Samsung Series 7 Laptops - 15.0" and 15.6" Models (NP700Z4 & NP700Z5)

If the user has the best-buy version, then it shipped with an centrino 6150-N, which only has an antenna for 2.4ghz signals (though still retaining MIMO?).

I bought the 6250-N card for 20+ USD on amazon for a problem-free install.

That said, my next plans are to figure out how to get SSD capability without buying a new SSD or a Momentus. I mean, Samsung's ExpressCache solution uses a separate SSD (P4 SSHD?)

The next plan is to see if the video card is soldered in or not.

 

My 29 day old Series 7 Chronos suddenly developed a line of dead pixels across the screen. Since it was within the 30 day return period, I promptly sent it back to Amazon.

I can't imagine how Samsung would have such quality problems seeing that they supply displays to the best - including the Macintosh line for Apple.

After looking hard and almost purchasing an ASUS N53SV-DH72 with better specs than the Chronos I decided to try the Chronos again. It is the best value for money and the best tradeoff for performance in a relatively light laptop.

 

Is there anyone using SSD + Expresscache 8GB?

I wonder if it's worth installing expresscache after having a SSD.

Cheers.

 

Well, one feature which interests me is the Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). Its available on the BestBuy model but not on this one because of the different wireless cards. I purchased a card that has the ability to work with WiDi.

 

Do you already own an adapter for the WiDI? If so, which one did you pick up?

Belkin Screencast?
NetGear Push2TV HD?
D-Link DHD-131?

Butters-

 

I've had the 15.6" Series 7 for 2 weeks now. The only variation they currently sell here in Singapore is the fully speced model with the i7-2675QM 2.20GHz, 8gb ram, 750gb hdd + 8gb express cache, 6750M 1gb and backlit keyboard. It does come with the VGA dongle in the box. I've been reading through at least a hundred pages of posts and I'd have to say that I haven't really experienced many of the problems people have been complaining about. Coming from the RGB-LED screen of my previous Dell Studio XPS 16, the screen of the Series 7 obviously looks nowhere near as vibrant. But in an office environment, the matte screen really works a lot better than the edge-to-edge glass on my old Dell.

The one thing that has been bugging me though are the flash playback issues (the crashing and the terrible scaling at full screen). I've just installed the latest 11.12 drivers from leshcat (yes, they are just fresh out of the oven) but they don't seem to help. Forcing the plugin-container to power saving mode seems to help with the crashing though (i suspect it crashes when it tries to switch from the intel to the amd gfx while in the midst of playing the vid). Still need to find a solution for the flash scaling though.

 

I bought the NetGear HD one. Ill let you know in a few days how it works out for me. A lot of users were struggling getting bluetooth working again because of the "Samsung easy settings". I read another users directions who seems to have gotten it working so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Regardless, if I loose bluetooth I suppose I will live.

Ill let you know in a few days where I end up.

 

Hey post the link to the hopefully working directions. The loss of bluetooth would be a shame as I'm used to using a Microsoft laser mouse 8000 over a trackpad. The WiDi would be a nice improvement over hdmi cables though...

Thanks!

Butters-

 

Hi,

this is for the European owners of the Chronos: is it possible to change the language of Win 7 from German to Finnish?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm considering to order this one from Amazon.de and obviously it comes with the German language version.

Also, what's the deal with the warranty? From what I've gathered, it's 2 years in Europe but it's not international, in other words the second year is only valid in the country of purchase.

 

courtesy of user "midgetdiablo"

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/625973-samsung-series-7-chronos-intel-wifi-card-3.html

 

i wrote about this few pages back but overall the answer is no. It will have no added value with ssd and infact can slow things down if your ssd is one of these that handles garbage collection on idle. Dont Install EC

 

Make sure you update the bios to the latest version or Bluetooth won't work.


Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

What is the latest version of bios and where can I get it? I have NP700Z5/S04US model.

 

Bios version 09FD...I got through Easy Update Software notification.

