Samsung's latest Ultrabook is the Series 7 Ultra (730U3E) and here's our hands-on review from CES 2013.
The Series 7 Ultra is the smaller bother of the Series 7 Chronos and has a Full HD 13.3in screen and Windows 8. It has the typical look of a Samsung Ultrabook laptop with a nice looking aluminium body. The touchscreen model we looked at measures in at 18.9mm and 1.65kg.
Samsung's Series 7 Ultra has a decent size silver keyboard which blends nicely into the metal body and is backlit. We like the super responsive large trackpad although we're not so keen on the integrated mouse buttons.
It's the Ultrabook's display which is the main attraction here since it has a Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution. A more than welcome change from the usual 1366 x 768 which almost every laptop has. Squeezing a Full HD resolution onto a 13in screen results in a very detailed picture. Colours look rich a vibrant and viewing angles are great. The only downside is the glossy finish but it’s not as reflective as most.
The touchscreen stretches right to the edge of the laptop so the bezel is touch sensitive for Windows 8 gestures. The Series 7 Ultra supports 10-point multi-touch and we were pleased with its responsiveness.
The sample we took a look at was sporting an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3517U processor and 10GB of RAM. There will also be a model with a Core i5. Storage comes in the form of an SSD up to 256GB in capacity.
We weren't able to run any benchmarks at the show, of course, but from a user perspective performance was very slick. Helping out on the performance front and driving the Full HD resolution is an AMD HD8570M graphics card with 1GB of RAM.
Ports include one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, mini VGA, HDMI, ethernet, SD card slot headphone and microphone which is well rounded offering for a 13in Ultrabook. There’s also a 720p webcam for video calling. Samsung said the Series 7 Ultra will also be available with 4G LTE connectivity but we don’t know if this will be an option in the UK yet.
Since we saw the Series 7 Ultra at CES, we haven't had a chance to battery test it. Samsung says that the Ultrabook will last for up to eight hours. We'll have to wait and find out if this is true. Pricing and availability for the Series 7 Ultra is unknown at the moment.
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