Samsung Notebook 5 (NP550XTA-K01US) BGA Turdbook Hater's Review

After more than a decade of being a laptop enthusiast/overclocker, I recently abandoned über-expensive high performance notebooks with desktop CPUs and high end mobile graphics cards in favor of using a real desktop computer. Still needing something for email and web browsing while traveling, using a disgusting touch-screen tablet or Chromebook just made me feel sick to my stomach because I hate that kind of garbage technology. Those are glorified smartphones and I really hate using a smartphone for that. Here is my down-and-dirty review of this fancy little BGA turdbook.

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After being discouraged by the ludicrous pricing of all of the pathetic BGA notebook garbage options, I stumbled onto the Samsung Notebook 5 at Best Buy. It's on sale now for $499.

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While is it a pretty wimpy product in terms of performance, and BGA, the metal chassis, striking good looks and 1920x1080 display got my attention. It was at the edge in the price range I wanted, and everything else in this price range is flimsy plastic trash with 1366x768 display resolution. I wrestled with the idea of buying it, and finally pulled the trigger with the knowledge that I could take it back for a refund within 14 days.

The performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 Mobile 2500U has a CPU-Z benchmark score that falls in between the i7-2600K and the i5-7600K. Like most laptops, the BIOS is almost worthless in terms of options. This one has a tacky-looking UI that is in Windows 10 style... about 4 ugly pastel-colored tiles with almost no useful options. But, I was pleased to see that I had an option to disable Secure Boot and disable the TPM module. I did both immediately. I cannot find any way to manipulate CPU voltage, power limits or clock speeds. (That was one of the first things I tried to do to get a little better performance from it.)

The Radeon Vega 8 Mobile isn't impressive, but it seems to be as good or better than the Intel integrated graphics that everything else in this super-low price range would have. The GPU memory runs no faster than the shared DDR4 memory speed. MSI Afterburner and Sapphire Trixx will not allow manipulation of the GPU core clock or voltage. That was the second thing I tried after looking for a way to better tune the CPU. AMD seems to have intentionally locked the APU down as tight as a gnat's posterior orifice.

It appears the motherboard has 4GB or DDR4-2400 soldered to it, with one slot populated by a 4GB DDR4-2400 SO-DIMM. The WiFi/BT card is permanently soldered to the motherboard. There is an available M.2 slot. I tried one of my 960 Pro NVMe drives in that slot, but it appears to not support NVMe (PCI-e) storage. I will have to try an M.2 SATA SSD in that slot. The 1TB HDD is fine for file storage, but it's sluggish... as anyone should expect a HDD to be.

Battery life using the high performance profile with all power saving features disabled looks to be in the 6 hour range. With the power saver profile, one can probably squeeze between 6 to 8 hours from it. I generally never run on battery, so it's not something I can speak to precisely. That's what the task bar tray icon shows when I hover over it.

I really hate clickpads (touchpads without buttons) but have to admit that this one is the best I have ever used. It's not nearly as spastic as the others I have used. It offers much better cursor control than any other clickpad I have used on a Windows notebook. I would prefer a touchpad with buttons, but I generally use a wireless mouse and avoid using touch-based input devices whenever possible. I forced myself to use it 2 days with the buttonless clickpad and tolerated it as well as I could ever hope to.

In summary, it's a decent buy for under $600. I would absolutely recommend it on that basis for anyone looking for a nice looking, well-built entry-level consumer notebook that will do a great job of web browsing, email and watching videos on YouTube or Netflix for the lowest price possible. If you expect to do anything more demanding than this, then expect to at least double the price for an entry level BGA gaming trashbook. Adjusting my expectations to match the price, I think I am going to keep it and use it for the purpose I intended when purchasing it.

Most of all, I am really pleased with the 1080p screen and chassis build quality. Those are what attracted me to in to begin with, and those will ultimately be the reasons I decide to keep it, if I decide to keep it. I am not willing to use a system with a lower display resolution and there is nothing better I can find in the sub-$600 price range. Kudos to Samsung for making this truly super low-priced option available with decent built quality and s FHD display.

