Samsung laptops

I got myself a Samsung NP550 laptop, and I have to say I am surprised by the build quality. This product, in terms of screen resolution, clarity, colour reproduction, keyboard quality, ruggedness and even temperatures is a lot better than my HP Pavilion DV6 laptop. I am pleasantly surprised as Samsung is a very new entrant to the market here.

Most Samsung laptops also do very well at gaming for their price range. Mine does damn well for a laptop!

The *only* con with this laptop is that there is no LED to indicate Caps/Num Lock is ON, thus causing loads of confusion at times. Other than that, WOW

Anyone else have a similar experience? I will definitely buy Samsung again after this experience!

 

Sounds good... Just watch out for this:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=340793&highlight=samsung

 

I will personally never ever buy a Samsung laptop after my previous Samsung Netbook. The screen got damaged within a year thank god the warranty was still valid but that shows you how reliable they are and their drivers download section sucks for if you want to do a clean install.

not my cup of tea but congrats on your purchase man

for me, the only laptops I buy after trying them all are:

Alienware, ASUS, Lenovo, Dell, or Toshiba

LG and HP are a big NO

 

I stick to Asus personally.. have had excellent luck with them.

 

yeah they're super machines when it comes to specs as you can see from my sig and they're fairly cheaper and they have excellent build quality

 

I just purchased this week.A Sony VAIO 13.3 LED S series 3rd gen i5 3210m CPU 2.50 Ghz 6 gigs DDR3 750GB HDD at 7200 rpm. Very good build quality and fast. The backlight key board is great.I ordered this one directly from Sony and I am not disappointed,its better then expected.


Yesterday at Bestbuy I got a New Macbook Pro 13.3 no retina $150.00 off 3rd gen i7 2.9 GHz 8 Gigs DDR3 750 GB HDD 5400 rpm HD4000 graphics 512 MB. The build quality is a brick of mortar and the speed is incredible.

One thing I am really happy about from the Sony is the track or mouse pad is centered which doesn't seem to be the norm today as most I see are shifted to the left,stupid design flaw IMO.

 

I agree with you about Samsung laptop quality. Picked one up for my wife a few months ago. While not being a gaming rig, we're very impressed with its build quality, performance, display, sound and keyboard. And it's the same layout for us with there being no LED Caps/Num Lock indicator. You do get a brief on-screen notice for each, though, so no big deal. We also would have no problem purchasing another Samsung laptop in the future.

 

Have never owned a Samsung laptop but they "look" and "feel" like good quality laptops.

 

They are. My brother's one year old HP Pavilion DV6 looks and feels like cheap trash when comparing to this....

I always look at the given configuration and value for money and the only other vendor that seems good in VFM department along with the build quality is Lenovo. I thought long and hard before getting a Samsung, but in the end I am quite happy I went for it. Dell's good too, but XPS machines are too costly, and I find Lenovo and Samsung offering better specs for all around multimedia/workstation laptops

@Cimmerian: Mine's not exactly a gaming rig either, it's a multimedia laptop that somehow also seems to have a decent NVIDIA GPU on it

Asus' stuff is good, but in my country they sell laptops without the OS, which was a bummer for me.

 

No they aren't. Samsung has been making notebooks for many years, selling them in the US for at least 5 and selling them in Europe and Asia for many more than that.

Plus, Samsung has been an OEM supplier of many computer parts to notebook makers for years - so slapping a notebook together with their own logo on it was a natural progression.

And considering Samsung has a long, excellent reputation for making quality, very reliable products, I am surprised you were surprised by the quality.

Then you are cutting yourself out of many good options. For one, netbooks should not be compared to notebooks. They are different beasts. And two, until Man can create perfection 100% of the time, there will always be bad samples. And one bad sample does not indicate the reliability of the rest of the batch.

It is important to remember that no notebook (or PC) maker makes all (or any where near all) the parts inside their computers. They buy their motherboards from Foxconn, Asus, or another OEM supplier, the CPUs from Intel and AMD, graphics from NVIDIA and AMD, sound from Realtec, etc. Then they assemble them. And each model is comprised of different parts from different makers.

So a bad model ABC does NOT indicate model XYZ will be bad too.

 

Ours has AMD Radeon Graphics, but like yours it seems fairly decent. For the videos and online games my wife plays, it's certainly more than sufficient.

