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The Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4C-A02US) with Compatible Parts is a high-powered ultrabook with a large screen, very good battery life, and a thin portable shell. It’s good for travelling artists or power users who want to compute 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 update of the Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) with Compatible Parts $1,369.99 at TigerDirectwe looked at last spring. It has the same 0.6-by-14-by-9.3-inch (HWD) measurements, and weighs the same (3.6 pounds). The system has a travel weight of 4.3 pounds with the AC adapter, which makes it slightly lighter than the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Retina Display) $2,194.00 at Datavisionon its own (4.4 pounds). It’s an ultrabook with desktop replacement dimensions, thanks to its 15-inch screen. That screen is bright, with a decent if underwhelming 1,600-by-900 resolution that’s fine for viewing 720p HD content. But 15-inch laptops are aimed at people who want to display more information on their screens, like photographers and Web developers, and the 1,600-by-900 resolution may be too small for that. After all, the high-end ultrabook Editors’ Choice–winning Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 $1,294.52 at PCNationhas a 13-inch 1,920-by-1,080-resolution (1080p) screen in a much smaller package. Ultimately it’s in the middle: better than the 1,366-by-768 resolution found on most systems, but you really want a higher-resolution screen to match the physically larger screen. There’s a puzzling set of I/O ports on this Samsung Series 9. The two USB 3.0 ports and single USB 2.0 port (with smartphone and tablet charging capabilities) are welcome. But the system comes with several micronized ports, like the proprietary Gigabit Ethernet port (with included dongle), and micro HDMI and mini VGA ports (both of which are missing dongles). The chassis is thick enough to support full-size HDMI and Ethernet, but it seems that Samsung went with the miniature ports to help support the system’s tapered design. We’d rather see a full-size HDMI port and Laptop Keyboard , if needed, we’d rather see a USB 3.0–to–Ethernet dongle to give the user more flexibility. The system also has a SD card slot, audio port, and a microphone on the side panels. The NP900X4C’s 62Wh battery isn’t user-replaceable, but as we’ll see below, that’s not too much of a problem. The system comes with 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, so it will work with dual-band routers (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and Samsung Keyboard Cover . The one-piece touchpad is easy to use and supports multitouch gestures like two-finger swipes. Most power users will find the 8GB of memory plenty, but the included 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) is a little small—Windows 7, the recovery partition, and all the included programs leave a paltry 53GB free. Considering that Windows 7 is designed to be installable on 20GB SSDs, this small amount of free space is perplexing; perhaps all the included bloatware accounts for the extra space. The system comes with a short 60-day subscription to Norton Internet Security, and Skype, Absolute Data Protect, Kindle reader, and Wild Tangent Games are all preinstalled as well. At least the SSD helps the system to an incredibly quick boot time (10 seconds). For more laptop reviews
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