Take a look at the back of most Ultrabooks and you’ll find nothing. By having sealed-in batteries the OEMS save money, weight and space. The owner, however, is left with the big unknown of battery lifetime and if you’ve ever owned a laptop you’ll know how totally useless they are when you have to drag the mains cable around with you everywhere. I recently had to order a new internal battery for a Samsung Series 5 NP530 that is under two years old and has zero battery capacity. On the other hand I’m typing this on a two-year old Ultrabook that still has 85% battery capacity. So how long will the average battery last?
I’ve just finished the main text for the full Samsung Series 5 13” Ultrabook review. It’s been a tough one. [Details, specs, gallery here, Review will be live tomorrow and linked on this page.]
To all intents and purposes the Series 5 is a simple, unfussy and polite Ultrabook but there’s a lot going on under the hood. It’s a swan! Express Cache is doing it’s stuff to improve boot, hibernation and application startup times and Turbo is giving a leg-up where needed; but only a little one. It seems the Samsung Series 5 has been de-tuned in order to keep it quiet.
I spent 2hrs testing the Samsung Series 5 (530u3B) in front of an audience this evening – the best way to review!
We didn’t find any showstoppers but we did find an empty memory slot. You can see an upgrade to 8GB in the fourth video in the playlist below but in the other three videos I give you a deep dive into the Series 5.
The 13.3” Series 5 is already shipping in Germany so expect full reviews from that part of the world within days but there’s already a nice detailed review up at 3DNews, a Russian website, who also appear to be happy with the Ultrabook. They’ve got some ‘naked’ pictures too!
Germany was one of the countries that never got that good value Ultrabook alternative the Samsung NP350 so maybe that’s the reason why the Series 5 Ultrabook has entered the market there at an interesting price point. In other countries, low Series 5 pricing could clash with the existing NP350. €780 for the Core i5 version in Germany is a very good price and if you want to go up to Core i7 with 8GB RAM, there’s an option at around €1000 today. For those not familiar with Euros, it’s the same price as the Toshiba Z830 with the Core i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM. The Core i7 option is not showing in the USA.
While I’ve got the chance to test the Series 5 13.3” and 14” at the Samsung Media Lounge here at CES I downloaded CrystalDiskMark, did a boot test and a few other tests.
I’ve already talked about the keyboard which is as good as the keyboard I’m using right now on the Samsung NP350. I’ve also mentioned the good selection of ports and the Wi-Di which put it ahead of devices like the Acer S3.
With such a short amount of time it’s really impossible to say anything definitive about the new Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks but I’ve had a chance to have some uninterrupted time with the two devices at the Samsung Media Lounge here at CES and the devices do seem well-rounded. I’m especially impressed with the keyboard, ports and Wi-Di . If you’re thinking about the Acer S3, I would advise to wait for the NP530.
More images and two overview videos below.
As you can see on the underside, there’s HDD and Memory access making it easier to upgrade to an SSD if required.
