Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus - NP940X3G

It looks like it only uses a single fan this time, the fan noise might be a bit concerning.
Also wondering if it'll have digitiser support.
Will have to get someone to confirm these when it comes out.

 

The 15" Series 9 has only a single fan and the noise is noticeable when the CPU gets busy. However, the Haswell chip in the Ativ Book 9 Plus has a slightly lower power rating while the Ativ Book 9 Lite is thicker and should be able to accommodate a bigger fan.

John

 

I always get a chuckle at this. Here we have Intel trying to get everyone on-board with the Ultrabook program, and Samsung is off doing the best work outside of specs. Cracks me up.

I don't even know what Ultrabook means anymore. I do know that if a Touch screen is a requirement now, I'll never buy an "ultra" book.

 

Even more amusing is that the link to "Shop Samsung" is to a now-dead page for the X4C which, IIRC, never claimed to be an Ultrabook.

John

 

If you are outside the US you may have options but I don't see any new "ultrabook" with Haswell here that is not touch. As far as the Ultrabook program, ASUS has done a good job while staying in the design spec.

 

Well ASUS always cuts a corner somewhere. With PC sales slumping, we'll see how much a stickler on the sticker intel will be. I don't think business users are particularly interested in touch, but they do want thin and light (and battery life). I do think while haswell supplies are tight, oems want them in their most flashy models.

 

I don't like touch in a standard laptop either..it seems cumbersome at best to use. It's great for some all in one desktops but even there if the screen is too big then you have an issue with being too close to it to bot see it and touch it (wonder if they thought of that). Ideally i should only be tablets or convertibles that have touch but I probably want a new Samsung and I have been resigned for awhile to knowing if I want Haswell it will have touch.

 

Has anyone heard something about the "locking hinge"?
Will that be the same like for the series 7 ones and how reliable are they?
When the series 9 came out, there were also some rumors that there would be a locking device later on available but I'm the end nothing was released.
Background is that I'm a student and I have to write my thesis next year that means that I will spend most of my time in the library where I'm not willing to take my notebook with me every time when I take a break or go to the restroom. So, I need a reliable lock especially for such a priced notebook.

 

The Book 9 Plus has a security lock slot at the back of the right side. You can see it clearly on the photo here.

I hope they will squeeze one in on all the new models.

John

 

you may want to check out my post at
http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...lightweight-high-res-options.html#post9263634

I am not full-quoting my post because I don't want mods to complain. therefore just an excerpt of the most relevant info:
...
1. Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus Thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/722548-samsung-ativ-book-9-plus-haswell-new-6.html
2. Zenbook Infinity Thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...finity-ux301la-just-announced-computex-2.html
3. Acer Aspire: http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...s7-preview-best-new-ultrabook-discussion.html
(Be careful not to confuse the old S7 with the new S7.)
4. Kirabook: No Haswell upgrade annouced yet, so not thread so far.
...
Ultrabook Comparison « Ultrabook News and the Ultrabook Database for a start, but there are errors,. e.g. the samsung is quoted as having 256GB as an option, elsewhere.
...
@mods: please don't delete my double posts within several threads, with this I am actually trying to *prevent* that identical information is posted more than once within the forum at large.

 

The only thing I would disagree with is the suggestion that 1920 x 1080 is not enough @ 13.3". I know my phone has a higher pixel density than that but I don't hold my phone at arm's length when reading the screen. Anyway, where Apple lead then others have to follow.

John

 

@john
Ironically, my older HTC diamond (win mobile 6.1 smartphone) has the identical pixel density as the ativ book+ will have. So I did some tests: First I found out at what font size (on the phone's screen) there is *no* noticeable blur/smoothing, i.e. the fonts are sharp. Then I put the phone onto the screen of my opened laptop so it would be at the typical viewing distance. Result: I think this will make sense in many situations, like zooming out of documents/whole page view ; overview of large excel sheets; temporarily putting two documents side-by side ; avoiding scrolling when doing drag/drop operations. however, I admit that the font size that 275ppi allows to be displayed as sharp is overkill for many situations except the beforementioned: it's only for punctual needs. - However: If even 1600 px has obvious use, from my test, then I am absolutely sure that 1440pixels (like the Zenbook/Acer S7/Kirabook) will have an everyday-benefit over 1080px on 13,3" screens. It will allow sharp fonts at smaller sizes, thereby being easier on the eye and it will enable you to scroll less because you can zoom out more when surfing etc. I think this will be a case of once-you-have-it you won't want to go back. In fact the low resolution is the main reason I did not choose the Vaio Pro 13. My Vaio X has 141ppi and that's absolutely no enough for sharp fonts -> 165ppi (@13.3 1080) does not seem like a significant step upward to me. The real question for me will be: Will the advantages of 1800 (275ppi)over 1440(220ppi) be so large that I will want the Samsung even if the Infinity/the new S7/updated Kirabook will turn out to be better in other regards all-in-all.. Possibly not, especially if other factors like mirroring/glossy/brightness happen to be better on the 220ppi screens.

