Samsung 9 Series laptop (ZX310 / 900X3A) unveiled

For those few that have replaced the wifi adapter & added a third antenna... May I ask where you placed the pad for the third antenna? I was (and probably still am) going to take my Series 9 to have the new intel wifi adapter installed and a 3rd antenna added. However, since I will be pulling off the back today anyway to put in my new Kingston ram, I though I might as will take a look at the wifi adapter. I know swapping the adapter isn't that hard, I'm just not sure about antenna placement, especially if I have to start disassembling other parts to stick the end of the antenna underneath something. Any help would be much appreciated, thank you.

 

Yes, Samsung may need to step up.

Preliminary reviews that test performance suggest the MBA is more powerful, with better battery life. If it also has good WiFi...

I want a matte screen and native windows, though. So maybe the Asus will be the winner. (Anyone know if HP will offer a matte screen? I assume not.)

The S9 sure is a nice looking machine, though. I really *want* to buy one... W/ a wifi fix, it would be easier to justify.

 

so the problem is fixed if you buy a wifi adapter? those things are really small right? I dont mind that at all

 

Well, I don't know about fixed.... Yes, I would say that an Intel wifi adapter is much better than the Broadcom one that is installed. But moreover, the Intl Ultimate - N6300 wifi adapter allows for a third antenna to be installed. I'm just not sure as of yet where to put it. Waiting for someone to point me in the direction of a guide, as I know others have done, this, or I'll just let a professional do it, that way if they break something, they can pay for it.

So to answer your question, installing a new/better adapter with an additional third antenna will most likely certainly improve the signal quality, but I can't yet say how much. Once it's installed, I'll report back.

Here's the Intel I'm speaking of:
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Ultimate-633ANHMW-802-11n-Adapter/dp/B0038A9HSK

These links are also very helpful & provided great pics of the Series 9:

http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/...k/6235888?tag=content;thumbnail-view-selector

http://blog.thecompanyofhedonists.com/?p=41

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews...amsung-quietly-releases-another-top-tier-ssd/

http://thessdreview.com/hardware/kingston-hyperx-ddr-3-1866mhz-2x4gb-notebook-memory-quick-look/

 

I understand the frustration about the wifi. However, the S9 has several great things going for it. First, you can get 8 GB of memory combined with a 256 SSD and core i7 cpu. You get the best laptop screen (brightest and matte finish). It has excellent battery life and the hybrid sleep mode! And Windows 7 OS.

 

I'm with you, but the wifi issue is a deal breaker, especially for something so essential to any laptop these days. Like the majority of people who own one are saying, we paid that much for a laptop and we need to find a fix for it.

There cant be a fix unless the materiel of the case is changed from the posts I read.

If there is a Gen 2 13" then for sure it will be my next laptop.

 

Fwiw, some have said that their external adapters work great when connected via a USB cable, but not when directly plugged into the USB port itself.

This is why some think something in the PC (maybe the duralumin, but if that's the case, why doesn't it affect the 11" model [or does it?]) is interfering with, rather than merely blocking, the signal.

A tiny "pop-it-in and forget it" workaround would, for me, be preferable to having to always connect a 3' USB cable... (Best of all, of course, would be for it to simply be fixed.)

 

Yeah, I do want native windows and that bright matte screen. I don't think I'll go w/ the MBA for those very reasons (though I do think a heck of a lot of other people - talking non fanboys here - still will, due to its current price/performance level + presumably strong wifi).

The Asus should also have a matte screen and Windows, though...and maybe non-crippled wifi too.

 

Thanks for the update, maybe this will give the current and future owners something to look forward to!

Although now the new Macbook Air is out, those not needing 8GB of RAM will be hard not to pick up one of those!

 

I have been using the laptop over a week now. I like it so far, with two complaints remaining:

- The LAN adapter or its little port on the laptop is extremely sensitive to movements or tiny touches. It disconnects easily. Something is loose somewhere. I am in the process of addressing through Costco/Samsung.

- I decided to get a micro-HDMI to VGA adapter for projectors (didn't like the idea of a clunky USB adapter). Good luck finding it anywhere. Even the places that show in stock on their web site, when you actually ask them, they are out. This is a potential deal breaker as I do presentations constantly. We'll see...

I ordered a micro-HDMI to HDMI adapter/cable already for LCD/TV connections, and it is taking forever when you wait for something...

 

Yeah, I need to hook up to other people's projectors on a regular basis too. Monoprice has thunderbolt to VGA connectors for less than $15. Wouldn't help me w/ an S9, though.

 

The negatives on the Asus are usually cheap screens, which is a pretty big deal and they usually don't add backlit keyboards and their built in cameras are also pretty cheap with low pixels.

