Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook listed at US retailer for $900, 'coming soon'

ok, got it today.

First thing I did after turning it on once was to remove the back panel and swap the hard drive with a Samsung SSD I had on hand. That back panel removal is not for the faint of heart, you really have to pull hard and work the tabs one by one.

Secondly, I enabled fast BIOS, and that was a mistake, when you do that, it does NOT detect bootable USB drives, so I had to revert it back to disabled on the fast bios to be able to load Windows.

Initial look: coming from an 8460p Elitebook, this feels like a toy. It is light and the quality seems decent. It feels pretty solid, but not as solid as a Macbook Air. I would say it's pretty close but the bottom is fiberglass so it does not feel as good to the touch.

More tomorrow when I play with it some more and take some pics

 

Can't wait to read your review. It's good to hear that the build quality is not abysmal. Coming from a Dell 1640 which was mostly plastic (I think), seems like half metal, half fiberglass can't be all bad. I've never actually seen a fiberglass laptop so I wonder how that feels lol. Oh well, at least it means that the wifi works good .

 

I was not aware of this model

I love my Y470 and also my work supplied T400 (durable), so this may be a good answer to a more portable travel buddy. Then again, discrete GPU means more battery use, so would defeat the point, since Y470 already covers me for gaming and media.

Seems the 13" S5 with SSD is the sweet spot combo for price, features and portability.

 

feels like painted plastic, so nothing new here Wifi is pretty good, at 40 ft from the router, I get a 36mbps status from a G-router, my previous laptop would drop to 12-15 mbps at the same distance on the same desk.

 

Did you get the 13" or 14"?

 

I got the 13" for portability sake.

 

is this ultrabook as good as samsung 9 series?

 

the old series 9 or the new one?

As compared to the old one, it has a much better wifi performance, there are no little sliding doors to break, CPU specs are the same, and for me I am replacing the slow spinner with an SSD anyway. The screen is on-par as far as brightness and clarity. The new one, I don't know, have not tried it.

 

Looking forward to a review listing if possible:


Build
Battery life with light and heavy use
Speaker quality
Wifi range
Game performance (not expecting much, but nice to know)
Keyboard quality

Thanks!

 

Also, let us know if the notebook supports bootable USB from all ports, or if there is a specific one.

 

Outside build is good: there is no flex if I hold the laptop on one corner. There is no creaking from the lid when I open it, and it shuts down smoothly. The screen has some wobble when you shake the laptop while open, hopefully it does not get worse. Also the lid itself is thin so I would not rest anything on it. I have been spoiled with my all metal HP 8460P Elitebook which I would have kept if it did not weigh 5.6 pounds without the adapter.
The fit and finish looks good, there are no obvious gaps or misaligned components.
The keyboard I think it great. I can only compare to the other chiclet style keyboard on the 8460P, and while it does not have the same travel, it is responsive and nice to the touch. I have not mistyped or having to press the key twice like on the HP. The HP seemed like the contact part of the key was too small for the key so unless you hit the key dead-center, you get a lot of letters missing from your words. That drove me nuts for passwords, and since I make a living logging into servers remotely....
The Touchpad is great, I use the 2 finger tap for right click and double tap to click, and the 2 finger scroll, so I don't even have to use the 2 buttons. The physical buttons are good but they feel too flat so you have to make an effort to press them down. The feel is hard rubber, slightly draggy, and it is not as nice as the glass touchpad that I have been getting used to, so that feels like a step-back


Inside is a bit different: pieces of tape was used to hold the wires, and it looks like "hand-torn" paper masking tape. It fell off as soon as I took the back cover off.
I also don't like the ribbon connector that goes into a zif port for the hard drive, it felt like I would tear it when swapping the drive.
Also the fan is super quiet, but if you hold the laptop at an steep angle, it starts rattling because the blades are rubbing the cage I was going to return it but really you can only hear the rattle if you have your ear against the back cover or on the keyboard. I guess tiny fan that spins easy also gets out of axis easy.

I will post some pics tonight.

light use, I usually get tired of the laptop before it reaches 40% so not very scientific testing here. Under moderate office use (some word, responding to emails and running a few monitoring apps) I would say that I have seen close to 5 hours. I am using the Samsung power profile and I have a 128GB SSD instead of the spinner

Speaker is clear and loud, loud enough to fill a small bedroom. Much better sound than any HP business Elitebook laptops. It does lack bass but normal for this thin and light.

At 40 feet from a Linksys G router, I get 30mbps from the wifi status info. Now consider that this is an old house with plaster wall and chickenwire inside. The intel card on-board is a Advanced N 6230 so it is a 2X2, I wished it had a third antenna somewhere but since the bottom is fiberglass no signal issues. I have not cracked the laptop fully open but I will soon, and will try the other card that I have which is a 6300 Ultimate

Sorry have not tried any games. But I have watched a few full screen HD videos and the Intel HD3000 does great on these as usual.