Pros:

• Metal chassis
• 1920 x 1080 display resolution
• 4C/8T CPU with slightly better than anemic performance
• There is an undocumented M.2 2280 SSD slot in the chassis that may support an M.2 SATA SSD
  
• Buttonless clickpad is more tolerable than others I have used
• Under $600

Cons:

• No keyboard backlighting
• Latest BIOS Update from Samsung to "improve performance and stability" lowers CPU boost clock by about 100MHz
• 8GB of DDR4-2400 memory in "Dual Channel" is 4GB on the motherboard, plus one slot with 4GB stick of same
• WiFi/BT module is soldered to the motherboard
• Single pipe heat sink is "tripod" design and cooling system is very small (but, the CPU and GPU temps are OK in spite of this)
• There is an undocumented M.2 2280 SSD slot in the chassis that does not support NVMe
• Almost everything else pathetic (excluding the above pros) that you would expect in this price range for a low-budget BGA turdbook

Nice looking aluminum lid...
Nice looking aluminum bottom cover...

Nice looking aluminum top cover...

Nice 1080p display...

Right side USB port and Kensington lock slot...

Rear panel exhaust vents...

Front panel... nothing except a finger slot to raise the lid...
Left side power jack, LAN, HDMI, USB (2) and headphone jack...
1TB HDD, One SO-DIMM, wimpy heat sink and fan (but temps are OK)...

Empty M.2 slot (does not appear to support NVMe... haven't tested SATA yet)...

CPU-Z Validation: https://valid.x86.fr/nwn0sg - AMD Ryzen 5 Mobile 2500U @ 3168.58 MHz
CPU load temps...

CPU-Z benchmarks...

 

If anyone can figure out a way to overclock the APU (CPU and GPU cores) please share it in this thread. I have about 12 days left to decide whether or not I am going to keep it or return it to Best Buy for a refund.

 

I reckon an M2 SSD would do some wonders for that laptop - don't want to rely on slow HDD's for operating systems nowadays! Yeah, that would speed up the whole laptop user experience.

You say the CPU performance of that little AMD CPU is similar to i7-2600K - hey that's pretty good!

 

Another way to look at it: better performance than a Macbook for less than half the price. I can't believe they are still using dual cores on those, they should have been relegated to the dustbin of history at least 5 years ago.

 

WUT, dual cores! I know nothing about Macs apart from their expense, history of using inferior hardware at inflated costs, and closed wall gardens - sounds like a good buy-in doesn't it!

 

You overclock the APU via the BIOS, if you don't have the options in the BIOS you could upload it and people like me could unlock it.

Overall the review is uselss. Almost no accurate information, only garbage subjective opinions.

 

Hey @Mr. Fox. Thank you for posting your review. I cannot believe how similar it looks to my NP700Z3A and the original Series 7/Chronos models -- which date back to 2011. I guess they came up with a somewhat timeless design.

@Danishblunt: There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting a review (on NBR, of all places) that reflects a member's personal experience and opinion about a device. I find such reviews at least as useful as ones containing endless lists of benchmark scores (which of course have value too). This review in particular contains a wealth of pictures, including a lot of objective CPU-Z and HWiNFO data.

There IS, however, something wrong with the tone of your post. We're used to a "mature" tone here in Samsung. Just as Mr. Fox is entitled to post his opinion about the NP550XTA, you are entitled to post your opinion as well -- within reason. I am sure you are already familiar with our top forum rule on NBR:

Just be careful, you're walking on the edge.

 

Had to wade through and at the extremist opinions littered throughout, but I know your style and opinions well by now, so it was expected.

Samsung is kind of killing it with the ultrabooks these days, but they strangely don't get much visibility. I'm eyeing the Notebook 9 15" (16GB model) very seriously due to it's inclusion of 4-lane Thunderbolt 3. It's insanely light at 2.82 lbs... unreal for what you get. I could dual-boot linux and windows on that thing and ditch my MacBook for dev work pretty easily. And the battery on it is insane.

This does sound like the perfect little laptop to just do some light work on. Have to agree there. Obviously no one would ever expect this thing to be anything other than what it is, a $600 ultrabook.

EDITS:
oh wow you got it for $499.. that's not bad at all..
You could just dump a 2.5" SATA SSD in there if the m.2 slot doesn't work out. Would probably help it immensely for performance perception in general use.

 

For $499, this is likely the best ultrabook you can get, and its seems to be suprisingly well made. The design reminds me a lot of the school chromebook I'm typing this one, but far less cheap. Overall, I hope you had a fun time with it

 

Brings back too many nightmares of this POS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Mini

Happiest day in my life (post family stuff) was tossing this in the trash can.

