Windows 8 Review + Video – Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch NP540U3C

You can buy this laptop at BestBuy.com My thanks to Samsung for the hardware!

Unboxing:

It’s a pretty simple and standard computer box that has the Samsung picture graphic on it. I am still waiting to see a hardware unboxing that leaves me breathless or eager with anticipation. This is just the standard cardboard and styrofoam combo. Once it’s unveiled, it actually looks pretty frikkin nice. This is a pretty powerful Ultrabook. It has an i5 processor and 32GB of ExpressCache paired with a 500GB hard drive. It’s priced at $849. It feels sleek to the touch and the keyboard is the standard Samsung Series keyboard. Tactile and responsive. The Series 5 UltraTouch’s 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 touch screen offers very clear graphic images and very accurate color reproduction. This is a Windows 8 touchscreen Ultrabook and I am beginning to be very fond of these models. As you’ll see from the video below, the actual screen itself is very responsive to touch and the whole Windows 8 touch the screen to interact with the computer is REALLY starting to grow on me. As usual, the setup process was pretty easy. Microsoft have knocked this one out of the park IMHO. The ease with which one can set up multiple Windows 8 PC’s and profiles is pretty impressive. The consistency of seeing your desktop across multiple PC’s is pretty amazing as well.

So here’s the skinny

The speakers are pretty impressive and were loud enough to fill my office both at home and in downtown Pasadena. It has two speakers located on the underside of the device. It got warm after extensive use but nothing out of the ordinary or unexpected. It doesn’t have a DVD drive but it does have an SD Card slot and two USB 2.0 ports. On the left side, you get a full-size HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, a mini VGA port, the power connector, a dual microphone and headphone jack and Ethernet port. Powered by a four-cell lithium polymer battery, this device lasted approximately 6 hours while I was surfing and using Photoshop etc. The Ultrabook I got had a touch screen, 1.7-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive with a 24GB ExpressCache SSD and Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated graphics chip. The keyboard is pretty cool as well if you like those type of keys. I personally feel that the Samsung Series 5, 7 and 9 keys are a little too light. That however is purely a personal preference. I had no complaints with the touch pad and buttons. As I said earlier, it runs Windows 8 and it’s pretty quick. I think that the experience of running Windows 8 really varies wildly depending on the kind of hardware you’re running it on. On this Ultrabook, it was pretty zippy and there was no lag switching between the desktop and the metro interface.

What don’t I like about it?

It’s OK. I’m not really turned on by a lot of these systems because there’s really nothing radical or revolutionary about the hardware or the software. On the hardware side, it’s a very capable Ultrabook that can run anything you throw at it and it looks like a sleek Samsung. Thing is, you’ve seen those before so it’s not going to blow your mind. On the software side, I’ve now set up Windows 8 on over 20 devices and it’s very impressive but… There isn’t the killer app that I can point to as a reason why people have to rush out and buy the software. It’s hard to go gaga about hardware when there isn’t that much you can run on it that will blow your mind. It’s a well made and perfectly capable Ultrabook by Samsung. If you like the Samsung Series X devices, you won’t be let down by this one. You can buy this laptop at BestBuy.com Check out the photo gallery and brief video review below…

Here’s a gallery of images of the Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch NP540U3C

[gallery link="file" columns="7"]

Here’s my review video of the Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch NP540U3C

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5F7ABd3TFA That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned for the next one – the Samsung ATIV Smart PC that just arrived. Thanks to Samsung for the hardware!]]>