See build quality above.
Also I must say that there is not much bloatware on this. I will go in and remove a few things such as the Samsung recovery and anything that puts services in the background. Time to do some startup services cleanup

 

As far I have seen, it boots from all ports on USB, and they also do charge your devices even in sleep or off mode (bios option)

 

I will also add that it does not have a Kensington lock, and I work at a school where there is a lot of people on campus coming and going so I have to lock the laptop inside the drawer if I step out. Minor incovenience though

 

Hi joeyl/Bman, can you tell me what model SSD you installed in the laptop? Did you see any change in change in battery life when you installed the SSD?

 

I had bought this when it was on Black Friday sale, I think I got it for 165 at the time for 128GB. Now I can pair Samsung SSD with Samsung laptop

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

No clue in battery life since the spinner lived in the laptop long enough to be ghosted to the SSD. I used an image because I wanted to see all of the Samsung software and tweaks instead of a clean install. I had a key for Windows 7 Pro, and after I cloned the drive, I just used the anytime upgrade and put in that serial to bring it from Home Premium to Pro

 

Excellent review joeyl. It seems that you are pretty satisfied with your laptop and based on what you said, it seems like it would be a good replacement for me.

I appreciate you discussing your experience in the forums. Most people I know would just buy the laptop and forget about discussing it if they liked it. And it means even more when this laptop has next to none reviews.

 

you're welcome. I will post more thoughts and comments as I get to use it more

 

Thanks here too!

 

some pics






















size of trackpad in relation to Galaxy S cell phone


Don't like the fact that the SD card sticks out that much. It is not spring loaded like other SD readers, it just hangs in there, and it would be sure to break if you forgot it and shoved the laptop in a bag

 

check out the hand torn tape, it looks yellow here but it is really a cream colored paper tape

 

I checked out the 14" version in John Lewis yesterday, half planning to buy it if it was decent but I left disappointed.

Very plastic build quality and a sub par screen which is average for a lot of laptops.

The screen on the new series 9 blows it away but you'd expect that for £350 more!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

ok so other Series 5 owners: does your fan make a rattling noise at high speed? Seems like I can hear mine more and more, like a fan whose bearings are going out Before I could only hear it with my ear to the laptop but I can hear it while sitting normally now. I could return it flat out or get Samsung service involved....

 

Very strange. Your removable panel doesn't have any vents under the fan like is shown in this pic from badman's link a few pages back.
http://ultrabooknews.com/files/2012/01/P1010912.jpg

badman, what does the bottom of your case look like?

On top of that, it seems that the pics on Samsung's site are more artist's renderings than actual product images. Again the bottom panel isn't even close to the two real life versions. The right side port layout is different and that dividing line of where the trackpad ends and the keyboard bezel begins does actually exist in owner's pics. I thought otherwise.
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP530U3B-A01US-gallery

 

that's really weird! I did not even notice...

 

Wow, I never noticed those differences.

Joeyl, do you have any issues with the computer overheating or getting hot?

 

no, the computer has been running really cool although the fan could be quieter to my taste. I can even run in silent mode and the computer does not heat up. Let me try some Prime95 loading and check the temperature.
I wonder if the US model is different from the EU model?

 

100% load with Prime95 blend test, temps seem higher than baddman's but they never went above that. I wonder if that vent makes that much difference!



also on a positive note, I reopened the laptop rear cover, and tightened down the fan, it was loose, I can't really hear it anymore now. Nice quality control

 

looks like the French version also has the vents

Samsung Serie 5 NP530U3B Ultrabook - YouTube

for those who speak French (I do! )

other US owners how is that back cover?

 

Excellent.

 

Bummer on the sd card sticking out. Seems they could have made more of an effort with that.

The displays seem an obvious margin holder, since it seems that that spending $40 more to put a better display would be good, but need to multiply that three times to maintain margin through the channels.

 

yes, it seems like manufacturers always leave something out when they release new models. At least it is a full size SD card reader

The display does not look bad to me at all, coming from HP business laptops that have blah screens. Resolution is ok for a screen this size, I don't do a lot of wide spreadsheets or side by side documents. I would not like that resolution on a bigger screen. The screen is bright enough, on full brightness, I can use the laptop with a brightly lit sunny window in my back, I can't do that with a dim glossy screen.

 

Here is a pic taken with a camera with the laptop screen facing a sunny windows: no glare or reflections, picture appears dark because I am focused on the screen.

 

Also since I run a 128GB SSD, I have no use for the express cache and the onboard Sandisk 16GB, so I reformatted it NTFS and use it as a temporary space for program downloads etc.

 

Thanks for the additional info!

 

regarding the vents lacking on the service cover: I called Samsung customer service and the rep was pretty polite and helpful. I told him about the lack of vents and he checked the service schematics for this model: it is supposed to have the middle vents!! He sent me a label to return the laptop to a Samsung service location and they will check it out. We are thinking that the fan is ramping up beyond specs and making the noise that I mentioned before because of the lack of airflow. So we shall see....