Comes to prove - size does matter

 

Thanks, guys. Yeah, it is not my style but it seems to be able to do what I need it, at a good price, without totally sacrificing everything just to be cheap. That is a win for Samsung and for AMD. I can appreciate it to the extent it will serve it's purpose. And, literally everything else I saw and touched at Best Buy, Microcenter and Fry's while I was in Houston last week was a turn off. As I normally ignore most things I have no interest in, I had not realized how bad things have gotten in the entry level notebook space in terms of overpriced poor quality products. I thought that is was worse on the high-price end of the spectrum and that is not the case.

I started my business trip thinking I would use my Fire 7 tablet for web and email and by Wednesday I was ready to stomp on the pathetic slimy-screened piece of trash, LOL.

The timeless question "can it play Crysis" has been answered as well. I will post a quickie video maybe later today or tomorrow. Sorry, no spoilers.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/3042/radeon-vega-8
assuming this is anywhere close to being correct, ofc it should

 

It is all going to depend on their definition of what constitutes an acceptable gaming experience and what one is willing to settle for. The Vega 8 APU is by no means somewhat impressive... not even a little bit. But, neither is Intel integrated graphics. At the risk of providing a spoiler, I will leave it there for now.

 

LOL.. can't wait..

The one i'm looking at is this one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1383106-REG/samsung_np900x5t_x01us_15_notebook_9.html

Best Buy seems to only have the previous gen of this on their site.

 

I mean I have read some places that if you <use it on battery instead for AC> the cpu will throttle down to give more power on the graphics Let the game begin

 

Ask and ye shall receive...

I tried that and it did not work. I saw that in a YouTube video and it must be specific to the issues that notebook was having. I tried the special Ryzen Optimized Windows 10 power profile and setting Windows 10 graphics to run the APU in high performance mode and none of that changed anything. Maybe AMD will eventually get their GPU drivers sorted and the Vega 8 will run at its actual boost clocks someday. (Yeah, right... I think I have been waiting for AMD to get their drivers right since Radeon 4870 days, LOL.) Anyhow... more explained in the video. And, the question "Can it run Crysis?" is answered.

Also added the video to the opening post.
@Dannemand

 

Ha, my old Dell XPS M1530 with overclocked 8600M GT (albeit something like 85% overclock!) played it better than that, and that was a laptop from 2008! (same res, 1280x720, I think 720). I thought it might do a bit better than that.

 

I suspect it would do as well or better if the Vega 8 APU actually functioned at the 1100MHz boost clock it allegedly offers. In 3DMark 11 the graphics score is almost 300% higher than Haswell integrated graphics, even though the APU clock speed is less than half what it should be. So, for anyone running a somewhat older laptop with iGFX this is a minor performance upgrade for $499. For anyone used to running a stout laptop with discrete GeForce graphics it is a pretty significant downgrade.

I am still struggling with the idea of keeping it. In some ways I like it. It will absolutely do everything well for the reasons that I purchased it. But, it is so anemic compared to what I am accustomed to that it is difficult to actually love it for what it is.

I still think it is a decent value for what you get at such a low price compared to anything else in the same price range, and I also know it will make the average consumer a happy customer based on what they are generally accustomed to.

 

For your use... email and web browsing while traveling, look for the cheapest possible with the same screen resolution (I expect this is the most important) and call it a day. Throw it into the garbage bin after it will fail. Do not use too much energy on this. It's what it is. How it looks and feel does not really matter because this is meant only as a replacement for a phone. Buy the cheapest you can find! And save money.

 

I wish it was this easy. Clearly if all we needed to get by was a phone or tablet, decisions would be sooooo much easier. Problem is with mobile OS. The proliferation of that OS for use other than watching porn is rampant. Touch screens are not an answer. Neither is a stupid mouseless OS. Trying working in Citrix via an iPad; copy and pasting documents between folders using nothing but your greasy finger. Then, when work is done, and we had our fill of porn, I want to play some decent games that don't behave like powerpoint presentations. Frustration only grows when you see minimum acceptable performance scaling upwards above $1000 point.

 

Hell, if it does what it needs to do for you, and does it well - that's a win! You've got your desktop for ultimate power & tweakability!

 

I decided that I could not stand it anymore. So I took it back for a refund. The more I thought about it the more I thought it was silly to pay extra for something for web browsing and email. So I ordered the refurbished HP ZBook with a 4800MQ CPU. Saved $100 LOL. And it's a full-featured business class machine that I can repair if something breaks on it instead of throwing it in the garbage. And, it's a full-featured business class workstation that I can repair if something breaks on it instead of tossing it into the garbage. It weighs 6 pounds instead of 2, but I think I can manage it after many years of 17 and 18 inch monsterbooks.

