The Samsung Series 7 Chronos is a high-spec 15in laptop wrapped in a serious dark grey body. It’s unquestionably gunning for the premium notebook market – quite likely hoping to find the confirmed Windows PC user who is teetering on the point of acquiring one of Apple’s 15in MacBook Pro models.
And Samsung has done a good job of porting some of the quality of components, along with several of Apple’s original technology ideas, to this laptop. And at a much lower price.
For main processor, it takes the same 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 quad-core as the entry-level 15in MacBook Pro, and likewise adds the same AMD Radeon HD 6750M for graphics. There’s more video memory here, 1GB against Apple’s 512MB, and system memory and storage are similarly raised, to 8GB and 750GB respectively.
That disk storage carries one trick we’ve not seen on a laptop before – an extra 8GB of flash memory on the motherboard to accelerate performance. Akin to Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT), this ExpressCache feature is licensed from Diskeeper and combines fast NAND flash with a capacious hard disk.
The aim here is to bring together huge capacity and quicker transfers. The result is said to give SSD-like performance for a relatively small price.
In our tests, the Samsung Series 7 Chronos could cold boot Windows 7 in 30 seconds. That was with a clean install of Windows and no bloatware – expect longer if you have anti-virus or Microsoft Office installed, for instance.
Build and features
Construction is very tidy, with less of the clutter and flaps that adorn a normal Windows notebook. The back of the display is smart brushed aluminium, although once you lift the lid you’ll find the corpus of the machine is entirely painted plastic.
The Series 7 has the same magnetic catchless lid first seen on the white MacBook – with a curious cutout in the body for hooking in a finger to lift the lid, essentially identical to the shape sculpted into the MacBook Pro.
The underside is cleanly finished, without even a battery hatch to spoil the lines; yes, Samsung has copied the concept of the non-removable battery. And like a MacBook, there’s a generous-sized lithium battery inside so you’re less likely to get frustrated at being unable to swap over to a spare when you run dry.
Really exploiting that huge 80Wh capacity, the Samsung lasted over 8 hours (492 mins) in the MobileMark 2007 Productivity test.
That’s appreciably longer than the 311 mins we measured for the top-spec 15in MBP. It’s not a valid comparison between models though, even if we had pitched the comparable models against each other with identical 2.2GHz Core i7: while both feature switching technology to defer to low-power integrated Intel graphics when AMD’s horsepower is not needed, Apple’s laptop does not switch under Windows 7 and the company’s Boot Camp drivers.
In Windows, an Apple MacBook has its full-power, battery-sapping graphics running at all times. As a rough comparison, sticking to OS X, Apple lists 7 hours ‘wireless web’ runtime.
Performance
Overall system performance of the Samsung Series 7 Chronos was also measurably higher, as recorded by our WorldBench 6 benchmark, with the Samsung scoring 138 to the Apple’s 132 points.
And remember, that’s a 2.2GHz versus a 2.4GHz Core i7, suggesting that the ExpressCache was clearly nudging up system speed.
Connectivity is well covered by the Series 7 Chronos. Most ports are ranged along the left side, leaving space for a slot-load DVD drive on the right à la Apple. Two USB 3.0, HDMI, a mini-VGA port (that interfaces with a supplied dongle) and a 3.5mm headset jack populate the edge.
Samsung wasn’t so successful at squeezing in ethernet to the plastic chassis, but there is a port here too with a weakly hinged flap that drops down to accept an RJ45 plug. On the front edge of the laptop is an SD/SDXC card slot.
In the all-important areas of human interface, Samsung has laid something of a curate’s egg. The keyboard is Scrabble-style and comfortable to type upon, with well-spaced keys having a reassuring action. These keys are also backlit, albeit with a more distinctive edge-light effect instead of glowing through the letter characters that Apple pioneered.
And the large trackpad is another Apple carryover, buttonless and with some basic multi-touch capability, if sadly clunky here compared to the slick operation in Mac OS X. But it’s the screen that literally caught our eye.
This is a nicely glare-free matt panel, with reasonably high resolution at 1600 x 900 pixels. And that pixel count gives away the aspect ratio, a film-friendly 16:9 that’s hard to escape on any laptop now.
Colour fidelity is a little poor, and viewing angles worse, but it does go unfeasibly bright when required.
Set within a thin aluminium bezel, the screen is one area where the Samsung arguably trumps Apple’s notebook choices, most of which have glass-fronted displays that are too reflective for easy viewing.
With the help of the AMD graphics, the Samsung was capable of respectable gaming performance. We measured an average framerate of 55fps while playing FEAR at Maximum detail settings.
Comments
Alansuton said: had mine 6weeksmost of weeks themwaiting for repair or replacementreturned once due to faultyambient sensorand troublestreaming afterdownloading updateslight sensor cased flashing screen on typingthe replacement had the space bar troubleand with samsungs assurance i took it to the service centre for repair the replacement keyboard exactly the same 240 mile and a lot of time wastedas you see the words run together this is not diliberate and if youleave the touch pad on the curser jumps i likethe machine but its unusable for me
Guest said: I had a key fall off the plastic slips are cheap holding then on