Screen and sound
No, it’s not the 3,200x1,800 laptop screen
which Samsung has just released at SID, but the 13.3 inch, 1,080p screen here
is still vibrant. There’s no clear pixelation or the serrated edges. We
especially love the strong colors, which are still vibrant even when you push
the screen forward or watch from the side. Sometimes the glossy surface can
create noise to the viewing angle, b but controlling the brightness along its 350-nit
range seems to remove that.
No,
it’s not the 3,200x1,800 laptop screen which Samsung has just released at SID,
but the 13.3 inch, 1,080p screen here is still vibrant.
Do you prefer small and brassy or silently
warm sound quality? That’s the choice we have to make with all forms of
recently Ultrabook, starting with Toshiba Kirabook and Asus Transformer Book and
then then with ATIV Book 7. If you’re like us, you will choose the balanced
sound, even if it means that you can’t dance with the volume that Justin
Timberlake requires. And that’s actually what ATIV Book 7 offers. I love to
hear everything from jazz to metal rock to pop, but setting the volume at max
level is normally not enough – even the traffic noise from an open window is enough
to overwhelm the sound somewhat, which means that the cracked air conditioners
may be a problem. However, the problem is that the more distorted the sound is,
the more the rate increases. Which mean that you will be fine when sitting
alone in a quiet space, but you may prefer using the louder speakerphone when
the AC season is coming.
Performance and battery life
Samsung ATIV Book 7 (Core i5-3337U 1.8GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,418
·
3DMark06: 4,045
·
3DMark11: E1081/P600
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 626MB/s (read); 137MB/s
(write)
Asus Transformer Book (Core i7-3517U 1.9GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,414
·
3DMark06: 3,840
·
3DMark11: E924/P512/X177
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 482MB/s (read); 317MB/s
(write)
Toshiba Kirabook (Core i7-3537U 2GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 5,275
·
3DMark06: 5,272
·
3DMark11: N/A
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 553MB/s (read); 500MB/s
(write)
Acer Aspire S7 (Core i7-3517U 1.9GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 5,011
·
3DMark06: 4,918
·
3DMark11: E1035/P620/X208
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 934MB/s (read); 686MB/s
(write)
MSI Slidebook S20 (Core i5-3337U 1.8GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,043
·
3DMark06: 3,944
·
3DMark11: E1053/P578
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 484MB/s (read); 286MB/s
(write)
Asus Taichi 21 (Core i7-3517U 1.9GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,998
·
3DMark06: 4,818
·
3DMark11: E1137/P610/X201
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 516MB/s (read); 431MB/s
(write)
Microsoft Surface Por (Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,673
·
3DMark06: 3,811
·
3DMark11: E1019/P552
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 526MB/s (read); 201MB/s
(write)
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 (Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,422
·
3DMark06: 4,415
·
3DMark11: E917/P572
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 278MB/s (read); 263MB/s
(write)
Dell XPS 12 (Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, Intel HD 4000)
·
PCMark7: 4,673
·
3DMark06: 4,520
·
3DMark11: N/A
·
ATTO (top drive speed): 516MB/s (read); 263MB/s
(write)
ATIV Book 7 has 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD which
are created by Samsung, built-in Intel HD 4000 graphics and Ivy Bridge Core
i5-3317U processor running at 1.8GHz. besides the SSD, that’s the same
technical specs you will find on lots of recently Ultrabooks, even MSI
Slidebook S20. So it’s nothing to be surprise that it provides the almost same
scores in everything from PCMark7 to the graphics tests such as 3DMark. Its
startup time of 8 seconds is also typical.
ATIV
Book 7 has 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD which are created by Samsung
Actually, one thing that surprises us is
the drive performance. First of all, write speed of SSD is pretty slow, with
the average of 137MB/s in ATTO. At the same time, its read speed is pretty
messy – but always higher than average. Even at lowest speed, we realized the
transfer rate of about 545MB/s, still better than what you receive from most of
Ultrabook. However, when it’s good, it’s actually good – exactly is 742MB/s up
high. After running the same test for times, we have the average of 626MB/s, which
is still excellent.
The apps launch quickly and we have no
problem in Netflix switching with music streaming and some weird tab changes in
IE10. After about an hour of playing music through the browser, the keyboard
still feels cool, though the underside feels warm near the fan. However, it
never becomes hot, so you shouldn’t hesitate when putting it on your thigh,
because it’s planned to use so. Fan noise is also small, especially for the
rivals such as Kirabook.
The
keyboard still feels cool
Samsung rates 57Wh battery of ATIV Book at
6.7 hours. We think that you can approach that run time in fact – if you’re
doing something light, such as surfing the web with screen brightness set at
low level. In our test, which includes repeating a video from the local disk
drive with WiFi on and stable brightness at 65%, the battery lasts 5 hours 2 minutes.
Like we always say in the Ultrabook review, it’s not bad, relatively at least;
the touch screen laptop with Ivy Bridge can’t last longer than 5 hours and a
half in one charge. However, in this case, we somewhat hope that ATIV Book 7 will
defend for the weight with special battery life. Fortunately, at least Haswell will
help in this respect, supposing that after all Samsung will renew CPU.
