When we first experienced the Samsung's
ATIV Smart PC, we did not have the optional keyboard dock. But finally the
accessory arrived to our lap just before the holidays, so we had the
opportunity to update our review. For $130, the keyboard dock buys you a nice
Chiclet keyboard, a mediocre button-less track pad and two standard USB 2.0
ports. The complete hybrid system ends up being heavier and thicker than an
11-inch MacBook Air - not quite as attractive but by no means cumbersome.
Different from the keyboard dock available for ASUS' Transformer series,
Samsung's accessory does not contain any kind of built-in battery, which is a
disappointing fact.
Keyboard
dock
The keyboard dock is placed in a plastic
shell that goes with the bluish-gray saturation of the ATIV Smart PC, but
misses the shiny, fake brushed-metal finish for a less durable satin paintjob.
Some kind of aluminum alloy along with the track pad creates a rail for the
tablet to slip, is the same color as the cover. Finally, an island-style
keyboard is colored in black with some white labels on it. You can find four
rubber feet at four corners of the accessory, two LEDs (caps lock and power) to
the left of the front edge, a port for power connector plus one USB 2.0 socket
on the left hand side and another USB 2.0 port on the right (each of the USBs
is covered by a plastic flap).
Inserting the ATIV Smart PC for the first
time requires you to remove plastic covers on either side of the dock connector
at the bottom edge of the tablet. The PC sits completely in place when two
hooks inside the rails fasten with the above-mentioned slots. Once it is
attached, you are no longer being able to access to the tablet’s power
connector; this is the reason behind Samsung’s design to place it on the
keyboard dock rather than on the tablet. A button on the rail allows you to
unlock the mechanism, and small Teflon pads located inside the hinge prevent
the PC from being scratched when it's being inserted and removed.
The dock connector consists of 12
symmetrical pins, which are arranged in a zigzag pattern on the keyboard dock,
corresponding points on the tablet. Unluckily, this is not the most reliable
setup: there's enough cavity in the hinge mechanism, which causes a lot of
troubles when we try to attach the PC and its accessory -- say when changing
the angle of the scree in particular. Moreover, we felt that the widescreen
could not be pushed back far enough compared to many other laptops.
You'll find the button-less track pad as
one of the best features of the device. It handles two-finger scrolling
remarkably well compared to most Windows machines, but we still experienced
problems that the machine very likely misunderstood between one-finger clicks
and two-finger clicks. It's also a bit small. The good news is, we love the
Chiclet keyboard operation -- it looks and feels similar to the keyboard found
on Samsung's recent Chromebooks. The design is spontaneous and friendly with
the users, with an Fn key allows us to operate special commands like adjusting
brightness and volume.
The
keyboard dock
On the other hand, we are as disappointed
about this keyboard dock as the ATIV Smart PC itself: there are so many issues
that stay unresolved to recommend this accessory. The dock connector itself is
not electrically designed well enough and the track pad is just annoying. It's
not satisfied spending $130 on a battery-less keyboard dock that should be
bundled with the tablet (it's pretty much required if you want to use the
Desktop UI). The accessory itself misses out the SD card slot and headphone
jack and because of this inconvenience, the PC is really uncomfortable to use
when docked. At least the keyboard is good, right?
Display and sound
We had stated our opinion that 11inch
screen can be quite difficult to use in tablet mode, at least, if you tend to
type a lot on the keyboard. Hot about the panel itself? Not bad, but neither
great. On one hand, the screen using PLS technology of Samsung competes with
IPS in terms of providing wide viewing angles. In fact, we experienced many
weeks of testing this machine without the dock keyboard, so we know how it
feels to lay the tablet on the table and watch movies. Even from such an
off-angle, you can easily follow the movie.
The
off-angle view
However, there are some “however” here –
the screen is just bright enough to use under the direct sunlight. Of course
increasing the brightness helped us a lot in framing photo in a sunny day, but
we had to squint though and wait until going inside to see whether the photos
were good or not. Moreover, the resolution of 1,366x768 of the tablet just
displays a 135 ppi pixel density. Of course, it can still be useful, but
causing disappointed while it is such an expensive tablet, and it also causes
the feeling of inadequate when companies like Apple, Asus and Acer are all
using higher resolution (2,048x1,536 on the fourth generation iPad and
1920x1200 on Transformer Pad Infinity and Iconia Tab A700).