 

Hey Denosha. Great to hear you are enjoying your new notebook and are not experiencing the many problems other users are having. I've really been eying the 15.6" Series 7 for quite some time now, but like others, I'm also waiting for solid reviews for the new Envy 15 for comparison. I may be traveling to Singapore this Christmas season and will probably get my notebook there.

Have you been able to solve the flash playback issues. This to me seems to be the only issue that may hold me from purchasing this notebook. Any notebook out of the box shouldn't have these issues. Have you been able to solve the problem? And what exactly is the "flash scaling" you are talking about?

I really want to do some gaming on this machine (as I've read it can play BF3 on low settings and run Skyrim pretty decently). However, if it can't even play Youtube videos properly, I can't really expect much of its gaming capabilities. There seems to be a real problem with the graphics switching.

Please let me know if all goes well with your issue. Thanks!

 

Hey,

Gamer here with the Series 7 8gb 6750m version in the US. I'm running all of my games from Steam on all high settings and am loving it.

Easiest way to make sure you're using the high end graphics card is to assign each program that you want the radeon to run with. Even set Chrome or Firefox to high end if you're having problems with 1080p videos on youtube etc.

Only gripe so far...is that I can't make a complete list of white listed programs at once. The Catalyst forces me to use each program before I can manually assign "High Performance" under the recently used programs list.

Butters-

 

Hi everyone,

Have you seen this article Samsung Series 7 Razor-Sharp Wrist Rest yet? Owners of this laptop, do you agree with that?

 

I would say that while the wrist rest has quite a sharp edge, it isn't really an issue if you keep your wrists in an elevated position (which helps with the carpal tunnel anyway). Better still if you have the machine on a notebook cooler which elevates and angles the machine.

 

I have to say the author has fragile wrists.

 

Ha disagree...I'm comparing a Series 7 to a MBP 15" 2010 right now and this is definitely not sharp. I don't find the wrist rest and edges uncomfortable at all.

Again, I'm using the US Samsung Series 7 version so I cant compare it to other models, but this Wick guy seems to get paid to write articles looking for anything negative to say.

Butters-

 

I bought mine in Dubai! And I can say that article is in no way accurate! Having been using the notebook on my lap for the last two days with my wrist on the palm rest, I didn't experience anything close to what that post describes!!!

 

While the edge is not smooth and pampering there is no way that it can be described as razor sharp. I don't even notice it unless I start thinking about it from posts like that. Also, my touchpad is the most accurate I've used on a Windows computer. I have also never seen any BSODs. The only small complaint I have so far is the very right edge of my spacebar does not register, but I just had to adjust where I press it and now I never miss a beat.

 

sinman02: do you mean that after BIOS update your are able to use Bluetooth in a Chronos S7 with replaced wifi card as an intel-6230?

 

Raj, where in Dubai did you bought your S7, what's the specs and how much? I'm also waiting for this one to be released in Dubai since GITEX. Thanks in advance

 

I have none of the issues he mentions, other than I've seen the auto brightness adjust thingy, but I disabled it very fast, so it was never an issue.

 

Good to know that all your Steam games are running great on high settings.

Let me get this straight though. If you assign the high end graphics card to run for all graphic-intensive programs (games, web browsers, etc.), do you still need to install those drivers everyone is talking about?

Like, can I just set Firefox to run with the graphics card and won't have any problems with playing HD Youtube videos? Or I still need to install those drivers?

 

Correct. WIDI also works...

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

If you're referring to the Leshcat drivers, than no..I have not downloaded or installed those. I was planning on waiting a little longer to see if Samsung would update their drivers on the samsung series 7 support page or the software manager application first.

Having set Firefox to run on High Performance, I searched Youtube for 1080p and can run those videos (in 1080p HD resolution) in both full screen and through HDMI to my hdtv without any bsod or green video errors like others have mentioned.

Butters-

 

Hello Guys...I've Bought the Series 7 a few days ago, with the main purpose of using it for cinema 4d R12 and after effects on the move. when i first tried to run cinema 4d, i got an error message, and the program would not start.

