Samsung X65 (15.4" widescreen)

Mine is ordered but I won't get it until next week. I'm told it's a matte 'super bright' screen, which better be the case as I have no time for glossy screens.

 

German Samsung site also says 15,4" WSXGA+ SuperBright™ Matte LCD.
http://notebook.samsung.de/article.asp?artid=E4869E48-051D-45F0-ABB6-86A83DBF0C10

 

Hmm......a very interesting notebook. Will it be available in the US?

 

Not the first time that question has been asked. Read here. However, at the moment Samsung are struggling to meet demand in Europe, where notebook prices tend to be higher (and more profitable?) so I doubt if they will move into North America until they have ramped up production.

John

 

Thanks, that made sense. Guess that's why I haven't seen them before.

 

Has anyone who's received an X65 got a 3dMark06 result yet? I'd be interested to see how well the 8600GS in it performs and what stock clocking they use (the ASUS V2S and F3Sv have been factory down-clocked).

 

Banjo-time has a X65. But where is he ? Must be busy with his new toy

Mine hopefully ships this week, i´ll do some tests.

 

hey guys!

found a "translated" test of the x65:
http://tinyurl.com/239q7v

have nice day

 

This has already been posted on p. 15 of this thread.

 

sry for that!

 

I have one now - not had much time to play yet. I've left it at the office tonight but want to get to grips with it tomorrow.
The only observation I have at the moment is that it has pre-installed partitions which I can't shift, which is annoying the hell out of me as I want to re-partition and really don't want to have to reformat the HDD.
Any suggestions how I can sort it?

Oh yeah - the screen is matte and the whole thing looks great and is so-o-o light. It runs pretty warm too.

 

This might be helpful for the pre-installed partitions:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=74043

 

Thanks ipanema

 

Haven't had any time to run tests, but anecdotally, it's fast, particularly noticeable (as you would expect) when doing several high intensity things at the same time.

There are some annoyances, like you would expect, I guess. The lefthand function key is in the wrong place - it's the farthest left key at he bottom of the board, now it might just be what I'm used to, but I'd expect the ctrl key there. There's no hardware wireless switch. And, for a computer which has obviously had a great deal of time spent on it design-wise, the ac adapter is one ugly lump of plastic straight out of that factory in PRC which seems to do all the adapters for everyone these days. Again, that may just be my being accustomed to my Sony (the ac adapter is a slim, flat work of art with my vaio), but, IMHO, it's the small details like that which prevent companies like Samsung from being, well, Sony .

But those gripes aside, it's a great computer - it's comparatively light, the display is bright and non-reflective , the processors are fast and effective when multi-tasking, and it looks a million dollars

 

Oh, yeah, my other gripe - why on earth do computer manufacturers feel compelled to cover their products in pointless, difficult to remove stickers? the wrist rest of my X65 was plastered in the irritating little boogers, and I still have an annoying dirty smudge where one left all its glue behind.

Do any real owners leave those things in place?

 

Thanks for your infos !

How is battery life ? And brightness of the display ?

About the stickers: There are some cleaning products that can remove rests of glue really fine. Just ask at a specialised store. I use one of these, too, hate these annoying stickers....

 

I was going to make a comment about the brightness jus then, but I noticed I have my tinted specs on today . Subjectively, everyone in my office has StinkPads, I would describe the display as brighter than those, the matte finish makes it really comfortable to view, IMO. Battery Life seems good - I've not done anything crazy, but I was running a couple of fairly hard audio rendering processes, on battery, over an hour or so, (this sort of thing used to eat my vaio battery in about 25 minutes), didn't seem to drain it too much, whether thats the battery or the management software I couldn't say right now.

And I wouldn't say that it's especially warm, probably runs cooler than the vaio did - and no shocks!

Overall - extremely pleased

 

Got any pictures ?

 

Not as yet I have another question for you more up-to-date types. The fingerprint reader on my X65 works great, but, I was kind of hoping it would be able to replace the conventional XP login window. Just now I get the normal login window, then after a pause the fingerprint reader pops up.

Or maybe I should just RTFM ?

 

I agree that Samsung could do better with their PSUs. However, the power of the X65 means that it needs a 90W PSU and they probably don't come much smaller than what you have got.