 

Except MBA has no USB 3.0 (I already have a number of 3.0 devices, including a 1TB Seagate HDD and a 3.0 multi-card reader). Since moving around large photo/video files when traveling is the raison d'etre for this laptop that IS a big deal for me. I know MBA has Thunderdolt adapter which is "twice as fast" as 3.0... except that nothing is made for it, yet.

other than that, new MBA is now pretty comparable (esp now with backlit keyboard and comparable CPU and RAM). MBA can support OX and Win7. EXCEPT FOR WiFi ISSUE (which can be wrked-around for now and will hopefully be fixed?)AND A COUPLE PORT DIFFERENCES, THEY ARE PRETTY SIMILAR. Basically, just choose your port preferences to make your decision.

As you say, S9 top of the line DOES have i7 and can upgrade to 8GB RAM, if needed... but starting to get a little crazy, expensive. (if that matters to you!!)

For me, The USB 3.0 and the RJ45 LAN is the deal-maker. I can ONLY easily connect my personal PC to work network via cable (medical office security issues) so that really seals the deal for me. I will just purchase a USB WiFi adapter for the time being to have for when needed.

 

Yeah, Asus' screen quality isn't always the best. I was going to withhold judgement until it came out and was reviewed. That is a big deal, and is why I'm really pulling for Samsung to fix the wifi.

Benchmark tests so far seem to show the MBA beating the S9 by wider margins than you'd expect (I5 vs. I5, 4GB Ram). I'm not sure reviewers are testing the latest versions of each, though (they may be testing the MBA versus the S9 before it was refreshed). I'm guessing the performance difference will shrink if/when they do that. And when you factor in the extra RAM I'd install...

 

Does the MBA use a pair of same-sized RAM modules with the fastest available timings. SB's integrated memory controller with high bandwidth means that memory and integrated graphics performance is more influenced by memory configuration than the previous Intel platforms.

John

 

Hey! Do we know if the B0x series have no wifi issues??

 

Well, I am a VERY FRUSTRATED new owner of a NP900X3A-B02US. Before getting started and as a qualifier, I am very experienced in laptop hardware, having setup 100's if not not 1000's of laptops of all different brands in my time.

This machine has me at my wits-end. The Wifi issue seems to still be with us. Side by side with a Lenovo Ideapad Y650, the 650 blows it away with wireless connectivity and speed. Furthermore, the S9 seems to drop the connection outright more often than not. I am about 25 feet from the router, a Linksys 160N, fully updated firmware. Bandwidth test showed .5 (yes 1/2) Mbit D/L for the S9 and 11 Mbit for the Ideapad. Surprisingly so, both showed about 2 Mbit on the upload. This is just the beginning of the frustration...

I was about 10 reboots in with installing and updating software, nothing crazy, just Windows Updates, Office, WordPerfect,....and the machine hung up. I had no choice but to hard boot it. Well, I was met with boot manager errors of which were irrecoverable. No permutation of repair or recovery from the samsung boot program or the windows disk worked. I kept calm and decided to do a restore from the Samsung utility....

The utility decided to fail, decisively at the same point, about 95% through. It failed at the same read point in MB (just don't recall the number). From there I have gone about several reinstalls of Windows, both from the included disk (home premium) and my action pack media (pro / ultimate)....all leading back to the original error at some point (if you have to hard boot it, its cooked! bootloader issue) I have even pared down the partititions first deleting the samsung recovery partition, then the c & d partitions, and now finally, the 100mb system partition (trying an install now on one giant (lol) 256GB partition to see what happens.

Its really a shame. I have been wanting this laptop since January, and now that the 256GB versions hit the market, I jumped on one, with the hope of buying several more for my firm. But, it looks like this will be going back and I'll be returning the land of Thinkpads...where details are actually paid attention to...and when you spend near 2K on a laptop, you get something that works...and works well.

 

Sorry for your problems, johnmccarrom. For me, the laptop has been rock solid is software stability.

 

Seems that WiFi is not the only issue that has not been properly addressed.. Sorry to hear you are having problems with the recovery utility, that makes me feel very wary - going to do a backup immediately. Manual one, the old-school style.

 

I still really like this A05 model even with the weak WiFi. I am REALLY disappointed with Samsung USA though. Over a two month period, I have opened five tickets -- the last two were supposedly going to be escalated the USA Product Specialist. I have spent about 3 hours explaining the weak WiFi issues, the tests that I tried, and possible resolutions.
I have received emails from Samsung Support and I have received tweets from various Samsung support accounts that I will be hearing from them soon. NOT one of them have followed up with an email or a phone call (after about 10 days so far)!!
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would currently rate Samsung Support a zero...

