Terrific screen, stylishly minimalist, powerful processor, long battery life
Not cheap
There are two versions of Samsung's ATIV Book 9. The higher-powered Plus version may not look as flash as the cheaper, more technologically lightweight, erm, Lite version, but open it up and it's got a terrific trump card waiting to show you.
Design
The sleek grey livery may look purely functional and business-like, but there's a party animal beneath that slightly dull exterior. The Lite version may look flashier, with its glossy coloured plastic, but the Plus's aluminium casing not only looks slicker, it weighs a bit less too. You can even get it to do tricks, like flipping the lid all the way through 180 degrees (well it could come in handy -- sharing across a desk for instance) though it's not a hybrid and won't flip into a tablet. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports as well as micro HDMI and mini VGA, plus a full-size SD card slot too.
But the trump card is the 13.3 inch touch screen which offers a choice of full HD 1,920x1,080p resolution. So what? Well, you can upscale to QHD+ to deliver an outrageously high resolution of 3,200x1,800 pixels. That equates to 277ppi and is much higher than full HD -- great to see performance laptop screens exceeding the tablet norm. It's not just the sharpness either -- the colours look vibrant without appearing saturated and contrast is good with rich, deep blacks.
HD movies and webpages look beautifully sharp and detailed (and sound pretty good too thanks to the quality speakers), though they'll mostly be created at a lower resolution, and won't take full advantage of the 9 Plus's eye-feasting capabilities. Still, it's nice to know it's there, and if you're using the 9 Plus as a design powerhouse, that additional resolution could be very useful.
Viewing angles are really good too, as is the responsiveness of the touch screen -- all in all, it's a bit of a cracker.
Windows and processor
Like any touch screen Ultrabook you're likely to encounter, it's running Windows 8 and its tile-based interface is intuitive for newbies, though for more experienced Windows users (i.e. most of us), there's a bit of a learning curve to get to grips with when you want to add new programmes or step out of the tiled garden that Windows offers on the Start page.
Also, at the full resolution the 9 Plus is capable of, the desktop mode is really too tiny to work with your fingers, so the choice is to drop the resolution, making the icons larger, or use the mousepad -- which seems a bit of a shame.
The Intel Core i5 processor of our test model was clocked at 1.6GHz and backed by 4GB Ram. It delivers a decent amount of poke and performance-wise, it's pretty impressive, with a PC Mark benchmark score of 4,890. That puts it in similar company to the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 but a little behind the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. Gaming frame rates playing Portal were around the 140 mark (not bad, but certainly not the best) and it took 3 mins 45 secs to reformat our test ten-minute video -- considerably longer than Toshiba's Satellite P70 for example.
Battery-wise however it held up pretty well, giving us a good six and a half hours on test. That's not the best you'll find, but then, most laptops don't have a power-hungry screen like this one.
Conclusion
It looks good, it feels good, and it has one of the best screens you'll find on a current laptop. The processor may not excel but it's more than enough to do justice to the screen and it doesn't drain the battery too much either. It's not cheap, but this is one of the best Windows laptops you can buy at the moment.
Software: Windows 8 64-bit
Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 Processor 4200U
Memory: 4GB Ram 1600MHz
Display: 13.3 inch, SuperBright+ LED Display (1920 x 1080)
Hard Drive: 128GB SSD
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4400
Webcam: 7200p HD webcam
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth
Ports: 2x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI, 1x mini VGA, 1x mini Ethernet, headphone/microphone jack, power connector, SD card slot
Blu-ray player: No
Size: 320x223x14mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