Consider yourself lucky: My Zepto 6024W has the X3100 GPU so it only needs a 65W PSU. However, for simplicity of inventory, Zepto only use 90W PSUs and the Liteon PSU they bundle is even bigger than the Samsung 90W PSU (and draws 5W from the mains socket when not connected, compared with Samsung's 2W).

John

 

Shipping updates for Germany:

Notebook.de already delievered a X65 T7500 Bekumar today and has some more in stock. Mine shipped today and will soon be "at home"

 

Lighter fluid does it just fine. Removing the myriad stickers was one of the first things I had to do.

I've got the partitioning sorted out now and hope to be able to give it a good going-over on Friday.

The display is bright. I have no idea about battery life as I have only had it plugged in so far.

 

Quite a few - you'd be surprised...

 

Glad to hear it.

 

UPS is on its way ! Est. delievery -> 9/6
It´ll be a long night after work....

 

Hey banjo time, you ordered your X65 from lambda-tek, right? Did yours come with a remote control? DigiUK states the remote control as an accessory.

 

Was included with mine

 

My X65 shipped on Friday but will be replaced on Monday by a new X65 as there has been a manufacturing defect.

So far i had the following impressions ( (+) positive (-) negative ) :

(+) Screen resolution is perfect. For my eyes 1680x1050 feels very comfortable.
(-) Display is a little bit "grainy". If you observe carefully there are some fine, fine nearly unvisible lines. You can´t see them without effort, but they are there. It´s difficult to show it on pictures. But it´s not a big thing for me.
(+/-) Screen brightness could be better. This is really a thing one should have a look at before buying, some like it, some don´t. Decide for yourself. For me its acceptable. Haven´t had a chance to test it outside buildings.
(+) Cpu and memory guarantee fast working. The T7500 really is powerful, Xp will run very fast. Vista still to test.
(+) Keyboard is superb. Brilliant haptics and different from the pic shown on official Samsung site the Enter key is big. One of the best Notebook keyboards i´ve experienced (and there have been a bunch...)


(Better pictures with the new machine to come during this week....)

(+) Quality of manufacturing is magnificent. The X65 feels like a good investment.

More impressions to follow....

 

Thanks for the update. Is your display matte? Regarding outdoor use, it is optimistic that any notebook can be used in the sunshine unless it has a special daylight display. A few days ago I tried my Zepto outside. It has a very bright matte display and was fine while there were some clouds. Then the sun came out....

That's the same keyboard layout as on the X60. I found the small left shift key and bigger right shift key to be a much better arrangement than some keyboards (such as the Q35) which has a small right shift key.

What was the manufacturing defect?

John

 

Display is matte. Normally i won´t use it outside but nevertheless i´m curious.

The X65 i got on Friday wasn´t exactly plain. The right front part of the notebook body didn´t touch ground, between the right front rubber foot and the desk was a gap of about 3 to 4 millimetres (~ 0.15 inches)
It´s not much but enough to feel disturbing when typing. The retailer agreed that this is not acceptable and will send a new X65 as soon as they get the old X65 via UPS. (I could have had Samsung repair the X65 but this would have been more time-consuming)

One thing to add, my X65 and all the other machines shipped in Germany so far didn´t have a remote for the AV station software.

 

yep, came with a remote control for the AV now thingy - I feel certain I'll lose it! It lives in the PC card slot, but thats where my mouse lives also - and there's only one...

 

I suspect that the remote control is a factory option which has to be selected by the country sales office, so maybe the German version didn't include it.

It is a useful thing to have from time to time. I used it for PowerPoint presentations. The computer could be next to the projector and I could stand close to the screen.

John

 

The screen just killed my interest, i was hoping that it was even brighter... (and wats up with the blue F6 F7 keys, it ruined the classi keyboard)

 

There's an X65 BIOS (05AF) dated 11th September. There's no indication of the changes made.

John

 

Right, as promised here are my thoughts on the X65 now I have owend it for a few weeks.

The good:

The build quality is superb.
The 1680x1050 screnn resolution is great.
The keyboard is the best I have ever used on a notebook
It is very quick and stable.
It is very light-weight for a 15.4" notebook.
It never gets HOT.

The bad:

Vista 64bit drivers are not available as yet.
The screen isn't as bright as i would like.
Conisdering the price tag it would have been nice to have at least a T7500 and a 8600GT instead of GS.
Power supply is a little large.

