Q40 or Q35

I want to buy a laptop, and I can't figure out whether the Q40 or the Q35 is better... I know Q40 is thinner and lighter, but has a lower CPU power, but I have no idea about its battery life.

Which one shall I go for?

Is the 1.2Ghz CPU that slow?

Thanks!

 

First, I would point out that the Q40 has an external optical drive. As an absolute minimum, this will weigh 0.3kg and be 13cm x 15cm x 1.5cm in size. The picture here gives an impression of the size. So, if you always want your ODD to be available then you have to carry it around so the weight is up to about 1.5kg and there's some extra bulk.

Second, the Q40 uses 1.8" HDDs. These are a step or two behind the standard 2.5" HDDs in both the maximum capacity and speed, particularly the data transfer rate.

Third, The Q40 has 3 cell and 6 cell battery options. The link above suggests it comes with both. However, the bigger battery most probably sticks out at the back and will add to the quoted weight. Samsung say here that 9 hours is achievable with dual batteries. I doubt if the 0.3kg weight of the 6 cell battery is included in the healline weight.

Now to the CPU: The U1400 is single core and running at 1.2GHz. If you are coming from an old single core Pentium M CPU then you won't see much difference. If you are using a dual core CPU then the main drawback with single core is the reduced responsiveness because there's no second core to share the workload. I recall that when the Q40 was announced, the dual core ULV CPUs would be an option. However, these have not yet been seen. These would give the benefit of 2 cores without the power consumption of the normal CPUs.

Finally, a few thoughts about the likely battery life. I have been making extensive studies of my Q35 (a review will be posted within a few days) and with a fairly dim backlight 5 hours of continuous light use is just about achievable with the standard 6 cell battery. I would expect the Q40 to achieve 6 or 7 hours under the same conditions. However, with the 3 cell battery the Q40 will struggle to get past 3.5 hours. For DVD playback, the battery life starts to converge as the Q40's CPU will have to work relatively harder (see Samsung's brochure). My Q35 can just about get to the end of a 3 hour DVD. And if you do have heavy work, the Q35 can match the bigger notebooks in everything except 3D.

I hope the above essay will help to guide your deliberations.

John

 

More of my observations on the Q35 are now posted here.

John