Samsung 15" Series 9 NP900X4B thread

@Thors: how is the screen,audio comparing the two machines? Overall build quality?

To clarify, are you saying the 3B will has no place for hard wired 8GB RAM, or just that it has no user-expansion from the 4GB provided?

Could you possibly do a photo of the 3B with the bottom off as you did for the 4B?

 

theres a photo of a 3B somewhere in the 3B thread with the base off, shows all the RAM hard soldered to the mainboard, if the chips were twice the capacity then bingo bongo, twice the ram onboard. to be fair with a bit of wiggling i reckon they could solder 16 gb in there, but that would be unprecidented tbh.either way its just samsung not thinking on. but there is zero expansion in terms of sodimm slots to plug standard ram modules into and naff all space to fit one in there anyway

 

My son informed me this morning I should not plan on getting the 3B back from him. I don't know about you, but I am not going to argue with an Air Force Major.

So I ordered another machine and I think it will be here tomorrow. I'll start answering some of the side-by-side questions this weekend.

 

You are getting me very excited here for my 15" now...hahaha

ordered it from JR and is coming over tomorrow.

Btw...i got a question...what kind of battery does this laptop uses? do i need to
drain the battery first time use and then fully charge it again?

 

Good question. Tonight it the first time I've used it on battery. I just got it yesterday. Been using it for 2.5 hours and it shows 6.5 hours remaining.

I will run some tests this weekend. My test is usually to put "Return of the Jedi" (.mp4 rip) in a loop, wifi enabled, tweetdeck running, and a few other things like web browsing. The goal of my test is to simulate a long flight that has WIFI. Therefore the screen never goes off though it's really dim, and the machine is relatively active.

If you look at the pic I posted a few posts back, you'll see the massive battery. This is definitely an advantage over the 13.3".

 

Oh! Please do let us know the result...but then one thing with the advantage nowdays on flight...i notice they do have power outlets now days. which is good....~ is the keyboard backlit bright enough?
oh yea i saw...but i wonder if this is lithium ion or polymer...cus i heard it is better to drain the battery before charging it to full~

 

.... ....

 

Hahaha. When you said you lent it to your son (not knowing his profession or rank!) I thought: this isn't coming back anytime soon.

Looking forward to your comparisons with #2 900X3B!

 

I think he should order a third. Just in case.

 

You apparently lost count.

 

Here's another photo of the 13". Twin cooling system fills a lot of the available space.

That's good news. I couldn't quite read the label on the battery in your photo but its >60WHr, which is 50% more than in the 13". The 15" display may need 20% more backlight power but the rest of that capacity can be used for extra run time. The 13" seems to be good for 5 hours of moderate usage, increasing to 7 hours if one is very frugal (no wiFi, backlight on 2/8). It looks as if the 15" may manage 7 / 10 hours under similar usage.

The 13" will sit on a plane tray table much more easily than a 15". The battery is lithium-polymer. It's a type of lithium-ion that can be made into thin cells suitable to fit internally. Another aspect of internal batteries is that they don't need a separate thick protective casing, which adds to the weight.

It's the nickel-based batteries which benefit from a full discharge. Lithium ones are best used in the middle of their operating range with only the occasional full discharge to reset the calibration (Samsung provide a facility in the BIOS to do this).

John

 

FYI,

The darn battery is going to outlast me. I pulled the NP900X4B off my desk and the AC adapter at 5pm and it's still going (9 hours later). It did get a 2 hour break while we were out to dinner and the store. It still shows to have another hour left but I need to crash.

I am going to run some unattended battery tests this weekend. I expect from this initial test the reports of 7 hours are pretty close to accurate. Pretty good for a swanky 15" ultrabook class machine.

I am getting used to the screen though I haven't had the wife try it yet. This weekend should be interesting.

Attached is the HWiNFO64 information on the battery. Night.

 

thats a damn good battery, very encouraging! its a superlight notebook that can actually in real terms 'do' a full working day on battery power by the sounds of it.

 

Can you actually utilize all of this RAM?
From what I see the X4B has a 2467M ( Specs - Series 9 Notebooks NP900X4B | Samsung Laptops) which at max supports 8GB ( Intel® Core? i5-2467M Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.30 GHz))

That seems interesting! Would be a killer to buy it for me, as the 13" doesnt offer that...
(if screen and keyboard are acceptable)

 

Really? How many second gen 13"ers have you got now?