I hope I don't regret it because I've been an HP hater for many years. I swear I'd never own another one... Never Say Never LOL

 

Next time, I would check out a M4800 (same specs, smaller form factor) or a M6800 (Same specs, but MXM B slot)
Either way, all refurbed/used business class machines are delightful to use

 

Exactly.

Doesn't realy matter. Would be worse if you throw out $100 bucks extra without get anything back. Put those saved $100 bucks for the next purchase when it fail

 

I cannot find an M6800 for $369.99 with free shipping. I believe the ZBook may have an MXM slot. Not sure if the one I ordered will have an MXM GPU in it or if the slot will be empty, but I don't need that if it does not. If it does, it is a proprietary form factor (not MXM B). This has a metal chassis like the Dell Precision as well.

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/101875/HP-ZBook-15-Refurbished-Laptop-156/

Exactly. It's still not too bad for the price, but why pay $499 + tax if I can get something for a lot less and is a better overall product?

 

Is it really proprietary? Looks like MXM-A to me, in which case a GTX 1050 Ti is the top card in that form factor. Should work if the panel is eDP, which I believe it is.

http://www.gecube.com/product.php?cid=32&id=79
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...bf2-b0891bfc52fc","x_object_id":573108428689}

 

Yeah, I looked into it after replying and it seems to just be plain vanilla MXM 3.0-A.

I wonder if that 1050 Ti is truly only $20 USD (¥ 2200.00)? If so, that would be worth doing. Otherwise, the intent at this point is to not spend anything on it, just use it until it's no longer usable. That seems roughly on par with 970M. Not great, but worth $20.

The Quadro M2000M also works in it, but there is no way I would consider spending that much on such an old laptop to get the equivalent of 950M performance. That would be nuts, LOL. Not worth it based on cost, and totally defeats the purpose of economy and basic computing, for which I would be buying it.

 

Review HP ZBook 15 Workstation-Notebookcheck.net

We take a closer look at the $2999 model (Intel Core i7-4800MQ - NVIDIA Quadro K610M) in this full review...

As well... https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ZBook-15-Series.135284.0.html

You know if it's possible lock up the bios?

 

Oh, that's RMB not Japanese Yen lol. Bot currencies use the same symbol. 2200 RMB is $321.

 

It's MXM A and someone managaged to heavily mod it with a 1070 MXM

 

I am not sure. I probably will not care. I do not need that for web and email.

Wow, that's almost what I am paying for the whole system, LOL. There's absolutely no way I would be interested in any kind of mods or upgrades at that cost. I'd rather put that money toward a nice water chiller for my 7960X.

I think I have had enough of laptop mods for a lifetime now. While 1070 is not a GPU that gets me excited, I also cannot imagine how one would cool a 1070 well enough with a GPU heat sink designed for a pathetic 35~50W MXM card. Looking at the guts of the ZBook 15, I'm pretty sure that the end result would be a thermal nightmare.

 

I totally agree. All things considered, it's still an obscene markup/MXM tax for a 1050 Ti which costs $140 in desktop form. Just didn't want you to get the wrong idea about the price being an order of magnitude off.

 

It managed to stay reasonably chill IIRC with Overwatch, but I agree on spending the money elsewhere. If you need something, get a W5170M or M4000 Firepro, they're about Vega 8 desktop performane

 

I appreciate that. When that foreign currency converted to $20 USD I was like whhhuuuuuttt?

It will be interesting to find out what it has in it. If it has no MXM card at all, the Intel HD Graphics will be good enough for what I plan to do with it. I have no plans to play games on it, especially if the experience is similar to Vega 8.

 

Closer to the Vega 8 desktop, still awful experience, but no where near what you got

 

Well, it's less money, and if it's the same performance or better it's worth it.

 

Agree. And, although I do not have it yet, I know that it is made better in terms of build quality. Not being BGA is also a plus. That said, the Samsung Notebook 5 is actually made really well in terms of the chassis. Can't say much for the quality of electronics tucked away on the inside. In fact, looking at the inside of it is what turned me off and ultimately caused me to return it for a refund. After sleeping on it, I was like... nope, no, huh-uh.

 

It does have discrete GPU. Nothing to write home about, but certainly better than Intel HD Graphics, LOL. Just got it today. Looks excellent. Well built business class chassis.