The 2012 Samsung Series 9 13.3" (NP900X3B)

the price dropped again to 1299$
Samsung 13.3 Core i5 128GB SSD Notebook at CircuitCity.com

 

Glad I waited a couple of weeks:

20% off (UK) Buy Samsung NP900X3B Laptop, Intel Core i5, 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 128GB with 13.3 Inch Display, Black online at JohnLewis.com

 

Very tempting because of the PLS display but not quite powerful enough to be my main computer. 7 left as I type this.

John

PS: After much deliberation I've placed an order. It's the obvious choice for when I want to travel very light. It will also help me decide (features such as limited keyboard travel) whether the 15" S9 could become my main machine once a 256GB version is available. As part of my decision making process I got my 9 year old Fujitsu P2020 out and studied the display since it is the nearest I have to the S9's resolution.

 

Don't think I'll be able to resist. This will be to replace an X360 SSD version which has seen slightly better days, and is not *quite* fast enough.

I'll probably get £200 for it fairly easily, which would net this down to £800.

 

its tempting to sell up my Z830 for it, but i think i'll need to road-test it first, may take a womble to john lewis this weekend

 

I'd still go with the Microsoft store deal. $1399 w. $200 gift card to upgrade a 2/3-year warranty and/or buy accessories or software. On the other hand...
not, because...I think it's worth waiting for some extra horsepower, especially
the HD4000.

"My symblings however do love getting my "old" stuff."

Your siblings wouldn't like me then, 'cause I still get use out of my 2001 Dell C610. Running dual-boot XP and Windows 7 OK and has a matte screen

 

You need to disable Fast Boot in the BIOS....

 

I just saw that in another thread, that works great. Thanks!

However, now it's asking for device drivers it can't find. I'm downloading the WLAN drivers from Samsung to put on the stick, I believe I read that on the first gen Series 9 thread. Do you recall having to do this as well?

 

I've found what looks to be my issue:

A required CD/DVD device driver is missing, usb installation - Microsoft Answers

Apparently, the USB port is turning off. I tried switching ports when the error message comes up, didn't work. Tried starting the install with the USB stick in the left side, but that didn't work either.

Is the right side a USB 2.0, and the left side a USB 3.0? Has anyone figured out how to do a clean install via USB drive on the S9?

Thanks!

 

That's what it looks like in the User Guide. Also, USB 3.0 has a blue tab.

John

 

Although I was able to boot Windows Install from USB flash drive, I had the same problems installing it. I ended up having to install via a USB DVD drive instead.

At least you took the effort to dual-boot and clean install for them, that is what is most important . I usually clean up everyting, install every program, codec, driver, they would ever possibly need, and image the whole Systems drive. I tell them to store their data on the second partition. So, whenever they run into issues or get viruses or what not, they now know how to re-image it. Less headaches for me.

 

So, you were able to use a USB DVD drive, but the USB memory stick didn't work? I wonder why, since both use the USB port.

I guess it's time for a trip to the store!

 

Thanks John, I didn't know about the blue tab. Good info! The left side is definitely the 3.0 side.

 

Yup, don't know why. Installing via USB DVD worked like a charm. From USB drive, I can load most of my ISO's and many of them do run, but do have issues running a few of them (ie, Windows, Gparted, PartedMagic).

 

I have one of them on my Lenovo T420s and learnt to remember which it was because there is an 'e' in blue and an 'e' in three (and no 'e' in two).

John

 

Double post:

I now have a 900X3B in front of me. It's not just thin, it's seriously anorexic. I think it's the first time I've come across a manufacturer's thickness (15.9 ~ 16.3mm) that included the feet / rubber pads. Without the pads it's less than 1/2" / 12mm.


(Top of tape is centimetres, bottom is inches)

So far I've found no problems - the hinges are firm but smooth, but I haven't yet turned it on. However, there is my usual complaint about using a 3 pin power cable (extra weight and bulk although it is short) which causes a hump in the power supply.

John

PS: Just found one drawback - any slightly wide USB device won't fit in the left USB port if the PSU is plugged in.

 

They bug me too.

 

There are other issues that are similar. If you don't pick your micro HDMI to whatever adapter wisely, you could have an issue there as well. Some of the micro HDMI adapters have a lot of plastic or rubber around that connector.

The proprietary micro VGA port and adapter should not be an issue because only Samsung currently makes it. And so far it isn't available here in the USA.

Shall I rant about the micro VGA port?

 

So what's the next-best laptop on the list?

