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I can’t help but use any other than the word cult when it comes to the new Windows 8. The rate at which personal computing biggies have adopted the brand new OS which was officially unveiled late last year is nothing short of mind-boggling. As of now there are at least 2-3 Windows 8 devices from any tech major you can think of. The sales might not have picked up yet, but when it comes to enthusiasm it looks like it’ll be a while before the PC brands’ enthusiasm abates.
Samsung which recently revamped its Series 5 Ultrabooks, originally released in 2011, has also adopted the OS of the season – Windows 8. We tried the new Series 5 Ultrabook out over a week to see how well it supplements Windows 8.
A slate grey (Titan Silver, officially) brushed aluminium body envelops the 13.3-inch display on the new Series 5 Ultrabook. The base of the notebook is made with fibreglass to cut down a bit of the weight and make it slightly resistant to wear and tear. The device looks sleek but it isn't exactly on the lighter side. So, although it’s relatively compact and portable you are always aware of the weight when you are carrying it around.
Display and keyboard
The display on the Series 5 is a high-definition touch-screen. So, not only is it aimed at providing a better multimedia experience but the touchscreen is designed to help make the most of the Windows 8 user experience as well. It’s configured to support 10-finger multi-touch usage. Every time we chose to abandon the keyboard and use the touchscreen, the interaction was pretty fluid and there wasn’t a single instance of a gesture not being registered or recognised by the device.
On the other hand it was the multi-touch keypad which would sometimes incorrectly interpret moving the cursor to the right as a right swipe and bring up your previously used windows on the screen. (This is a Windows 8 gesture where if you swipe from left to right on one part of the screen it pulls up your previous activity.) This bit was slightly annoying.The older Series 5 notebook didn’t come with backlit keys so we were kind of hoping this one would. But there has been no change in that aspect of the keyboard.The keyboard layout has been tweaked to make it just a little more compact but the chiclet arrangement remains the same.
Multimedia Experience
As is mentioned before, the 13.3-inch display is designed to make for superior multimedia experience. We watched a couple of episodes of The Office (U.S Version) and streamed 6-7 HD upcoming movie trailers on full brightness and the visuals were pretty impressive. Nothing to complain about there, except maybe the fact that when we were watching stuff with low brightness the screen turned out to be pretty reflective. The audio wasn’t disappointing either. A couple of people could easily enjoy music or videos on this without the need to plug in external speakers.
The display uses Samsung’s SuperBright technology which translates into 300 nits of brightness, again the same as its predecessor.
Our review unit was powered by Intel Core i5-3317U running at 1.7 GHz and is equipped with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. Over the week that we used the Series 5, we pretty much used it for every task imaginable including gaming, writing articles, surfing the web, video chatting and after every full cycle of charging it gave us company for about 6 hours or thereabouts. On our standard NovaBench benchmark we got an average score of 370 points, which is on the lower side given the fact that it sports a SATA HDD instead of a Solid State Drive and uses Intel HD Graphics 4000 and not a dedicated GPU like NVidia or ATI Radeon.
Verdict
Although a little heavier than most other 13.3-inch Ultrabooks in the market, the revamped Samsung Series 5 notebook is a pretty decent machine when it comes to the activities you’ll mostly indulge in on an Ultrabook - browsing the web, watching movies, using Windows 8 apps and the usual suite of productivity apps.
Rs 64,990
Love - Excellent screen, multimedia experience, decent battery life
Hate - No backlit keys, overly sensitive trackpad
>mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in
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