They’re called Series 5 and they’re Samsung’s official war cry at the ultrabook standard, a while after Acer, Asus or Toshiba jumped on board the skinny frigate trying to drown the MacBook Air. Some might say that Samsung already had an ultrabook out, namely the 9 Series, but actually that entry failed to align with Intel’s requirements when it comes to portability, autonomy and performance.
Well, it doesn’t really matter, as the 9 Series enjoyed good press and sales and it would have been sloppy from Samsung to jump in too soon in the market with another ultra slim laptop. Anyway, CES is always a good time to brag with your goodies and Samsung introduced the Series 5 ultrabooks. There are two models, 13 and 14 inch in size, with the bigger one having an optical drive as well (here are some other ultrabooks with optical units).
Both machines are powered by a Core i5 processor, integrated HD graphics and come with 4 GB of RAM, but the ultrabook essential SSD is just an option here. The base models will come with mechanical hard drives, but will have 16 GB of flash memory for fast boot times, so that you won’t lag behind a Zenbook or Portege when doing a “who boots up faster” street race.
It might be thicker than the competition, but the Series 5 also packs an optical drive
The display on both ultrabooks is a matte panel with a 1366 x 768 resolution- basically the one we’ve met and quite enjoyed on the Samsung Chromebook. The two ultrabooks are quite bulky (3.95 pounds for the 14 incher and 3.5 for the 13 incher) if compared to other ultrabooks, but have all the ports you might want- USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card, VGA (larger version only) and Ethernet. Also, one of the options you can go for is squeeze in a dedicated video card, namely the Radeon HD 7550M, something no ultrabook can do right now.
The matte, 1366 x 768 screen reminds us of the one on the Samsung Chromebook
The cheapest 14 incher will cost $899, while the base 14 inch model will sell for $949, but if you want an SSD in there, you’ll need to spend at least $1099. The pair should ship next month in a store near you or your mouse by the end of the month. Stay tuned for a short preview video from CES and we promise we’ll do our best to get a hands on clip in the following days. Enjoy.
