Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4C-A02US)

The Samsung Series 9 15 - inch ( NP900X4C - A02US ) is a high -powered ultrabook with a large screen , a good battery life , and a thin portable shell . It is good for the traveling artist or power users who want to calculate untethered without waiting for a hard drive to spin up . Ultimately , however , there are better options out there for the money .

Design and Features
The new NP900X4C is essentially a processor updating the Samsung Series 9 15 - inch ( NP900X4B - A02US ) we considered last spring . It has the same 0.6 -by - 14 -by - 9.3 - inch ( HWD ) dimensions , and weighs the same ( 3.6 pounds ) . The system has a travel weight of 4.3 pounds with the AC adapter , making it slightly lighter than the Apple MacBook Pro 15 - inch ( Retina Display ) on its own (£ 4.4) . It is an ultrabook with a desktop replacement size , thanks to its 15 - inch screen . That screen is bright , with decent if underwhelming 1600 -by - 900 resolution fine for 720p HD content viewing . But 15 - inch laptop aimed at people who want to display more information on their screens , as photographer and web developer , and the resolution 1600- by- 900 may be too small for that . After all , the high - end ultrabook Editors' Choice - winning Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD - DB71 has a 13 - inch 1,920 -by - 1 , 080 resolution ( 1080p ) screen in a smaller package . Ultimately it is in the middle: better than resolution 1366 -by - 768 found on most systems , but you really need a higher screen resolution to match the larger physical screen .
There is a puzzling set of I / O ports on the Samsung Series 9 . The two USB 3.0 ports and single USB 2.0 port (with smartphone and tablet charging capability ) are welcome . But the system has some micronized port , such as the proprietary Gigabit Ethernet port (with included dongle ) , and micro HDMI and mini VGA port ( both are missing dongles ) . The chassis is thick enough to support the full - size HDMI and Ethernet , but it seems that Samsung went with miniature port to help support the tapered design of the system . We 'd rather see a full - size HDMI port and , if necessary , we would rather see a USB 3.0 dongle -to - Ethernet to give the user more flexibility . There is also an SD card slot , audio port , and a microphone on the side panel of the system . The 62Wh battery NP900X4C is not user- replaceable , but as we will see below , not too much of a problem .
The system has 802.11a/b/g/n Wi - Fi , so it works on dual - band router ( 2.4GHz and 5GHz ) . One - piece touchpad is easy to use and supports multitouch gesture like two finger swipes . Most power users will find plenty of 8GB of memory , but the included 128GB solid - state drive ( SSD ) is a tiny Windows 7 , the recovery partition , and leave all the programs including a free no commensurate tailor 53GB . Considering that Windows 7 is designed to be installed on the 20GB SSDs , this small amount of free space is perplexing , perhaps all the bloatware included account for the extra space . The system has a short 60 - day subscription to Norton Internet Security , and Skype , Absolute Data Protect , Kindle reader , and Wild tangent games is preinstalled as well as all . At least SSD system helps an incredibly fast boot time ( 10 seconds ) .