I will be following up with them again late next week when I'm back in the USA.

 

I had no problems with the recovery utility -- it worked perfectly for me.

I had installed all possible Intel upgrades (even those not approved by Samsung yet) and Win 7 Pro. Somewhere there it had resulted in some issues. Doing a Recovery and installing only the updates published by Samsung and ALL Microsoft Windows updates has my A05 as stable as a rock (so far). I did not do the upgrade to Win 7 Pro -- I decided to leave it on Win 7 Prem (for now).

 

Just an update...a few more attempt at completely CLEAN installs....no matter what, If I force shut down the machine...its done. I called samsung business support and the tech was very friendly. His thought was that it had to do with the hardware (ssd or board). Their only option was to send it in, swap the hardware and send it back. For a brand new premium machine, that is just not worth it. Its not the cost...but the time that has gone into this that has made it such a disappointment. Plus the fact that I do not / will not have the time in the future to deal with issues like this. I will say that is one place where Lenovo & Apple have everyone beat....support time.

The Samsung tech did say that this second round of series 9's were so rushed to the market that they don't even have the proper web support up yet...you can't even properly register the notebook online.

So, I called Abt to initiate a return. They were sorry to hear about the problems but eager to know what they were. No restocking, free shipping back to them. Now my decision....just go with the new MBA and run win on it when needed, try the Thinkpad X1 (also plagued with problems, I hear) or go back to a T-Series slim model.

 

I agree - time is important. Now, if this was a toy like some promising barebone or gaming machine, I would enjoy poking around it despite voiding warranty, but for a business machine it is a bit too frustrating. So, to sum up, we have a rushed product with issues and we have support problems, plus the whole bunch of support people do not even recognize the wifi problem. A pretty shocking scene this is.

 

dr_hfuhuhurr, if you are still watching this thread, could you please confirm if B01 Samsung has Wimax or not? You had mentioned before it has Intel 6230. Samsung support is clueless. They are saying even the A series have no Wimax. I am very confused.

Thanks
Peter

 

I suggest you ask for a swap with another Series 9 laptop. I agree, its sound like a hardware issue, which I think will not happen to you again.

 

I still think it's Samsung's marketing! Hybrid sleep is a software feature introduced with Windows 7 release. All of my laptops with Win7 are able to use it.

 

Had the same issues. Called Samsung support, they sent me a new LAN-dongle. No problems so far. Conclusion: poor quality control on the dongle manufacturer side.

 

None of the Apple laptop computers will give you even 50% battery juice under Windows compared to the Mac OS results. As soon as they optimize their hardware and drivers to Microsoft I will buy a Mac.

 

As of today, it's absolutely true for "the first round" also. You can't register A02 either. Silly!

 

There is (and was) no Samsung Series 9 laptops on the market with the built-in support of Wi-Max. You can do it yourself by swapping 6230 to 6250.

 

Of course, if you add Wi-Max, you lose bluetooth.

 

Hi everyone. I upgraded my S9 to Win 7 Ultimate and I formatted my whole hard drive in the process. What do I need to do in order to get my Fn keys function? I cannot seem to find the drivers on Samsung's website and searching here did not lead me to anything useful. Thanks!

 

I'm glad I didn't get this laptop now. Seems to be plagued with problems. I think this pretty much seals the deal for me to wait for the Asus UX21 and see its reviews before I pull the trigger.

 

Can I hook up my cable box to my laptop and watch tv on my laptop via the micro hdmi port?

 

Yup! You can just directly connect it to the TV too.

 

They are sending me a new LAN adapter after talking to them more than two hours yesterday and today. Hope the problem is not on the laptop side...

By the way, when I asked about the VGA dongle, they referred me to google and Amazon (to the adapters that everybody here knows don't work for laptop-VGA connections).

What I can say is that talking to their customer service did not give me high hopes for fixing the issues quickly and in a knowledgeable manner in the future as they could not hide that they were clueless for the most part (they thought I was having wireless adapter problems!) I may regret returning the x1 but I had a lot of issues with my order (before I get the unit) so Lenovo did not live up to my expectations either (coming from a 10-year Thinkpad user).

 

Really? What's the name of the software which allows to use a Micro-HDMI on S9 as an input?

 

I assume it's not an adapter, but dongle (cable). Anyway, congratulations!

Why? Adapters do work. Cables do work too. It depends on how do you use it and whether do you understand what are you connecting with.

 

Yes, it is the dongle. We'll see how flimsy the new dongle will be...