After much research and playing around, i've found out that the problem was the old video card drivers. then i found this page and the leshcat drivers, and installed them. then the program now opens, and i thought i had reached the end of my C4D woes. however,when i open the program, under preferences>open GL, it shows that im not using the ATI Card at all, instead running on software mode:


the Catalist center is set to High performance, as shown:


the same in After Effects, it shows that i have not got any Open GL capable card.

Interesting Fact:Cinema 4d R13 worked just fine, but showing the Intel HD as the graphics card instead of the ATI, but now also shows the Generic microsoft card.

anyone out there using Cinema 4d R12 on this laptop managed to fix this?
or anyone that found a way to run the ATI in Fixed mode?

I installed and played Dragon age 2 with all the settings on high, and 1600x900 without a hiccup, so the ATI card is not faulty.

thanks a lot for the Help guys.

my system is the i7 2.2ghz, 8gb RAM s01UK

 

I'm still trying to figure out what's with the awful flash fullscreen scaling. For those who don't quite understand the problem, i took the following photos of the same 1080p youtube video playing in the window:


And in full screen:


You can see that in the window, the characters are all well-formed and crisp. But in fullscreen, everything turns ugly and smudgy, including the video itself.

As a test, i switched my screen resolution to 1280x720p and set the panel scaling to "center" (ie. it displays using 1:1 pixels). Playing a 720p youtube video in this resolution is perfectly sharp and the controls also look crisp. I suspect the drivers/video card doesn't quite know how to scale to the "non-standard" 1600x900 screen resolution and is probably using the most efficient but ugly means to perform the sampling. This isn't excusable since 1080p youtube videos should be able to scale perfectly fine whatever the target screen res. They scale fine on my desktop's 2560x1440 screen and even on my Galaxy S2's 800x480 screen so something is seriously wrong. Hopefully some kind of tweak can be implemented to fix this issue... and soon.

 

I purchased the S04US from the Microsoft Store and am yet to start using it. I was alarmed to see a couple of posts stating that their laptops went dead or something like that.

Are they exceptions or have more ppl faced this ?

Might be silly to ask, but any such failures would be covered by warranty right ?

 

Hi,
It's available from Eros. I picked up mine in MoE!

The max config is i7, & 6 GB ram, and everything else is the same. The KB is English Arabic.
It's priced at Aed 6000


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Dude!
There are always exceptions! You liked it and bought it! Start using it and enjoy!

Around a 100 ppl are discussing this here in the forum, probably thousands bought it and you see just a couple of doa's here and it's covered by warranty. any product batch has a bad apple Among it!

Stop worrying and start enjoying it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

exactly what I was about to say. Go for it man youll love it.

 

Has there been any news with regards to availability? It's not coming out in Canada until the end of March (according to Samsung's customer support), and I can't seem to find it anywhere in upstate New York.

 

anyone heard a date that the $1299 US03 model will be back on the market? Im being very particular in that Im holding out for that model (7200 RPM HDD, 8 Gb RAM, Windows 7 Pro)


I have looked and looked everywhere for a week now

 

Hmm..very interesting. If you check out this URL: http://www.flashstreamworks.com/demos/fullscreen/ and try out the 2 modes of full-screen scaling, the "slow" method looks perfectly sharp while the "fast" method looks like the pixelated crap Youtube is on this machine. So it looks like there is some implementation issue in the Youtube flash code itself? Strange thing is that it doesn't affect other machines. Very weird.

 

Could be that they use different versions of flash or that one uses Actionscript and the other one keyframes.

 

according to some websites that actually show such info, seems another batch of the S03s will be in stock around the end of December

Here is an example Samsung NP700Z5A-S03US NP700Z5A-S03US I7-2675QM 2.2G 8GB 750GB DVDRW 15.6IN WL BLUETOOTH SILVER - BLT Catalog!

 

Right, fast says : video 1280*720, screen 1600*900,
slow says: video 1600*900, screen 1600*900.

So in fast mode, flash isn't upscaling the video content, but the driver is.
Strangely it is only youtube with such problems as far as I have seen.

 

do we yet know what GPU the 15" model (in a 14" chassis) comes with?

 

I have had that problem on another website that uses flash videos. They use JW player which also uses flash.