 

That's not surprising either. Integrated graphics solutions have greatly improved over the last 5 or 6 years (with the proper graphics oriented CPUs). This is driven not just by user demand for better graphics in portable devices, but because integrated graphics solutions are more and more being integrated into high-end home theater PCs (HTPCs) where quality graphics is essential.

 

I agree about the integrated graphics 100%. Unless you're a dedicated gamer, or use super graphic oriented programs, there's almost no need for a dedicated card anymore. At least not for the average user, imo.

 

Right. Of course, other factors still apply. Gobs of RAM is essential to minimize the need for the OS and CPU to spool data out to the Page File on the slow drive.

The more capable the graphics solution, the more tasks the CPU can hand off to the graphics solution. And it takes very little CPU horsepower to hand of tasks. So you don't need a high-end killer CPU when using integrated graphics, but you do want a decent one.

 

After having had laptops with independent GeForce chipsets. I will never EVER buy a laptop with an integrated one

One thing you may need a high end graphics chipset even if you don't play games like me for example, is if you watch videos, there is an application called SVP (Smooth Video Project) that plays all your videos at a steady 60 FPS, and for that, you do need a high end graphics chipset.

After watching a video with SVP, you will never want to watch anything without it

 

Our TV does frame interpolation, looks wacky when it doesn’t correctly detect interlaced input (some TV shows we have on DVD like Dora the Explorer ), but generally its slick (I can't think of a better word).

 

I was, because I own a variety of Samsung products - while my general impression about them was that they were decent, I never really regarded their products as very good. They were to me in Electronics and Home Appliances, what Ashampoo is to software

I mean, I have had Samsung mobile phones, cameras, refrigerators, microwave ovens - while all of them were good, the competitors were just as good or better. So Samsung wasn't the only choice or even the first one for those things.

I was surprised, because with this laptop Samsung showed me it can run with the best - the build quality is great, and I mean superb. I would say it is well on par with Lenovo and Dell, maybe better. I didn't get that feeling that this product is "decent" like I did with the other Samsung products - I simply felt this was one of the best in it's class. That's why I made particular mention of Samsung's laptops in this thread. The configuration offered for the price I paid - only Lenovo could match that.

The screen is excellent compared to my HP, which frankly seems horrible compared to this (oddly, the HP screen is also made by Samsung)!

Does this even apply to models made by "we-manufacture-it-all" companies like Flextronics? I'm sure they are sourcing chips, but motherboards and PCBs?

 

Indeed, one reason I am scared to buy a Mac is because I have done some searching around and they don't have such a program to play videos @ 60 FPS. No matter how nice is the screen man that SVP spoiled me I am not able to watch anything less than 60 FPS and truly enjoy it.

 

I don't think the Nvidia and ATI graphics chips in my laptops are anywhere near powerful enough for this, but I will try it anyway.

 

Actually, do give it a try. You may be surprised. NVIDIA and AMD cannot sell their lower end GPUs on purely performance, so they tend to put a lot of effort towards video processing functions

It should work as long as you have a GeForce 8000 series or greater and a Radeon 5000 series or greater graphics chip

 

I'm out of luck it seems: ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 and nVIDIA GeForce Go 7600. However I will still give it a try, from what I've just read about it online, seems like it works very well.

 

It should still work very well as long as you have a decent CPU. In this case you will get only video quality enhancements and not performance enhancements. It should not be a problem though. Give it a try

 

I don't watch tons of movies or films on my desktop but that sounds interesting.(Talking about SVP) I may try it.

 

On my previous Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 which had an entry level GeForce GT555M it was good enough. Now with my current GeForce GTX 670M it's even smoother but it's worth a try

here is a small guide


basically, you must install MPC-HC, then disable all its internal filters

then install LAV and madVR

then install AVI Synth

then install ffdshow

then install haali media splitter

then install re-clock

then install SVP 3.1

or simply grab the full SVP installer which automaticlaly installs everything for you: http://www.svp-team.com/wiki/Download

restart your computer after the installation

now go to MPC-HC, then go to External Filters, and add LAV Video, and LAV Audio and add ffdshowraw video filter and haali media splitter

now double click on LAV Video and choose CUDA as the renderer if you have a GeForce or if you hace a fast CPU and an average GPU you may get smoother results with DVXA (Native)

now play an video, when re-clock asks you do you want to play the video with re-clock say yes, always

enjoy 60 FPS smoothness you can never go back to 30 FPS after that