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As other manufacturers unveil smaller, thinner, lighter laptops, Samsung is thinking big. On Thursday, the company released its 17-inch Series 7 Chronos, a hopeful desktop killer and the latest addition to its Series 7 lineup.
Compared to ultrabooks, the 17-inch Series 7 Chronos is a monster. It features a 1920x1080, 17.3-inch display, and measures just under an inch thick and weighs a whopping 6.26 pounds -- quite heavy but still lighter than the 6.6-pound, 17-inch MacBook Pro. The whole Samsung shebang is encased in brushed aluminum.
Samsung's new gargantuan isn't made for always-scrambling road warriors -- even thinking about carrying around this heavyweight for a full day might make your back ache. But Samsung says that the large screen will appeal to users who need a portable desktop replacement.
The laptop comes packed with Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i7 CPU, 8GB of flash memory, and Nvidia's latest graphics processor, the GeForce GT 650M. You'll get up to 8 hours of battery life, and retain 80 percent of the battery's original capacity even after 1,500 charges, according to Samsung.
The company wants to satisfy its multimedia power users, too. The 17-inch Series 7 Chronos comes with JBL stereo speakers, a built-in subwoofer, and HD audio processing. And with Intel's Wireless Display (WiDi) and built-in adapter, you can wirelessly beam your laptop's images and videos to a TV. As for storage capacity, 1TB of space is perfect for people who collect tons of music and video. The notebook also comes with plenty of ports: HDMI, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, VGA, and a card reader slot.
It seems anachronistic that Samsung would release such a large laptop in our current age of ultrabooks, but, hey, there must still be a market for unapologetically decked-out desktop replacements. If you want to get your hands on one of these big-screened bad boys, they're available for $1,500 starting May 10.