Conclusion:

A good laptop but addressing the above bad points could make it a fantastic laptop!


If I think of anything else I will add to this post, and please feel free to ask any questions.

 

Since writing the above i have decided to return the machine to samsung to get them to check out the screen, it has the following problems:

When on max brightness the screen doens't live up to its "superbright" name.

When on minimum brightness the left hand side of the screen is completely black while the right is just about readable.

There is a graininess that looks almost like there is a layer on condensation on the screen.

I have put an all white background as my desktop with no icons and it just doesn't display the colour uniformly, when viewed at 90 degrees the top left has a warmish white colour with a hint of orange and the lower right has a darker blue tint.

 

There's often some vertical unevenness in illumination but horizontal unevenness is abnormal. I hope the next display is better.

John

 

LEDs anyone?
Hey, open another thread up for "Future improvement of the X65plus (or X70)" and hope that Samsung officials browses this site.

 

Is it possible to change the panel ones self? There are 15.4" LED mac screen on ebay for £139! Would they be compatible?

 

I can't answer about swapping LCD panels. It's something I've never tried to do.

I agree that LED backlit panels are the way forward although I don't know if Samsung are getting their own production moving. The display in my Sony G11 is impressive although there is a little unevenness in illumination along the bottom.

Forgive me if a link to the notebookcheck X65 review has already been posted, but that clearly shows below-average brightness and a bit darker on the left side. I'm impressed by their reported battery life of up to 4 hours. The previous X60 plus struggled to get past 2 hours.

John

 

Well i could also get 4 hours with very low brightness, wireless turned off and Itunes playing music. But with brightness at max and normal use of programs it´ll last about 2 1/2 hours.

About changing the display: Be sure to first check new display´s compatibility with the electric system and with X65 chassis. And be sure to have the exchange done by someone who really knows what he is doing. Otherwise you could possibly destroy your X65 and supposedly this wouldn´t be covered by warranty.
I´ve seen Dell technicians exchanging notebook displays, it´s quite easy actually. But they do it all the time and they use 100% compatible displays.

 

I see the X65 in UK ( NP-X65T002/SUK) has now been upgraded to a more reasonable T7500 + 250GB HDD.

John

 

Unfortunately not, i saw this when looking at getting mine, so rang them and asked them to check if it was definetly the 002 model that they would have when stock rrived, they rang their supplier and they are actually having ths 000 ones in.

 

I see that the X65 has now dropped to below £1,000 in UK.

John

 

I bought the X65 just before xmas and I have to say it is an excellent laptop. The spec I received was...

2.2GHz dual core duo
256MB Nvidia 8600GS (OEM - not supported by Nvidia directly)
250GB HDD
DVD/RW Litescribe drive
4GB RAM
Fingerprint reader
HDMI output
WLAN abgn
Bluetooth

Oh and I managed to get this for just over €1400 from Laptopsdirect.ie

The question I would have however is where or how can I get hold of the remote that is an option for this lapper? I have done numerous searches on the interweb but no luck as of yet :-(

 

Ah, so they no longer bundle the remote?

Unfortunately, I'm far away from home so I am not able to check whether the HP remote I bought for my Zepto works with the X60 / X60 plus (and hence probably with the X65). If you get nowhere by March, send me a PM to remind me to look into the matter when I get home.

John

 

Cheers John, I may well do that. Although it would be nice to have an original laptop remote if possible that you could have in the card slot. Cheers again.

Brilliant laptop though and three of my friends liked it so much they have gone out and bought one themselves!!

 

Does anybody know if there is any chance that the successor of the x65 or even x60 will come out soon?

Including the new penryn cpu's?

 

I'm sure Penryn will appear in the X65 as stocks work their way through the system since Penryn is what Intel will be trying to sell to the manufacturers (smaller chips mean more per wafer = more profit).

In early January Samsung released new BIOSes for (I think) all the current models and I suspect that was a systematic inclusion of Penryn support.

I would not expect any other significant change until the next Intel chipset becomes available. It remains to be seen whether the refresh will include an LED backlit display. In 2007 Samsung showed off several new models at Cebit. It remains to be seen what happens in 2008.

John

 

Yes, LED would be sweet... but if I hope for it Samsung will probably dissapoint me.