 

I have a work-around for the thick cable.

I would also love an on-board D-SUB but where would it fit? The dongle is available in UK but look at the price (that seems to be the only place having it at the moment and I fear that I will have to buy one since other places are waiting for stock). The VGA dongle should be in the box even if the various HDMI options are not.

What has an equally good screen? I was worried that the smaller pixels (relative to my usual 14" 1600 x 900) would give my eyes a hard time but the crispness and good contrast make it among the best.

John

 

I know many people still need analog VGA connections for work and school. I would much preferred to see a mini DisplayPort port on the Sammy instead of a proprietary mini VGA.

I doubt the dongle on eBay is the same as the dongle at SS9 USA accessory area.

 

Yes, I need the capability to plug into a projector.

The UK ebay listing should be OK. Digicare is an authorised Samsung UK repair agent.

One interesting observation: HWiNFO says the mainboard is labelled "Samsung NP900X3B/NP900X4B". so big brother has the same board - makes sense in many ways.

John

 

I been clicking amazon every day, looks like price dropped by $50, and currently has a couple in stock. Not as sweet as a week ago where it dropped $85, but still better than nothing. If you recently bought from amazon at full price, go get it price matched

$1350: Amazon
$1300: CircuitCity

 

That's very good to know. While I haven't seen it yet, I'm still concerned things might be a tad too small for me.

 

Have you seen a vaio Z on display at any stores? Their screens are 13.1" with 2 different resolution, depending on the model. Lower end models get 1600x900, while higher end models get full HD 1920x1080. I actually prefer the higher res one, all on a 13.1" screen! But of course I'm still in my twenties, no squinting to read text yet.

 

If the micro VGA dongle is exclusive to Sammy... couldn't you make a case that it should be included or they should ship you one?

 

It is not even available yet, so they can't even ship you one. Their micro-hdmi to VGA however is available and works fine.

 

A few more observations:

Has anyone seen their NP900X3B run at over 2GHz? HWiNFO shows the CPU speed as going to 2GHz once wPrime starts andthen never changing. It is possible that Samsung locked the CPU speed to 2GHz max in order to limit heat and fan noise.

The label on my box said 145/200 and the notebook has February 2012 on the bottom. which suggests that only 200 were shipped to John Lewis and the last few are only getting sold now.

And the Windows CoA is stuck on the top of the PSU. Presumably someone thought it was safer there than on the bottom of the computer.

Amazon.co.uk now lists this notebook as in stock on 13th April for £1,129 as an alternative to John Lewis's £1199 (which includes an extra 2 years warranty and a free Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse).

John

 

I thought the Series 7 used a micro-VGA dongle too.

 

My post on this subject is at http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/638253-new-2012-samsung-series-9-13-3-a-4.html#post8398046

 

Does the Samsung power plan contribute to this? It's set to limit max cpu performance to 50% on battery....

 

I can see a hint of 2.3GHz if I go to the High Performance power plan but there's no sustained running at faster than 2 GHz even when running single-threaded SuperPi.

in the Samsung Optimized power plan the speed on battery is locked to 800Mhz so that's only 40% of the 2GHz I'm seeing above. Switch to the High performance plan while on battery and the CPU will go up to 1.6GHz (ie no Turbo mode).

John

 

Hitting 2.3 on my machine was pretty rare. They were brief spikes. Certainly not sustained. The pic was just to prove that it got there. The question I was answering at the time was whether turbo boost was using the range. It appears to use the full range.

I didn't attempt to benchmark it doing encoding or something stressful. I have no intention of using an Ultrabook in that manner. I think in the pic I posted I played some youtube videos, hit some heavy flash oriented web sites, and did other normal activities.

I was not on the high performance plan. I believe it was on the Samsung optimized plan.

 

If I may chime in, I've been using Sony Vaio Zs for about a year now, having had the 1080p FHD screen for a while and also a 900p version - my preference - for the past 6 months. I have 57 year old eyes and I find most text is readable at both resolutions, though I often zoom in ("nosquint" add-on in Firefox great for this) or set the Windows text at 125% just to give my eyes a rest when I can easily spare the real estate. Bottom line: 13" @ 1600X900 is very workable, even if some will want to zoom in text at times. The way I feel is, the higher the resolution the better, for both screen real estate and, more important to me, superbly crisp images, video and text.

My question to all who have their 900X3B's is: how are the contrast/blacks, color breadth/accuracy and viewing angles on this Sammy screen? Has anyone here previously seen either of the Sony Z screens or, perhaps, the HP Envy 14 with the "Radiance" display (2010 E14, new E14 Spectre) and care to render a gut feel comparison?

