Samsung had a gigantic booth at CES, and among the many things to see we found the Series-5 Ultrabook. From first impressions we can say it is a solid build and the price makes it one of the cheaper on the market.
Even though Samsung is far from the largest on the notebooks market, it often manages to present interesting solutions. Its Samsung Series 5 Ultra, or the less flattering name Samsung NP530 is a 13.3″ computer that impressed us during the short time we had with it at CES.
Samsung Series-5 measures 14.9 – 17.6 mm in profile and weighs 1.43 kg, which is above the 1.4 kg Intel has set as the maximum for an Ultrabook. The construction is solid and both touchpad and keyboard felt good, in line with Dell XPS 13. The keyboard is generally the achilles heal of Ultrabooks, since many have compromised with it to get a thin format, but Samsung has done well here.
Looking at the specifications the processor is the one that will become the standard among Ultrabooks; Intel Core i5-2467M at 1.6/2.3 GHz and HD 3000 graphics to power the screen at 1366 x 768 pixels, and it sports 4 GB memory. What makes Samsung’s computer stand out is its storage solution and the price. The connectivity include Ethernet, HDMI, card reader and three USB ports, one USB 3.0.
It has a hybrid storage solution with 500 GB harddrive sporting 16 GB NAND Flash cache. this will result in faster boot times and overall faster experience at regular use. Despite that the computer will boot in 20 seconds, and like other Ultrabooks rise from sleep in two seconds. The battery time will be around 6.5 hours, which is on the same level as other Ultrabooks.
The price will be $800 when it launches in February, which is fairly cheap for an Ultrabook, especially considering the first impression we got from Series-5. Those who want something better than Samsung’s hybrid solution, can get the version with 128 GB SSD, but will have to pay $1,000 then.
