Samsung NP900X3E - Backlight Bleed & SSD

Hi,

I've just picked up my Samsung NP900X3E-A01UK today and have noticed some backlight bleed.

On the bottom of the screen, there are around 7 white bleed spots, however these are only visible on a black background and on max brightness.

Is this normal or should I try and get this replaced?

I've noticed that they have installed a Samsung MZMTD256HAGM 256GB SSD, how does this compare to the U100's that they were putting in previous models?

Thanks

 

Some unevenness in backlighting is normal but there should not be local bright spots. Are you able to take a photo showing this problem? It will then be easier for others to compare with their notebooks (but few people here has the X3E with the FHD display).

The Samsung SSD is much better than the U100. However, can you run HWiNFO or CPU-z and see if your RAM is single channel or dual channel. We had a report of an X3E with single channel RAM which is a step backwards from the dual channel RAM in the 2012 Series 9s.

John

 

I can't seem to get any decent photos of it. But yes, there are a few bright spots, so may ask them to replace the unit.

I can also confirm the RAM is single channel, will this make a big difference, as I have the option of purchasing my NP900X3C-A02UK back for £720.

Is the NP900X3E really worth the difference?

 

The single channel RAM has most impact on the graphics performance as shown in my table here (the Intel GPU uses the system RAM). The X3E graphics performance also suffers relative to the X3C because there are more display pixels to process.

The potential benefit of the X3E is the higher resolution display. It's your decision about whether this is a worthwhile feature. You also have a faster CPU and SSD in the X3E than in your previous X3C but can you notice the difference? If you need more storage in your X3C then the 480GB Crucial M500 mSATA will appear any time soon for around £300 and 256GB Crucial m4 mSATA SSDs are available for around £160.

John

 

Yeah I cannot notice the difference really. Considering the difference in price between the NP900X3C-A02UK and NP900X3E-A01UK is around £487, there is no way to justify this for the higher resolution display and a faster CPU that I may not notice the benefit of. I guess I can upgrade the SSD in the NP900X3C to the 256GB Crucial one, and still have money to spare.

Is there a noticeable difference in performance between Sandisk U100 and Crucial m4 M500 or is it purely just capacity difference? How complex is the upgrade? I guess it voids the warranty?

 

The SSD upgrade is discussed in detail in this thread. Samsung don't encourage us to venture inside our Series 9s but it's not difficult to do with a good Philips size 0 screwdriver. If you need warranty service, then restore the hardware to the configuration supplied by Samsung.

There is a detailed comparison between the Crucial m4 mSATA and the Sandisk U100 here. The U100 is OK except when confronted with multiple queued concurrent input / output such as can happen when loading a big dataset that necessitates RAM being dumped to virtual memory. Effectively the computer freezes for a few seconds until the backlog is cleared. If you aren't running programs that generate this condition then you won't benefit from the improvement other SSDs offer in this respect. I needed both better behaviour and more capacity.

John

 

Two amazon users are also reporting backlight bleeding: Google Translate Amazon DE
see 'loop's comment with photo: