If you're after for a laptop that will add the least heft to your cabin bag, there are few notebooks more desirable at the moment than Samsung's Notebook Series 9 -- it definitely punches above its weight.
The Korean electronics collossus may be better known for home theatre, but it has used its engineering prowess in making TVs ultra-thin to create one of the most impressive Windows laptops we've seen.
Samsung makes the bold claim that it is the best in terms of weight and size among notebooks that use the very latest "Sandy Bridge" class of Intel Core chips, and we haven't yet seen a laptop to disprove it.
It also has gorgeous looks -- brushed gunmetal grey, made of real metal, not plastic faux-metal.
Size and weight
The Series 9 tips the scales at 1.31KG and is only 1.63cm at its thickest point.
Its casing is built from Duralumin, a lightweight material used in making aircraft, which Samsung says is twice as strong as aluminium but just as light.
What you get
The main chip powering the notebook is the "Sandy Bridge" Intel Core i5 -- the second-generation of Intel Core technology with considerably faster performance than the first release Core i5.
However, it is one of the ultra-low voltage versions, running at 1.4GHz, which means it will not be as fast as 'full-power' Intel Core i5s used in larger notebooks. One tech comparison site ranks its speed as similar to a high-end Intel Core 2 Duo from two years ago -- so the speed of the notebook will be like full size notebooks of a 2009 vintage.
If you're after full computing speed, Toshiba's Portege R700 or Sony's new Vaio Z may be a better choice, as both ultralights use full-power Intel Core chips.
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Samsung hasn't let its experience in manufacturing LCD TVs go to waste -- the 13.3" display on the Series 9 notebook is a vibrant ‘SuperBright Plus’ LED-edgelit display. Like LED-lit TVs, the ultra-thin screen is able to come on instantly rather than having a few seconds warm-up time.
It has a 1366x768 pixel resolution, so it's not 'full HD' like Sony's high-end models of Vaio Z, but then, it's not $4,000, either.
Slow, mechanical hard drives have been abandoned altogether for this new breed of laptop. Samsung is instead offering it with a 128GB solid state disk (SSD) which uses very high speed flash memory with no moving parts. This means initial startup and program loading is lightning fast compared to laptops using hard drives.
Samsung says the battery-life on the Series 9 is 'three times longer' than the previous model. To its credit, Samsung doesn't claim a theoretical maximum battery-life; it uses real-life examples: 7.7 hours running the BatteryMark standard battery testing software, and 4.7 hours playing a movie.
What you don't get in such a slim package is a DVD drive -- and we think that's probably not a bad thing. With the wide availability of downloadable movies and TV shows, and super-cheap USB memory keys, the only real reason to have a DVD drive these days is for software installation, and an external USB DVD drive will do the job for these occasions.
The webcam is a 1.3 megapixel model, which will give higher image quality than laptops packing only a VGA webcam.
It only comes in one configuration, with 4GB memory installed, so if you think you'll need more than that (and most people won't) you'd have to remove RAM modules from inside the machine and get higher capacity ones installed. 4GB is plenty for good performance under Windows 7 with many apps running.
CloudTags: Samsung Series 9, Notebook, maximum, computing, battery life, laptop battery, iPad Tablet PC, Hp 2230s battery
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