 

AMD HD6750M

 

cheers, is it available to buy yet, or MIA like the 14" screen version?

 

Some info for Canadian readers... I've been tracking this thread for a while and been looking for a Canadian retailer who will sell this laptop. The tigerdirect.ca website has shown the laptop as "Currently Unavailable" for quite some time. I called them yesterday and found out that their US warehouse is getting a shipment on Dec 28th, but they can't ship those to Canada based on restrictions imposed by Samsung (apparently Samsung doesn't want US models shipped to Canada). They had no idea when a Canadian model would arrive.

In the mean time, I've been browsing bestbuy.ca and tracking the model they recently posted:

Samsung 15.6" Laptop featuring Intel Core i7 2675QM Processor (NP700Z5A) - Silver : 15" Laptops - Best Buy Canada

Last night, they were showing 3 available, and comparing their model to the one on Samsung's official site:

Samsung Notebook Series 7 CHRONOS - NP700Z5A-S03CA - Performance - mobile computing | SAMSUNG

Noticed that it is the exact same model, ie. the Canadian model. Albeit for $1349, which is quite a bit more than the US models. Looks like the Canadian model doesn't have express cache, or backlit keyboard, but has the intel wireless card (with Widi). It does have 8gb of ram, but a 5400rpm drive. For me, since I'm swapping in an Intel 320 SSD, the express cache and hard drive speed are no problem, also the backlit keyboard I probably wouldn't use that much.

Anyways, with other retailers (tigerdirect) not even close to stocking it, I decided to buy one, figuring that 1. The Canadian prices will be higher across the board and 2. Paying a bit more for not waiting 3-4 months is worth it. Also, it's Best Buy so I can return it to a store nearby if something is off. But specs wise it looks great, and is exactly the same as the Canadian model on Samsung's website, so my guess is that is the only one we'll see in Canada.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers.

 

Picked up one of the S04US from a Microsoft store about 3 weeks ago and while everything seems to work fine on the laptop, I'm not getting anywhere near the promised battery life. Right now I get anywhere from 2-4 hours from the battery.

If I run everything in power saving mode, doing nothing but surf the web, I get no more than 4 hours out of it. This is with the key backlight turned off, screen brightness turned all the way down and switchable graphics set to economy mode for Chrome.

If I watch anything, and that includes Youtube, or use it for CAD, my battery life really plummets and I get somewhere around 2 hours on a charge.

Also, I had an opportunity to compare this against the Best Buy version and was able to get roughly double the run time out of the Best Buy variant. I even tried switching the batteries between two; the problem stays with the machine so it's definitely not the battery.

Anyone else having this issue?

 

am getting around 5h easily but then again I don't use it heavy load on it mostly just chatting and surfing in web. Also make sure u let battery charge 100% I believe there is a mode that limits it to 80% or so...

 

I'm interested in the NP700Z4 as well. The 14 inch screen version (NP700Z3) is/was available at Tiger Direct in the US. Check the 14 inch thread, I think some people have received theirs.

 

Battery wise I am getting atleast 5 hours or so. The other day at school I took a final history exam (word document only) with the screen brightness near medium for 2 hours, played Super Meat Boy for about an hour, and then played music for another couple of hours before I had to plug it in. This morning I was able to play Civ 5 for about an hour without taking a huge chunk out of the battery.

 

Just got my hands on my new laptop. USA s04 version.
Must say I'm really satisfied with it. Screen is fine, applied the .icc file posted here but not really sure did it do anything
No space bar issue, no Youtube issues, really silent, good sound.
There is some flex on the keyboard, some near trackpad, and some between keyboard and screen. But nothing serious or noticable if u don't search for it.
Trackpad asks for some adjustment (is there any other way except ELAN tab?) and getting used to, but really nice to work with considering the placing and surface quality.

Only thing that bothers me is that brightness ups and downs while working on battery power.
Did anyone find a solution for it?

Anyone tried using Cyberlink or Samsung Kies? Are they any good?
I would like to clean the machine from anything not necessary but wouldn't want to uninstall something important like ExpressCash...

Ty guys!