I am truly salivating to get this machine but really want 256GB storage. Is it as awesome in the flesh (the whole thing, not just the screen) as it looks in pictures? Do you find it to be fast and snappy for everyday apps - compared to any other SB notebooks/ultrabooks? I'm spoiled by the Z's screens and RAID0 SSDs, but really drooling over the new 900's awesomely sexy lines.

 

lovelaptops,

My advice is to wait. The 13.3" has really good color, contrast, blacks, grays, white, etc. It's the best screen I've seen in a long time. I enjoyed it much more than my MacBook Air (late 2011 model).

The chassis is a classic, too.

I would like a 8GB RAM 256GB SSD 13.3" model but I would settle for 4GB RAM. I won't settle for 128GB of storage on a machine with at least a 3 year life.

Samsung could do serious damage to Apple and the rest of the market. But their warranty and service model is SERIOUSLY flawed. They need to grow up or partner with someone to kick butt.

 

Here are some photos I took. Hope it helps.
I love the display even more than my old vaio Z1.

 

woah, dat viewing angle..... is legendary

one random question, how's the backlit keyboard? It looks really dim and greenish in the pic, is it like the really faint backlit keyboard on Z2?

 

Their warranty in Korea is top notch....

I don't know why their warranty policy is such mediocre for overseas products.

Koreans choose Samsung for its legendary warranties back in my home country..

Sent from my HTC Flyer P510e using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5

 

Great viewing angles.

Can you check the red reproduction? Seems some LCD displays have problems with red.

 

Here is an unfortunate message I just received from Samsung support. This is rather unfortunate for me, especially with only 2 USB ports on this thing…

"We are sorry; it is not possible to boot from the SD card. You can only boot in the laptop using a USB flash drive or a disc."

 

I haven't actually seen laptops that can boot from the sdcard, why do you need it so much?

Sent from my HTC Flyer P510e

 

Thanks very much for that. I'm with you entirely. I hear you about their support, but coming from Sony, nothing could be worse! I still think this will rock the fruit guys, though they may come out with a new kick-butt display for the MBA and the pendulum will swing once again. It's all good for us consumers though.

 

For those of you who are having a sad face because of the smallish 128GB SSD, there's a guide to massively slim down a Windows 7 install. It was written for the Dell Mini, but I don't see anything specific in there. They can get it down to about 3GB, so I'll assume 5GB is an easy target. I plan on doing it this weekend so I can dual boot windows and Xubuntu without giving up too much disk space.

If this works, having 120GB free instead of 70GB, will be a huge improvement.

 

You will never have 120GB free. The blank 128GB SSD is actually 119GB free. It's that funny math storage makers use.

Regarding trimming the Samsung Windows implementation, you can easily trim 20-30GB without resorting to a third party tool. If you have no intentions of using hibernation, there's over 4GB right there. Getting rid of the Samsung recovery partitions, turning off restore points, and a number of other measures returns nearly 30GB to the user for apps and data.

 

How does the warranty in Korea differ? This is a concern for those of us in the USA. A one year warranty on so expensive of a product is rather asinine.

 

I have exactly the opposite issue - I could probably deal with a 128GB SSD but I really need 8GB of RAM. This is why I'm considering the 15" model. I only wish it had as good of a screen - this 13" version looks seriously tasty.

 

Yea, I would certainly prefer 8GB of RAM especially if I decided to run a VM. It's a key reason I want to see the 15" and decide. The little 13.3" with the tasty screen is way cool, but the specs are slightly below my preference bar.

I really wish Samsung would just sell their 256GB mSATA drives in the retail channel. They would eat Intel's lunch.

 

I am the same way. I am happy and actually prefer the 128GB to keep prices down, but wouldn't mind the option to get 6GB or 8GB of memory, that shouldn't be much more expensive.

 

I do this on my Asus netbook all the time to boot into various Linux environments for security and data testing on various projects I work on. Because I use different Linux distros for different things, I don't usually install them on the hard drive. Because there are only two USB drives, and I'll have to use one to boot from, that only leaves me with one open port to use. I'll live with it in the end, I just wish I didn't have to. (the screen makes up for it!)

That issue aside, the machine is pretty solid so far. I was worried that the shallow keyboard would really annoy me, but it's not as bad as I expected.

 

Is native hardware support required for your security and data testing? If not, have you tried virtualization and snapshots? It's easier to manage.