I am looking for a micro-HDMI to VGA adapter/dongle (not necessarily Samsung "optional" part that is nowhere to be found). If you have a recommended item for this that will work between the laptop and projector, I would appreciate it.

 

I have the micro-hdmi to VGA dongle that is the official Samsung part sitting in my living room. I returned my series 9 has it had several problems, but had already purchased the dongle from an online retailer i cannot return it to. I would be more than happy to sell it.

 

Not sure how to send private message here. So, how much are you asking for it? Thanks

 

intel centrino ultimate-n 6300 w/ 3rd antenna works pretty well... improves signal quality/strength, but doesn't totally solve the problem. The tech that installed 3rd antenna did say that the "metal" shell didn't seem like that big of a issue, as the signal remained the same with or without the back on/off. I consider it a good upgrade and unfortunately for Samsung a necessary one, if you get a Gen1 series 9.

 

Did he test the system in the comfort of his own testing environment as well? eheh. I would love to see you go to speettest.net and provide your test results for wifi. We have been around the block over and over with new posters and techs and the problem always seems to be the same when proper testing is done. I am vurious though where the 3rd antenna is routed ???

 

Hate to mention it but I read about the new Asus UX21 yesterday....looks very nice.

HEY! Someone deleted a bunch of posts between my two in a row now! One spoke of another persons testing on the Series 9.

 

Is there a solution for this wifi issue????

And finally,does it worth buying this laptop?? or should I look for a Macbook Air?

 

Fwiw, my current thinking about what to get.

Macbook Air: Probably much better WiFi, higher resolution screen, and possibly a little better in several areas related to performance benchmarks and battery life. Thunderbolt is nice too.

(Caveat: benchmarks I've seen show a surprisingly high gap b/w the MBA and S9, but they all seem to compare the A model and its slower clocked I5 rather than the B or, hopefully, C refresh that I'd actually get; and they also don't include the extra RAM I'd install.)

S9: Bright matte screen, native windows (and thus, I assume, better performance than the MBA if performing resource hungry windows tasks for business and what not), and, to me, better looking.

Asus: I'll assume working WiFi, and it could be the best bang for your buck given the bandied about specs and price range, though I'm not sure if the screen - though said to be matte - will be very good.

I'm pulling for the S9. I need good WiFi in public places, though, w/o having to use a USB cable connected to an external adapter. (And I also need to be able to easily connect to other people's projectors. I wish Monoprice had mini-HDMI to VGA connectors that were as affordable as their thunderbolt-VGA connector.)

 

I wish an 11" owner would chime in with tests outside the house and w/ multiple Speedtest runs both near and far away from their router.

If there really is not a WiFi problem on the 11 inchers, then that would seem to suggest that the duralumin is not, intrinsically at least, the cause of these problems. That might make a fix easier to implement.

 

Did you guys see the review on B01? JR.com: Samsung NP900X3A-B01US Series 9 13.3" Premium Notebook PC in PC Notebook Computers
quote:
The Series 9 seemed to fit the bill, however, after some research it appeared that wifi was an issue on previous iterations of the device. I can happily report that no such issues plagued the B01 I received and the wifi connection is excellent throughout my house(even in the basement).

It seems that B version has solved the wifi issue. Can anyone else confirm or object?

 

We have had response from someone previously here with the B01 have we not. I can state that when I moved to the Asus Black Diamond wifi router, everything seemed to be great within the house...until I tested it at airports, conventions and coffee shops. It would be great if this guy could get here and we could suggest side by side testing in and outside his house that might verify his claim.

 

Again, this is a rehash of what has been repeated over and over here. However, after more than three months of use of a March build A03, I can state unequivocally that I have had ZERO issues with wifi at any of the following:

Hotels
Coffee shops
Airports
Mifi / Phone hotspots

Generally signals at coffee shops are pretty strong, and for my particular usage patterns speed has always been adequate and the connection has been highly stable -- no dropouts at all.

At home, I also had no issues whatsoever in my normal usage, but doing tests in the far corners of my homes showed that wifi range was approximately 30-35% less than my other laptops.

From a practical perspective, it would never have even entered my mind that there is a wifi "problem" with this laptop had I not read about it here.

I did order an Alfa USB wifi device as a back-up, but it was lost/stolen en route to Singapore and I haven't bothered to order a replacement since I have had no need for it to date.

So, the point of all this is that, yes, wifi range is clearly below average, but it may or may not be any issue at all from a practical perspective --- for me, it has been an absolute non-issue, and as a professional trader a stable wifi connection is crucial for my livelihood. For others, YMMV, but for many I would suggest the S9 wifi may very well prove to be acceptable depending on your particular usage patterns.