop to be honest.

 

Got my Envy 17 and it has the same wireless card as the Samsung. However, Wireless performance is much better. The antenna is on the top of the lid.

 

If im going to put in a Samsung series 830 ssd in this thing will i need any extra padding or does the 7mm fit right in there?

As with regards to the wifi, i can see a differens while pinging and getting the hard numbers however while doing my ordinary work i have no issues so go for it! Love the machine esp the keyboard!

 

Fits fine. It's screw mounted.

 

For those of you that are gaming with this machine:

Do you lose connection to the servers? Do you lag out all the time because of the wifi?

I do a lot of professional work and this laptop seems perfect but I also do some light gaming and I would like to play Guild Wars 2.

Can somebody who has participated in the beta events in Guild Wars 2 with this laptop chime in and share how well it worked for them? Connection issues and how well the game ran.

Thank you all for the input I have never wanted a laptop so bad and at the same time been worried about a bad purchase.

 

Yes.

10char...

 

I was thinking the same thing but to be honest, if gaming is not your main target with the computer just buy some externa super adapter and use that for gaming, the rest of the time the laptop will be super!

 

With a SSD, do you lose some of the space due to formatting? Like how a 200GB hard drive ends up being about 180GB usable space?