Samsung’s Laptop Is Lighter, Thinner Than a MacBook Air [GALLERY] ~ CK

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Samsung’s Laptop Is Lighter, Thinner Than a MacBook Air [GALLERY]

3:52 PM

Kakrona Chan

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Before you rush out and buy that ultrathin MacBook Air, take a look at the Samsung Series 9 Notebook that will begin gracing store shelves starting Thursday.

You might remember this wispy little black number from CES 2011, where we briefly mentioned the Samsung Series 9 amid a flurry of product rollouts. Exciting? Yes, but talk is cheap, and now Samsung delivers this 13.3-inch laptop that’s lighter, thinner and packs a more up-to-date processor than a MacBook Air.

With all that miniaturization and speed, of course, there’s a price premium. The cheapest Samsung Series 9, packing an Intel 1.4GHz Core i5-2537M processor (vs. the MacBook Air’s 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo), 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD is going to set you back $1649, $50 more expensive than the highest-priced MacBook Air.

Well, this is a switch. Usually a comparable Mac is a lot more expensive than its Windows laptop counterparts. But look what happens when Samsung pays more attention to quality, and shoehorns faster components inside a swoopy, impossibly-thin enclosure. Things start getting pricey.

Samsung also announced today it would be shipping another member of the Series 9 line next month (April, 2011), an 11.1-inch ultrathin laptop running the Core i3-380UM processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD. Samsung hasn’t announced pricing on that yet, but it will probably cost around $1,150, according to a price leak on Dynamism.

All these numbers are one thing, but what’s it like to hold it in your hands? According to Mashable’s Ben Parr, “I held it. It’s awesome.” Beyond its aesthetics, as a practical matter, Samsung said at CES 2011 that this laptop boots in 12 seconds.

Get a close-up look at this skinny lappie in the gallery, and then tell us in the comments: Is this worth more than a MacBook Air?

Samsung Series 9