 

@matthias2468

I'm sure that some of us (probably younger people) have vision that can make use of the higher pixel density but I know that I'm not among them.

The article here indicates that 300 ppi is the limit of resolving power at the distance of one foot (30 cm). I find that a comfortable distance for viewing the screen is about 2 feet and therefore the resolvable ppi is 150 at that distance. So, theoretically, I might benefit from FHD on the 15" Series 9 (=146 ppi) with the letters looking slightly sharper than at 1600 x 900, provided the font scaling works and the letters are big enough for me to read. I use the 13.3" Series 9 for a couple of months and found that I was sitting closer to the screen in order to be able to read it properly.

I anticipate seeing people working huddled over their notebooks as they try to take advantage of their ultra high resolution displays.

John

 

At least until they can't see at all.

 

Any news on a release date?

 

From what I've seen so far, it looks like the chassis on these new ATIV 9 are the same as all previous series 9 (except X3A), with the addition of the security lock. That probably means the keyboard will be the same; too shallow.

Btw, is there such thing as PLS touch screen? If so, will it be in this model?

 

The 9 Lite is plastic and the 9 Plus is metal. The 9 Plus does have a PLS touch screen and I'm not sure if the Lite is PLS or not but I believe it is just at a lower resolution and touch in the Lite is an option.

 

Will the plus be available with matte, non touch option? The current 1080P matte is one nice looking screen. I'd give up the touch advantage in a second to get a book 9 plus, with haswell, and the 1080P matte screen. Any resolution higher then that is dumb IMO.

 

So far, there are no clues about this: Searching finds only one model (NP940X3G). As we have discussed many times, touchscreen is a requirement for officially using Intel's Ultrabook label and Samsung may not want to appear to be rocking the boat with their top model (which has put on weight compared to the current 13.3").

We have to hope that Samsung has the prudence to make a simple, quiet, Haswell refresh of the current X3E / X3F and provide both touch and non-touch versions. Otherwise there will be a big gap in range between the premium 9 Plus and the budget 9 Lite.

John

 

@john I totally agree about the "huddled - anticipation"! I realized I will have to use my glasses to take advantage of the screen without sitting there like a monkey at many times
Perhaps we can agree that more than 1080 will indeed come in handy in special situations like I mentioned, but not in everyday browsing/work etc. So it basically depends on wheter one will want that "feature" of being able to switch to a cool hi-res overview of a spreadsheet/document/coding lines/photo/whatever, resp. how *often* one will need this. So that's no "it's definitely a plus" vs "it's unnecessary/dumb", but it simply depends on one's habits and working profile. In any case you have convinced me that I could also go with 220ppi. Thank you for your points.
It also largely depends on one's habits regarding distance eye<->screen.
Everyone should take not of this paragraph in the article you quoted:
start quote
"Now, Steve Jobs referred in his keynote to a viewing distance of 10 to 12" when claiming that the limit of the human retina is reached for a 300 ppi display. Why? Likely because 10" is the distance that corresponds to a 20/20 visual acuity when holding the "Retina Display". However I think that this viewing distance is too short from a practical point of view: personally, the most comfortable distance between my eyes and my iPhone 3G is about 18" (45 cm) and not 10" or 12", and guess what? At this comfort distance, the Apple "Retina Display" [326 ppi ] would provide exactly the higher limit in angular resolution argued by Dr. Soneira (50 cpd)! "
end quote (source: Apple "Retina Display" in iPhone 4: a Vision Scientist Perspective | Display Technology | KyberVision)

So there. Especially on the Ativ Q, the 275ppi resolution might make sense after all. But for the Ativ Book+, being a laptop, it might reach spheres were one could consider it overkill unless you want to move to the screen in an ergonomically suboptimal manner. But 220ppi sure will make sense with younger people/people with good eyesight, *without* having to sit there in a "huddled" manner - which is not to say the nonetheless will

 

No, it is bigger in every dimension and the area between the hinges where the WiFi antennas were located has moved into the display bezel.

 

Additionally, it's gained weight (in part due to a larger battery, but also a thicker touch screen). Hoping they bring out a "classic" haswell model with the current chassis and a ho-hum matte 900-1080p, otherwise it's no go.

