Earlier this year, Samsung launched its Notebook 7 Spin 2-in-1 ultra portable laptops in order to give competition to the likes of other 2-in-1 ultrabooks available in the market including ThinkPad X1 Yoga, HP Spectre x360 15t and Dell Inspiron 15 7000. The Samsung’s Notebook 7 Spin is one of the most beautiful 2-in-1 ultrabook available in the market. The laptop’s price starts from $999. There are certain plus and minus points of the laptop which we’ll be discussing in our review on the Samsung’s Notebook 7 Spin.
Design
The Samsung’s Notebook 7 Spin is truly one of the most beautiful 2-in-1 laptop that comes in an all silver aluminium chassis which is built solidly and comes in attractive round edges. Open the lid, and you have a 15.6-inch 1080p touch display with a full sized keyboard along with the number pad. Unlike the Notebook 9 Spin (with two hinges), this laptop flips around a single hinge.
Image Source: Techbuzz
The 360-hinge allows for the Notebook 7 to be placed into four different modes: a laptop, a tablet mode by folding the screen all the way around, a tent mode placed as an upside down “V” and a stand mode by placing the keyboard facedown and the monitor standing straight up.
Image Source: Gogi.in
The sides of the Notebook 7 Spin feature all of the ports you need for work and play. The left side of the laptop has the power jack, an Ethernet jack, HDMI output, USB 3.0 and Type-C ports and audio output. The right is where you’ll find two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot and space for a security lock.
Image Source: Gizmodo
Image Source: Gizmodo
At 5 pounds and 14 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches, the Notebook 7 is heavier but a little smaller than most of its competitors. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga, is both thinner and lighter (2.8 pounds, 13.1 x 9 x 0.7 inches). But among consumer models, the HP Spectre x360 15t (4.2 pounds, 14.8 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches) and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (4.6 pounds, 14.9 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches) have larger footprints.
Keyboard and TouchPad
One of the great disadvantage of the Notebook 7 Spin is its keyboard which is too shallow and offers just 1.36 mm of key travel distance. The keys requires 56 grams of actuation weight for typing. The typing is not good on this keyboard, or we can say, the Notebook 7 Spin is not for those who need to type a lot on there laptops.
Image Source: Gizmodo
The Notebook 7 Spin’s 4.2 x 3-inch touch-pad is petty nice and responsive. The smooth glass felt comfortable under the fingers and we had no problem navigating, scrolling, zooming or performing any of Windows 10 gestures.
Display
The Notebook 7 Spin features a 15.6-inch touch display that comes with a resolution of 1080p. The display is extremely sharp and bright. Though, the Notebook 7 Spins display has an average brightness of 260 nits, which also happens to be the mainstream average. The Spectre x360 (246 nits) and the Inspiron 15 (244 nits) were dimmer, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (279 nits) was a bit more luminous.
Image Source: Gizmodo
As per the Laptop Mag, the Notebook 7’s screen had a Delta-E score of 1.8 (zero is best), far below the average of 4.2. The Spectre x360 (4.1) was just below the average, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (1.0) and the Inspiron 15 (0.9) were both more precise.
The screen covers 72.2 percent of the color gamut, less than the mainstream notebook average of 88 percent. The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 was worse at 62 percent, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (102 percent) and the Spectre x360 (119 percent) were far more vivid.
Graphics and Audio
The Notebook 7 Spin has an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU that comes with 2 GB of VRAM. As per the Laptop Mag, The Notebook 7 earned a score of 88,956 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark. That’s not high enough for the most intense gaming but you should be fine playing lighter games like World of Warcraft, and the extra power should be useful for using Photoshop etc. This score beats the category average of 73,353, and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (70,475), the Spectre x360 (64,632) and the Inspiron 15 (64,067), all of which use Intel’s integrated 520 graphics.
The speakers on the Notebook 7 don’t get as loud as we’d like but are enough full fill a room with its sound.
Performance
The Notebook 7 Spin is powered by an Intel Core i7-6500U CPU clocked at 2.5 GHz that comes with 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2 GB of VRAM, a 1 TB 5,400 rpm HDD and 128 GB SSD. This configuration is enough for doing intense multitasking on this laptop. Even with 15 tabs of Google Chrome are open with a 1080p streaming video, the laptop shows no lag at all.
Image Source: Business News Daily
As per the Laptop Mag, Notebook 7 Spin scored 7,132 on Geekbench mark. This score outperformed the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (7,064), the Inspiron 15 (6,499) and the Spectre x360 (6,376).
The Notebook 7 copied 4.97 GB of mixed-media files, including photos, music and videos, in 1 minute and 5 seconds, a speed of 77.5 Mbps which is very slow when compared with the mainstream average of 181.1 Mbps, as well as the Inspiron 15 (122.6 Mbps), the Spectre x360 (149.7 Mbps) and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (a blazing 186.2 Mbps).
On the spreadsheet macro test, the Notebook 7 matched 20,000 names and addresses in 1 minute a 5 seconds. While that’s quicker than the 1:29 category average, the Spectre x360 (0:34), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (0:35) and the Inspiron 15 (0:41) were far faster.
Battery Life
The another big disadvantage of the Notebook 7 Spin is its poor battery backup. On the Laptop Mag‘s battery test (which involves continuously browsing the web over Wi-Fi), Notebook 7 lasted just 5 hours and 53 minutes which is lesser than Inspiron 15 (6:55), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (7:52) and the Spectre x360 (8:27). So, you need to keep a charger along with you if you are on a day out along with the laptop.
Configuration Options
The Notebook 7 Spin that we reviewed included a 2.5-GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, 16 GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2 GB of VRAM, a 1 TB 5,400 rpm HDD and a 128 GB SSD configuration will cost you $1,199 (approx INR 80,000).
A configuration with 12 GB of RAM and no SSD that is otherwise identical will run you $999 (approx INR 66,700). If you want a smaller screen, there is a version with a 13-inch, 1080p display, a Core i5-6200U CPU, 8 GB of RAM and a 1 TB HDD that will cost you $799 (approx INR 53,400).
Verdict
If you need a good looking laptop along with the good performance and good gaming experience, the Samsung Notebook 7 Spin is a good choice for you as this laptop offers you the latest and powerful Intel’s core i7 processor with up to 16 GB RAM options. The only thing that will bother you is the laptop’s battery back up and shallow keyboard. If you are ready to compromise with these factors, than you can surely grab the beautiful Notebook Spin 7.
Source: Laptop Mag