 

Thanks for re-posting this. Seems a shame they took up so much space with the cooling system; hard to believe it's needed with a ULV cpu and integrated gfx. Rather have room to expand RAM.

 

13.3.version still could be upgraded to 8Gb.
Puzzles that probably don't need to be solved: 13" Ultrabook with 8gB Ram?

 

Two. But the 15" makes three.

 

I picked up a micro hdmi to hdmi cable and a hdmi to single link DVI and I'm outputting to a Acer 24" LCD just fine now at 1920 x 1080. Apparently, Intel has no interest in fixing the issue in the 64 bit drivers, but they could at least make the solution known.

 

@Thors.Hammer, you got yours from costco.com? I've had one on order from Amazon for a month now, thinking they'd be likely to have it at least as soon as anyone else, but—Murphy's law—it's still telling me they won't ship me it till mid to late May... I kinda want to cancel and just order it from Costco... But then, of course, I'm sure Costco would run out or something, and Amazon would finally receive their stock!

 

Yes, I ordered the NP900X4B at costco.com. The downside it they take out state sales tax. But the upside is they provide an extra year of warranty service, 90 day return policy, etc.

See Costco - Samsung 9 Series Ultrabook Core i5-2467M 1.6GHz 0.58" Thin, 3.51 lbs.

 

My ThinkPad had no issue driving a U2711 at 2560x1440 using the Intel HD 3000. I really don't know if this is a Samsung driver issue or not. I have a couple of gizmos to try next week when they get here in the mail. If I ever get about 1920x1080 I'll certainly report it.

 

Sorry, so what is the issue and what is the solution. You are able to get that resolution out because you are going through DVI, but mini HDMI to HDMI does not work with 64 bit?

 

I am running the 64 bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate. There are no display issues that I am aware of.

The issue as I see it is that Samsung provides a proprietary mini VGA port instead of mini DisplayPort. If it was mini DisplayPort, we could drive high resolution monitors at 2560x1440 or above.

What we really need is an engineer or PM from Samsung to confirm the micro HDMI port capabilities. The specs at samsung.com do not say.

 

You can read up on the issue through most of these threads.

Threads of Intel 3000 HD not ouputting to DVI

If you are using a single link DVI connector, you would not know it's an issue.

I can't say the same if you are going HDMI to HDMI. I have a Sandy Bridge PC at home with 3000 HD that won't do HDMI to HDMI on it.

 

So for the uninitiated then, you can not get that high a resolution strictly through mini HDMI to HDMI cables? Interesting and thank you.

 

My 24 inch only goes to 1920x1080 so I can't speak to that if you are at the point that it's outputting over the connection.

 

See the specification of the micro-HDMI connector.

John

 

I still have a 2011 Series9 and this 15" looks tempting. If anyone else had the previous generation:

- How does both screens compare? (apart from the resolution increase)
- How bulkier does the 15" feel compared to the 2011 13"?

TIA!

 

Alright, well if I am fine outputting to 1080p I am good to go, thanks for clearing it up for me, you guys definitely outweigh me in the technical knowledge department. It is nice to have learned a few things as I wait for mine though.

 

From Joanna Stern:

Ultrabook Reviews: Dell XPS 13, HP Envy 14 Spectre, and Samsung Series 9 - ABC News

Bottom line:

"If you're in the market for the best Windows 7 ultrabook, the Series 9 is a great choice and worth the cash, but the $1,300 MacBook Air's better battery life, display, and touchpad keep it at the top of the pack."

 

Just chatted with an Amazon dude who said they didn't expect the 15" to be in stock till May... Why the multiple-week difference between Amazon and Costco and so forth?!?

 

Thanks John. I was afraid of that. I looked at that site a week or so ago but I guess I missed that FAQ entry.

The description for the connecter I have is also misleading. It says High Speed HDMI which implies certain things. Like the higher bandwidth and potential to support higher resolutions. 1920x1080 isn't bad, but I would like the full native resolution of my monitor if I can get it.

