Samsung Series 9 (900X3B) review

The Series 9’s keyboard is superb. Each full-size key felt springy and responsive, so we were always sure that our key presses had registered. All the punctuation keys are in the right places and the function keys also double as multimedia shortcuts, but only if you hold the Fn key first.

We were also surprised by the multi-touch trackpad – although we don’t usually like all-in-one touchpads that lack physical buttons, the one on the Series 9 works reasonably well. Left clicks can be activated with a tap and right clicks with a two-finger tap, as well as physically clicking in the right corner of the touchpad. Multi-touch gestures were responsive and easy to perform, with none of the hit-and-miss activations of some multi-touch models.

We were hugely impressed by the high resolution screen, which is among the best we’ve seen from an Ultrabook– the 13.3in display looks fantastic at its native 1,600×900. Like Samsung’s other new laptops, it has a matt screen finish that helps diffuse light reflections and an incredibly bright 300-nit backlight. There’s not a huge amount of contrast, but colours were vibrant we were very impressed with the excellent viewing angles – there’s plenty of tilt, but you don’t always need to use it to achieve accurate colours.

This updated Series 9 feels like the version we should have got last year – it has vastly superior build quality, an improved screen and a more sensible chassis layout that makes it feel every inch the premium product it should be. It’s priced accordingly, at around £100 more than a 13-inch Apple MacBook Air and £200 more than Ultrabooks such as the Asus ZenBook UX31, but it’s still the best Windows Ultrabook there is.