 

Have you seen the current ho-hum matte 1080P matte on the Ativ book 9? That is one gorgeous screen let me tell you. I even ordered one and it was almost at my door when I heard that Samsung was going to have a announcement. I cancelled it. Almost wish hadn't but i really want the extra battery life of haswell. Now when Apple announced their air 13" gets 12 hour battery life people are actually reporting its that good, even if it has TN glass. Now Samsung's 12 hour claim with their new Plus with the hi rez, touch display? I am very skeptical it will achieve anything near that in real life. But if it can get 8 hours it will be good. But Apple is getting 12 by putting in a huge battery on the air and sticking with the TN glass. Something does not add up here.

 

To be clear I have the ho-hum (for pixel fanboys) 900p screen and it is also very good, which is why I think FOUR times that resolution is going to be tough on the scaling. As for the battery life, it's quite possible they will get 12 hours with light usage. They have also gone with a larger battery as well and were already getting 7 with ivy on the 13". I'm just not looking for touch or any more weight, so I hope they do keep a 1080p matte option around and with haswell I wouldn't need a larger battery. But if the plus is the only option, I'll probably pass.

 

Amazon have the 9 plus 13" up on pre-order for £1299, with a release date of 12th July.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-ATI...OLE&s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1372947321&sr=1-6

Only i5, 4gb ram 128GB SSD seems to be available right now, hope the i7, 8/256 version hits the UK too.

 

Seems they have the Ativ Book Lite up too. £499 for the non-touchscreen, and £599 for the touchscreen option. with July 19th as release date.

 

I just contacted Amazon and they confirmed the release date, telling me they only specify release dates which are given to them by the suppliers and manufacturer. Odd that there has been no word from Samsung themselves yet about the date.

 

Apparently, according to Mobiletechreview Lisa stated the same. But added that the newer 1080P panel had much better saturation/contrast and the colors were much more correct then the 900P one. They obviously went to a different panel source for that. All I can say is wow that was the nicest display I have ever seen on a notebook when I played with one at BB. As for scaling I have heard Paul Thurrott (windows supersite) say that windows 8.1 takes care of that and has auto scaling that works as good as macs. But even so, its going to take too much power and resources to drive all those pixels. Its as if they are doing it just because they can and say they have more pixels. Like a 500 HP mustang over a 400 HP one. Is 500 HP really needed? But its a race between Ford and Chevy to see who has more.

 

Good find. There's no trace, however, of NP940S3G-K01UK in the SW Update database. It seems that this model uses the i5 4200U CPU. The 128GB SSD is, however, a major drawback (we have to hope they have run out of the Sandisk U100).

+£100 for touchscreen is surprising. The -905 might fly off the shelves. It's almost worth buying just to see how good / bad it is.

Also available in white non-touch and touch.

It's time, I think to give the Book 9 Lite its own thread.

John

 

Hello,

I registered newly to the forum, enjoyed reading the discussions on the new Ativ Book 9 Plus and would like to add something.

Are we not going to experience the same issue as it happened when Apple introduced the Retina screens? In the beginning the display was totally amazing.
Then people realized only preloaded OS X programs were able to handle the resolution and display it sharp and crisp. All others looked fuzzy. Only with a work around people were able to make at least the text sharp but buttons, symbols or bars still looked horrible.
In addition some like me need to use remote desktop (which I ran tried via parallels) but remote desktop with Windows Server 2008 R2 does not let you change the DPI so you ended up with not being able to properly use the session.

With the new qhd+ display I am feared that the scaling in Windows, soon Windows 8.1 and the programs will be a challenge with having a fuzzy resolution. And for remote desktop I also have no hopes so far.
I tried to find some first pics or videos which shows the desktop of the new Ativ Book but I only found the tiles screen of Windows 8. A little strange that during the first short review nobody checked out the desktop screen with opening some programs to see how it looks.

Please kindly correct the above if you have other thoughts or found out something about it.

Thank you

 

Windows 8.1 should solve your fears to a large degree.

 

For what it's worth all of the 128 GB X3Es I have seen here had LITEON SSDs..also, does the Plus use PCIe SSD or is that only Sony that started using that in their new Pro 13?

 

The new IGZO screens claims to be 40% more energy efficient I think. I will be happy with 8h battery thou. I doubt 12h. If Apple had came out and said the new Air had 11h, then Samsung would have said the same thing just to match the number.

I bought a Macbook retina on Sunday, did not think the new Series 9 would show up so fast!! No sign of it in Sweden yet thou!!

I don´ t belive this machine will be delivered a week from now. W8.1 is just released as a Beta, and the qHD+ screen need the new scaling i guess?

 

The current 13" series 9 ivy can get 7 hours (which is about what they claimed). I imagine the haswell-equipped Plus with its larger battery will easily get 8, and probably not too shy of 12 under light usage. Myself, I would rather they have swapped cpus and kept the battery the same instead of increasing weight.

