samsung book 9 plus vs book 8

Hi,

I have the samsung book 9 plus ordered and I just need to pick it up from Best Buy tomorrow. Thing is, I am not sure it was worth the 1500 dollars. Yeah it is a pretty slick ultra book, but that is a lot of money for something that supposedly cannot even play a game that well.

Now i should preface by saying that I am not buying it SOLEY to play games on. I am looking for something primarily for school and I want it to last 3+ years. But in my downtime, I would have liked to have had something that could run Warcraft 3, WoW, and starcraft. Supposedly that cannot be done on this.

That is why i am turning my head towards the book 8. I have heard that one is pretty slick as well. Any comments on what choice I should make? Would the book 8 and its 3rd gen processor be worth it over the book 9 plus if I am intending on playing a few games very sparingly?

 

tech specs are as follows:

book 8: Samsung ATIV Book 8 15.6" TouchScreen Laptop 8GB Memory 1TB Hard Drive NP880Z5E-X01UB - Best Buy book 8&cp=1&lp=1

book 9: Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus 13.3" TouchScreen Laptop 4GB Memory 128GB Solid State Drive NP940X3G-K01US - Best Buy 9 plus&cp=1&lp=1

 

There's not much in common between those two models other than the Samsung badge.

The Book 9+ is for those who value portability and have got better-than-perfect reading vision to take advantage of the extremely high resolution display. For the rest of us with more normal vision the previous Ivy Bridge Series 9 / Book 9 offers more portability. You may find that the 128GB SSD capacity is also a constraint. The Book 9+ uses an M.2 format SSD for which upgrades are currently hard to find (but this will improve). The 4GB RAM is also a limitation (unless you get the more expensive 9+ with 8GB RAM).

The Book 8 is a much larger machine with better upgrade options. It has a much larger battery than the 9+ and is capable of all-day operation (until you apply the Windows 8.1 upgrade!). I would think you would find the Book 8 to be more suited to your needs. You can use the money you have saved to buy an SSD which will give a very noticeable boost to the everyday performance. You have to carry around a few more pounds (if you are going to carry the notebook around), but that difference is only the equivalent of a big text book.

John

 

thanks for the response. I will look into the book 8 before i pick up (and possibly return) the book 9+

Do you have experience with the 9+ at all? Do you happen to know how it fares with a bit of gaming?

 

See notebookcheck's review of the 9+ and a lot more gaming results for the Intel 4400 graphics (which you can compare with the 8770M results)

John