Samsung ATIV Book 9 plus thoughts?

[imported_trajan]

Anyone have personal experience with this laptop or suggestions for similar models to consider? Not sure where to look for reliable, unbiased reviews. I've played with it at a local store and was very impressed with the size, weight and "feel" (conveys a great sense of build quality).

* 13.3" 3200x1800 touch screen (IPS? Not sure.)
* Intel 4200U (1.6 GHz)
* Intel 4400 graphics
* 4 GB RAM / 128 GB
* just barely 3.1 pounds I think, extremely thin

I plan to mostly use this for day to day web surfing at home, occasional office tasks, casual/indy games (not FPS), streaming video, photo viewing and for occasional travel and temporary photo storage. My last laptop was a top-end Dell 13" and worked great for 5 years, and still works, but is showing its age. Would be great if my next laptop could last awhile too, and I'm happy to pay for that. Battery life is not a massive concern.

Anyone have impressions or thoughts? Any competitors you'd recommend? Some concerns I have are (1) it's pricey ($1,400), which I think is inflated but can live with; (2) is 4 GB RAM sufficient?, (3) how future proofed (future-resistant?) are those processors? are there better options available yet?, and (4) I love the high res, no complaints, but candidly I don't feel that I need it, so would willingly trade for other items.

I've built a bunch of desktop systems over the years but like some other recent posters I'm not up to speed on the latest mobile tech, so thanks very much for any advice.

 

[JasonCoder]

I'm on the same quest you are on. When looking at the ultrabook form factor I quickly realized that they are as upgradeable as the latest batch of macbooks. By which I mean they aren't. So make sure whatever you buy you will be extremely happy with for as long as possible.

Personally, I was put off by the high price tag on the ATIV Book 9+ with limited ram. Screen is nice but you can get the same in other notebooks for much less. Also the DPI scaling isn't all that in Windows 8. 8.1 made strides but not sure about desktop mode. You're essentially paying a major premium for thinness.

 

[gorcorps]

I'm on the same quest you are on. When looking at the ultrabook form factor I quickly realized that they are as upgradeable as the latest batch of macbooks. By which I mean they aren't. So make sure whatever you buy you will be extremely happy with for as long as possible.

Personally, I was put off by the high price tag on the ATIV Book 9+ with limited ram. Screen is nice but you can get the same in other notebooks for much less. Also the DPI scaling isn't all that in Windows 8. 8.1 made strides but not sure about desktop mode. You're essentially paying a major premium for thinness.

The Desktop scaling is still pretty screwy in Windows 8.1

I want to scale specific UI elements without scaling others and it just doesn't seem to be possible. However, on a notebook where I'm not using touch controls I wouldn't really need it either. I only use Desktop mode scaling because I use a touchscreen and need bigger buttons.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Anyone have personal experience with this laptop or suggestions for similar models to consider? Not sure where to look for reliable, unbiased reviews. I've played with it at a local store and was very impressed with the size, weight and "feel" (conveys a great sense of build quality).

* 13.3" 3200x1800 touch screen (IPS? Not sure.)
* Intel 4200U (1.6 GHz)
* Intel 4400 graphics
* 4 GB RAM / 128 GB
* just barely 3.1 pounds I think, extremely thin

I plan to mostly use this for day to day web surfing at home, occasional office tasks, casual/indy games (not FPS), streaming video, photo viewing and for occasional travel and temporary photo storage. My last laptop was a top-end Dell 13" and worked great for 5 years, and still works, but is showing its age. Would be great if my next laptop could last awhile too, and I'm happy to pay for that. Battery life is not a massive concern.

Anyone have impressions or thoughts? Any competitors you'd recommend? Some concerns I have are (1) it's pricey ($1,400), which I think is inflated but can live with; (2) is 4 GB RAM sufficient?, (3) how future proofed (future-resistant?) are those processors? are there better options available yet?, and (4) I love the high res, no complaints, but candidly I don't feel that I need it, so would willingly trade for other items.

I've built a bunch of desktop systems over the years but like some other recent posters I'm not up to speed on the latest mobile tech, so thanks very much for any advice.

I have a Yoga Pro 2, which is effectively the same device (same panel even) with a different physical enclosure. I have the i7/8GB/250GB version and I really like it. The i5 is probably plenty. The 4GB is definitely enough in the short term at least. I went with the 8GB mostly because it's not upgradeable and I tend to keep my computers for 5+ years. I think the big limitation for you is going to be the 128GB SSD. That's really not a lot of the space, especially when the OS and recovery partitions will take up almost half of that. I'd recommend upgrading to the 256.

As for the screen, windows still has a lot of issues with UI scaling. It now has individualized scaling based on monitor resolution, but you have to log out and back in to reset it when you change monitors (or resolutions). Adobe products in particular seem to not scale well at high resolutions, making Photoshop CS6 almost unusable at native resolution. Lastly, for games, I seem to be having this problem, which is super-annoying.

The panel looks super nice except for those problems, but those problems are really annoying and on Microsoft to fix. Of course, you can solve most of them by just setting the monitor to 1600x900 (1/4 native resolution), but it shouldn't be necessary.