 

I haven't a clue whether Samsung will be using mSATA or another format for the SSDs in the new models.

The NP940X3G is now in the SW Update database (at least for the USA & Germany). Also NP980Q3G now shows up for various countries.

John

 

You mean a slower CPU? I´m struggeling to get 5h out of my Series 9, but prefer a nice touch-screen over all day battery.

Well Well. I have faith in Samsung. The Series 9 13" is the best computer I ever owned.

 

New Samsung ATIV lineup priced, available for pre-order in the UK:

New Samsung ATIV lineup priced, available for pre-order in the UK - GSMArena Blog

Germany:

http://blog.gsmarena.com/samsung-ativ-q-briefly-goes-on-pre-order-for-e1599-in-germany/

 

The unit Anand got to play with had a Samsung M.2 drive installed.

AnandTech | Samsung's ATIV Book 9 Plus: 3200 x 1800 Display in an Ultrabook

 

For those who don't know / can't remember, the M.2 format is the "gumstick". It's longer than mSATA and 3.5mm thick rather than mSATA's 3.75mm. We wait to see whether Samsung will use this format in all the new Series 9s.

A list of the Samsung SSD products is here.

John

 

Well that's a bit disappointing. The early reports said 9 Plus was going to be 8GB of ram. I assume this is not up-gradable?

 

I am not quite sure how an ultrabook profits from 8GB of RAM. The ativ 9 will have a 4400 graphics chip which probably will be a bottle neck if there were 8GB of RAM. I do not see a problem with 4GB in this device. it should be decent enough for a non-gaming machine. I will even be happy with i5 instead of i7... after all we hope to see 12hrs of battery life.

 

RAM requirement depends on what programs you are running (some are RAM-hungry) and how many concurrently.

One reason why I bought my X4C was that the 4GB on my X3B resulted in some relatively long pauses while RAM was dumped to the virtual memory the SSD when I loaded a new program or large dataset ( the Sandisk U100 didn't help). However, I agree that 4GB will be enough for many people who want something more versatile than a tablet but still very portable. Other people, however (including myself) want to combine significant computing power with the portability.

John

 

I understand your point but again, this device is not intended for huge computing power. I am well aware of programs that are as you call it RAM hungry, but I would not attempt to use this ultrabook as only device to work with such RAM hungry programs. If you are coding and working with huge datasets the ativ 9 may be a good playground to work out and test your code, but I think I would not use a tiny notebook in such situations as my main workstation. in my case I usually rely on cluster solutions or the like. in that case even an atom CPU in a netbook is enough to design the code and submit it to a high-performance computer afterwards. if you need a lot of RAM for your general work a notebook will never be enough or at least quite annoying compared to a desktop or HPC solution. if you insist on 8GB RAM I would consider a notebook instead - not an ultrabook.

 

Anyone knows whether Samsung confirmed at any point that there will (also) be a 8 GB model?
Thanks! TBH I can't believe there won't be a 8 GB model (cf. the Vaio Pro 13). Even my browser with lots of tabs open eats RAM like mad. I suppose this will get worse in the future so you will have to be prepared. That's my idea behind wanting 8GB.
So the question is, why don't Samsung launch both the 8GB and 4GB model simultaneously / when will the 8 GB model be launched / will there be one in the first place....

 

Your logic does not hold up. Ultrabooks are not toys. There is no restriction in the Ultrabook spec to prevent 8GB RAM ( link) and Intel actually boasts that Ultrabooks "are empowering employees to get the job done from virtually anywhere." ( link)

 

8GB of RAM is useful even in this form factor. Probably the most obvious example is a VM. Pretty sure 8GB will make it into the top tier model (i7, 512GB), but I'm doubtful you'll see it in a more affordable i5. It will continue to be soldered on the 13". Though you wouldn't want to do heavy crunching, video rendering, or other cpu-intensive tasks, the ULVs are surprisingly powerful, in short bursts.

 

(1) I did not say there was a restriction to prevent 8GB RAM - no idea where that comes from.
(2) If you buy your computers based on ads, fine for me.

Again, RAM intensive work, if we talk about the same thing here, is nothing you want to do on an ultrabook.

 

Some of us want significant computing power in a light and compact package. In my own case, 4GB RAM may be enough 90% of the time, but I don't want to carry around another computer for the other 10% of the time.

John

 

I love it when people generalize and tell others what they need or should want. There will be a 4gb model for those of us who think that 8gb is too much. The rest of us have been waiting for the 8gb for a very long time.

 

I priced out a Vaio pro 13 at i5, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD. I am hoping there is an Ativ 9 plus in the same config (I am semi open to 128gb SSD as i'm going to use an external 1 TB HD anyways)