R610 opinions?

I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on an R610 on Newegg for $799, which is about the outer limit of my budget. I want it mainly for basic video and photo editing (been doing it on a borrowed 1.73 GHz Dual Core Pentium Toshiba L300 for a while as I currently have no computer of my own). I've always been envious of those who could easily get their hands on Samsung notebooks back before they were available in the U.S. and have been itching to give one a try. I've found a few reviews for it, including the one on laptopmag.com in which they didn't seem particularly thrilled with it, but wanted to hear feedback from some actual users before I dropped on it.

Thanks!

 

Yes, R610 reviews are in short supply. You will need to interpolate between reviews of the R500 /R560 and the R710. In general, the R series provides good (for the price range) build quality with cool and quiet operation.

My interpretation of the R610 is that it is intended to be a budget machine for watching DVDs since is has an extra-wide 16:9 display. The 768 pixel display height would probably annoy me but a work-around may be to put toolbars at the sides of the screen.

The weak nVidia GPU is probably one reason for a less positive review. Once manufacturers include a dedicated GPU then reviews expect to see stunning graphics performance. However, if you aren't into heavy 3D graphics then the GPU will be fine.

Note this post which reports a smaller than advertised battery with the R610.

John

 

Thanks, John. This forum doesn't seem terribly active (supposing it's due to Samsung being a relatively new U.S. retailer), but I knew you would at least get around to replying to my post eventually even if no one else did and I appreciate it.

You read me correctly in the fact that I'm not into heavy 3D (but I don't know, I suppose Bejeweled could be pretty demanding ). For my purposes I believe anything in the neighborhood or above the Intel 4500MHD will suffice. As I stated in my OP, the most intensive use this notebook will ever see is light home video editing (I'm trying to do slideshow DVD's and such for special events to make a little money on the side - as simple a task as that is, you'd be surprised how many people are willing pony up to have someone else do it for them out of laziness, ignorance or a combination of both) and photo editing, and when I say photo editing I mean with something like Photoshop Elements or Paint.net, not any bloated, resource-hungry stuff like the CS suite. I believe based on the specs and my research involving the individual hardware components that it would tackle these tasks adequately.

In any case, you answered my main questions (although I don't think I stated them very well), which were primarily concerning build quality and quiet/cool operation, both of which you addressed and two of the things I would expect from a machine carrying the Samsung name from what I have heard in the past. The low weight relative to other 16-inchers is also a pretty solid selling point for me as well, although I don't fly or travel as much as I used to.

I think I'm going to go ahead and jump on this in the next week or two, and who knows? If I get time I may even be the first person in ages to review a Samsung notebook around here. Thanks again!

 

Thanks also for the suggestion to get an idea from reviews of similar models. Just Googled for an R560 review and first hit was one here in our very own forum! Impressions seemed pretty positive, so I'm most definitely going for it now.

 

Also see Trusted Reviews for reviews of various Samsung notebooks, although not the R610.

John

 

Thanks again, John. The Trusted Reviews lookover seemed to be much more objective than laptopmag's take on the R610 (I swear, from some of the hypocritical "flaws" they find in some notebooks and then dismiss on other brands I'd almost swear they're on somebody's payroll), and pretty much in line with the NBR reviewer's opinions. The differences in the build of the R560 is almost indistinguishable from the R610 with the exception of the keyboard from looking at pictures. Again, you're recommendation of using the R560 as a benchmark for similarity's sake was brilliant.

 

I recently got a R610, ordered from mwave.com. I also got stuck with the 4000mah battery. Pretty sneaky stuff, if you ask me. All the research I did before taking the plunge indicated a 6-cell 5200mah. Only the documentation inside the box says that this model comes with either the 4000 or 5200mah battery. WELL GEE, SAMSUNG, THANKS FOR NOT INCLUDING THIS LITTLE TIDBIT ANYWHERE ELSE.

Anyways, battery life with wifi on and high screen brightness is about 1.5 hours (lol), and about double that with the extended 7800mah battery, which sticks out around half an inch from the back.

I got this laptop for light general computing, and wanted something with a full keyboard (meaning with a number pad) and 32-bit Vista. I also have a Gateway P-6860FX, but wanted something lighter and quieter. To that end, I guess I am satisfied. The max screen brightness on the R610 is higher than that of my 6860FX, and the viewing angles are better, but its not the brightest glossy screen I've seen.

The fans on the machine do like to come on, but they are pretty quiet and are only noticeable when there's no background noise at all. Samsung has some sort of software setting that changes the Vista power schemes. There are three settings: regular, quiet mode, and speed mode (I got the names wrong, but that's the gist of it). The machine always starts up in regular mode, and that's tied to "Samsung optimized mode", which appears to be Vista's balanced. The quiet mode turns on "power saving" and the speed changes it to "high performance". Quiet mode forces the fan off for 99% of the time.

The stock 250gb hdd is a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 5400rpm, and there's a 10 gig hidden recovery partition. I swapped it out for a 320gb 7200rpm hitachi, and used the handy-dandy included recovery dvd (something Samsung made good on). The process is easy, but took over an hour to let it re-install everything back to stock factory status. Doing this, there's no hidden 10 gig recovery partition.

The cpu and gpu temps seem to stay pretty high, as hwmonitor shows around the 50's celsius, and they go into the 60's under load (i.e. gaming). Left 4 Dead runs alright on the lowest settings at 800x600, 20-30 fps. The machine itself does not get too hot, just warm.

If someone is ever brave enough to do a picture tutorial for swapping out the cpu, I'd be eternally grateful because I want to change to a P8600, but I am not technically proficient enough to be ripping my laptop apart without guidance.

Let me know if you need to know anything else about the laptop.

 

Thanks for all the feedback madmook. Much appreciated, but I think I'm gonna hold off purchasing anything for a bit now. The wife picked me up an HP Mini 1000 for a Valentine's Day gift and I think that it will hold me long enough to wait and see what Samsung has on the horizon in this form factor since I didn't have computer to begin with when I started looking and this should get me by for now. I'll definitely be watching and waiting to see what's around the bend as I still would like to have a larger machine (especially a Samsung!) to do more than just the basic tasks I can accomplish with this netbook (although it is incredibly cool!).

 

No problem, but now I need to revise my battery life estimates. Apparently the Fujitsu 7200rpm 320gig drive was somewhat of a battery drain, as I just upgraded to a 500gig 5400rpm Western Digital Scorpio Blue, and now battery life is more reasonable:

~2 hours wifi on with the 4000mah battery
~4 hours wifi on with the 7800mah battery

The Fujitsu also vibrated more (which made it audible).