 

Wow, it was just "lacking" the necessary vents. That's a funny case of poor manufacturing. Looks like everybody's got to check the bottom of their laptop lol. Good luck with the replacement.

 

thanks, I am scared now because replacements can be hit or miss. Of course the rep said that the final decision will be made at the service center, which means that they could declare that the US models have no middle bottom vents

OK found a new review in German, and they don't get the vents either

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4PU5c7t4Pek#t=128s

bizzare. I wish Samsung would tighten up their model line and concentrate on a few and do them well....

 

With a thin form factor it seems the lack of a vent means increased temps and fan speed, so less battery life.

I may just "stick it out" with my Y470 and Thrive tablet and wait to see how much better the thermals are with the new 28nm Ivy and the HD4000.

None the less, I appreciate the details!!

 

if you believe the news of efficiency about Ivy, those laptops should be able to run fanless. As for me I will patiently wait for Samsung and see what they say about me laptop.

 

I just bought the 14" version with the dedicated 7550M graphics (bought in Australia), and I'm having trouble getting the dedicated card to work with OpenGL programs (a problem with most AMD switchable graphics cards), was wondering if anyone here had a similar experience/advice (as Samsung support hasn't been very helpful).

 

I think it will still have heat issues, since they are going to pack more stuff in smaller areas. This will offset a lot of the heat adavantage IMO.

My guess is the main offset will be the HD4000, since perhaps they are balancing total thermals to account for the faster GPU. Seems a chance the devices will have better graphics ability, but the net result could be similar heat as current chipsets. Better performance with same heat output.

The again, they may add and an economy mode that steps the GPU down to HD3000 levels. Perhaps needed for tablets.

 

Mine was quiet when it was new, not so much anymore.

The stiffness of the chassis is also deteriorating, i can bend and twist it easily and the plastic keyboard/button is making crackling noises.

I will be returning this.

Going for MBA 13 even if its almost 2x the price :-|

I loved this because of

1. I can add any 2.5" SSD i like, cheap
2. I can add 1x4gb for 8gb total cheap
3. The machine was cheap

But .. As usual, you cant get everything.

I would go Macbook Pro 13 but the 1280 display is just too low-res

 

With vent-holes.

Guess you U.S (?) customers gets less ventilation .... Go figure!

 

already, man those things are not durable I dislike Apple but I am starting to see the appeal

 

Oh i forgot to mention the hinges; When the machine was new they were super smooth, no noises. Now things a squeeking and cracking, they just dont feel that nice. Another issue i see now is the power outlet placed at the side with no angled connector, this feels flimsy and i think i will eventually destroy that port.


I borrowed a MBA 13 last weekend and my gosh, that computer is just one good piece of hardware. Just lacking stupid things as ...GB LAN port, HDMI.. and, ahh.. USB3.

Oh i guess i could go USB2 -> GB LAN

 

you are not overly rough on your equipment, are you?

but really my thing is that I could afford the Samsung <900 bucks, and I can use it at work easily. The MBA would take me some time to get used to. Also same reason as you: I had a spare fast SSD that was not being used, and I will upgrade it to 8GB when I get it back

 

Nooo! I wanted to hear good news about this computer before I buy it. If the quality deteriorates that badly so fast, I think I'm going to have to start to look for alternatives (which is hard because of the price point of the computer and all the great connectivity).

 

Pretty frickin sad that $900 isn't enough to get decent ports in an attractive form factor that's not all plastic, especially with only Intel graphics. It seems like the choices are something full featured like either the Asus U36sd or Acer 3830tg, or an MBA et al. for a lot more cash. Aren't the later first gen Series 9 models around $1k now?

Against my better judgement, I actually ordered a 13" Series 5. I'll have it next week. I was iffy about it at first but after reading badman's post, I'm about ready to slap myself, or simply facepalm in the corner for a while.

I want ports + lightweight and hdd. The issd is only a bonus for me. I also figured that there's no way I'd give Lenovo the satisfaction of knowing they enticed some chump to pay $1200 for their U300e, which is the only other 'ultrabook' that has a hdd. I'm not rough on my equipment and I plan on Linuxing this up as much as possible. I don't see any problems with that as there's nothing exotic except the bga socketed ssd which should show as just a separate drive.

If my Series 5 turns flaccid, I have no idea what I'd go to next. The Arrandale Asus U36 is around $650 now (with an Nvidia chip too) and gets better battery life than the Sandy Bridge version. ..no idea.

 

EDIT: Sorry for the double post. Don't know what happened and I can't seem to delete it.

Exactly my sentiments. It's a shame that there aren't more products like the Series 5. It seems to be right between ultrabooks and mainstream laptops (which is exactly what I want, the best of both worlds). Right now it's in a class of its own...

I hope joeyl and you don't have the same problems badmann reported. Keep us updated!

 

well we shall see how it fares in the coming months. Anderson, I would wait, especially since Ivy bridge will come out, maybe they will lower the price. And we beta testers will iron out the bugs for the current model