This just supports my position that the mini VGA connector should have been mini DisplayPort.

 

What is the MacBook Air battery life on OS X? I think that is a false statement.

 

She covers that in a different (very interesting) article here:

MacBook Air with Windows 7 review: the ultrabook to rule them all? | The Verge

(and yet again I wish the MBA had an option for a Windows keyboard!)

 

Awesome!! Really!! So happy to have found a light machine eg for conferences. I sent the 900X3B back. Can you verify that VT-x can be enabled in the bios?

My W520 is too heavy for lugging around sometimes. Likewise fully loaded

 

She says six hours for the MBA and OS X. I'm pretty confident the 15" will routinely exceed that.

 

I'll look more closely later after the battery test that is running concludes. What product do you use? VMWare Workstation, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, or other?

I haven't upgraded my copy of Workstation to the latest version yet. I keep looking for a good discount coupon.

 

Wow... Strange that intel say only 8GB supported:

Intel® Core? i5-2467M Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.30 GHz)

Can you really use all 16GB?

 

Thanks - I use VMWare but could use Hyper-V in Windows 8

Really appreciate it, I'll have a hunt for a discount coupons!

 

You did see my screenshot of the WEI score a few posts back, correct? It's shows the 16GB installed.

 

Yeah just surprised, in a good way (vs the 900x3b with a paltry max of 4GB..)

 

Simulated long flight test number one is effectively over. I have to go run some errands and it will die on the vine while I am gone.

I stopped the test at 6.5 hours. There is 10% of the battery left which is probably a little less than another hour of juice.

During the entire 6.5 hours, the wifi card was up and running. Tweetdeck was receiving updates. Email was live for the first couple of hours. A movie was playing the entire time. The movies I used are 720p HD rips in .MP4 format. The screen brightness was at it's lowest setting most of the time which is going to be good on a long dark flight. Very little web browsing was conducted in this test.

I'll probably run another test tomorrow that is just email, messaging, Word editing and web browsing. Battery tests are pretty boring to me so don't expect much more from me in this area. I'd rather test some virtualization.

I received the NP900X3B. Wow it seems small. Wow the screen rocks.

 

1. Dontcha think the 15 is a tad large for a plane trip? Or ??

2. I'm on an iPhone so it's hard to tell, but is that 2nd picture the edge-to-edge size difference? On paper the difference in dimensions doesn't look quite that vast.

 

I tried 900x3b with Dell U3011 for a week with a little success.
First of all it does not work in Windows with resolution higher than Full HD.
I can confirm 1920x1080 resolution was working well. In driver setup you can add custom resolution 1920x1080 and refresh rate 59.9.

When I tried to set anything higher dialog validation replied: Not enough bandwith capacity. But I doubt it is a case. I was able to make it work with linux using custom modeline. With 2560x1600 resolution. Unfortunately picture was not really stable. Still wondering why.

One more drawback was discovered: Both Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 were not able to recover after going to sleep mode.

Returned it today but still thinking of buying it again later.

 

Looks like HDMI intentinally restricted on most monitors (this is definitely the case for Dell U3011).
My opinion is the only chance to make it work on higher resolution is Micro HDMI -> HDMI cable plus HDMI ->DVI connector.

 

1. I rarely use a notebook on an airplane. That's why god created the iPad. But to your question, the 15" screen is wide not tall. So I imagine it'll be pretty good on a tray.
2. I took a bunch of pics. I don't have a pro studio and lighting so all of the top down shots looked odd with the flash shadow. So I decided to take a macro shot of the right edge to show they are lined up. Then I took the macro shot of the left edge. There's a pretty big difference in size. It's really apparent with one sitting on top of the other.

 

If somebody interested. Couple of hours ago I asked John Lewis consultant about np900x4c.
it has not arrived yet to John Lewis but recomended price was already shown: it will be 1299 pounds. ETA still unknown.

 

Yea, I remember you saying that. That's why I haven't given up yet. So far I've only spent $13 in stuff from monoprice. I have a high Speed HDMI to DisplayPort cable coming. If that doesn't work, nothing likely will.

 

That was somebody else. I've just finished my test and shared this information here for the very first time.

Micro HDMI port makes tests rather difficult because the limited choice of cables available.