Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus review

HARDWARE PERFORMANCE

The 4th Generation Intel Core i5-4200U processor at the heart of the Ativ Book 9 Plus usually runs at 1.6GHz, but can Turbo Boost up to 2.3GHz when extra performance is required so we never felt wanting for more power. Paired with 4GB of RAM, it should be more than enough for general productivity and office use, as well as multimedia playback and even some light gaming. An overall score of 47 in our updated benchmarks put it on par with Sony’s Vaio Pro 13, which has the same CPU. The 128GB SSD also helps give the system a speed boost when powering on or resuming from sleep – it reaches Windows in less than 10 seconds from a cold boot, and resumes from sleep in less than two.

The i5-4200U is an ultra-low voltage chip, so uses even less power than the already miserly standard Haswell laptop chips, meaning it should last a long time away from the mains. In our light-use test, it managed a superb 11 hours 17 minutes hours, which puts it among the longest lasting laptops we’ve tested. It’s not quite on par with Apple’s unbelievable MacBook Air results, but you’ll still comfortably get a full working day from a single charge.

Intel also provides the graphics power, courtesy of the HD 4400 integrated GPU. It’s perfectly capable of rendering such a vast desktop and plays nicely with full HD video, but even this latest generation isn’t going to handle much gaming. In Dirt Showdown, it managed 19.7fps at 720p, so a reduction in image quality settings will be in order to play most modern titles smoothly, and you can forget about playing at the native resolution.

EVERYDAY USE

We found the Ativ Book 9 Plus an absolute joy to use for everyday tasks, thanks to the excellent keyboard/touchpad combination. The Chiclet-style keyboard has a bright white backlight which is easy to read in low light as well as total darkness. This makes a welcome change from some of the earlier Series 9 machines, which had a blue LED that was often difficult to read. The function keys remain blue here, but it’s less of a problem when it comes to everyday tasks.

The keyboard itself uses full size keys and was incredibly responsive to type on, which came as a surprise given the ultra-thin chassis. Each key has plenty of bounce and a great amount of travel, and although the keyboard tray flexes slightly under pressure, it had no effect on our typing speed or error rate.

The wrist rest is surprisingly spacious for a 13in laptop, although it’s here you’ll find the embossed logos for Samsung’s SideSync and HomeSync apps. We wouldn’t mind it if they were removable stickers, but there’s no way to peel them off and their presence spoils the otherwise completely minimal design.

Although we usually prefer physical touchpad buttons, the all-in-one model used here works very well, thanks to greatly improved palm rejection that prevents accidentally knocking the mouse cursor when typing. It supports all the standard Windows 8 swipe gestures but defaults to inverted two-finger scrolling (so moving your fingers down scrolls up the screen). Thankfully there’s an option to switch it back if you prefer.

THE VERDICT

Intel’s Ultrabook specification has evolved significantly over the last few years, and if the Ativ Book 9 Plus is any indication, Samsung is now at the forefront of the form factor. It’s a stunning piece of hardware with outstanding build quality, a gorgeous display and excellent battery life.

Currently there are very few laptops with resolutions higher than 1,920×1,080. Even Apple’s Retina display Macbook Pro models can’t compete with the Ativ Book 9 Plus in terms of raw pixel count, and those are still powered by previous generation Intel processors. Because of this, we think £1,300 is a reasonable price, although that’s still an awful lot of money to pay for a laptop. If you have that kind of money to spend, then this is the best thin and light Windows laptop available today.