Hasta La Gadget!

Back at CES, Samsung pulled out quite a few surprises, and no, we’re not referring to its Zoll-infused press conference — although, that performance still gives us the willies. Of all the Korean company’s announcements at the show, which we’ll remind you included an impressive new LTE phone and range of SmartTVs, it was its Series 9 laptop that left us the most stunned. And well, a glance at that picture above should explain why we found ourselves counting down the days until its March launch date. The 2.8-pound system is a complete and total 180 from Samsung’s typical bulky mainstream systems, yet its 0.64-inch thick chassis still crams in quite a bit of horsepower with a Core i5-2537M processor, a 128GB SSD, and 4GB of RAM. It’s also built from some of the toughest stuff on earth, has a backlit keyboard, and an incredibly high quality 400 nit LCD. You see, the $1,699 machine teeters on having the absolute perfect balance of beauty and brawn, and certainty has the core ingredients to compete with that other extremely popular and super thin ultraportable — but when you get it home and out of its fancy box, does it truly have the chops? Or is this just yet another rail thin and expensive Windows laptop that falls short? The time has come to find out – hit the break for our full review.

Continue reading Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3A) laptop review

Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3A) laptop review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alienware’s laptops first hopped on the Sandy Bridge bandwagon when the company’s top-of-the-line M17x got Intel’s second-gen Core processors, and now it appears the more budget-conscious M11x may get some Sandy Bridge love too. According to Dell News and more — who correctly foretold the 3D screen on the M17x R3 before its January debut, among other things — the littlest alien laptop is getting your choice of Core i5-2537M, Core i7-2617M, and Core i7-2657M chips ranging in speeds from 1.4GHz to 2.7GHz. Accompanying the new silicon is an optional 750GB HDD (up from 640GB) and an upgrade from 800MHz to speedy 1333MHz RAM. And, to keep you gaming wherever you please, the company will offer optional 3g, LTE, and WiMAX radios as well. Unfortunately, one minor detail didn’t make it out — how much will the extra goodies cost?

Alienware M11x R3 specs leaked, brings Sandy Bridge to your next LAN party? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At CES, LucidLogix’s Virtu software solution promised to get discrete and Sandy Bridge GPUs together in graphical harmony — giving you both Sandy Bridge’s greased-lightning video transcoding and the horsepower of an NVIDIA or ATI rig. The code also lets you watch content from Intel’s forthcoming Insider movie service while running a discrete GPU. Now that Chipzilla’s 2nd-gen Core i5 and i7 CPUs are getting to market en masse, the gang at Hot Hardware put an RC of Virtu through its paces to see what it can do. As expected, the software waxes chumps and smokes fools when encoding HD video, but gaming performance suffered slightly (in FPS and 3DMark 11 tests) with the technology enabled. The other nit to pick was that Virtu renders the control panel of your discrete card unavailable, so any graphics adjustments must be made in-game whenever the software is running. Time will tell if the final release has similar shortcomings. Hit up the source link for the full rundown.

LucidLogix Virtu in action, discrete graphics and Sandy Bridge together at last originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so Samsung’s newest business laptops may not be as slim or light as their Series 9 brother, but they actually don’t look half bad. First up is the Series 2, and as you may expect, the 12.5- and 14-inch systems are the most budget ones of the bunch. We don’t have a price on the duo, but the smaller version packs an Intel Celeron processor while the 14-incher kicks it up to a Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPU. Sadly, we don’t have details on the exact configurations either, but they will be available with up to 4GB of RAM and 320GB hard drives. Jumping on up, the Series 4 keeps the same 12.5- and 14-inch chassis options, but provides new Sandy Bridge Core i3, i5, and i7 processor options as well as 7,200RPM hard drives and six-cell batteries.

Last but not least is the Series 6, which tops off the chain with some higher-end specs. Unlike the other two lines, the 6 comes with 14- and 15.6-inch SuperBright 300-nit displays — there’s also a 1600 x 900 resolution option on these, while the others keep it at the standard 1366 x 768. The Series 6 is also available with your choice of Core 2011 processors (i3, i5, and i7 all available) and finally jacks up the graphics power with an NVIDIA NVS 4200M GPU. All three systems are said to be made of “super-hard external casing,” have metal hinges, and pack 1.3 megapixel webcams. We don’t have any pricing details, but the 2 and 4 will be available in April and the Series 6 in May. Check out the pictures below or sneak past the break for more details.

Continue reading Samsung serves up Series 2, Series 4, and Series 6 laptops for serious, professional types

Samsung serves up Series 2, Series 4, and Series 6 laptops for serious, professional types originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS U30S appears overseas with Sandy Bridge and NVIDIA GT520M graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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