Samsung Series 5 review

While other manufacturers have been busily trimming the fat from their Ultrabooks, Samsung’s approach looks to be a little more sensible. Instead of shedding every last gram, the 14in £853 Series 5 places the emphasis back on the practical, putting back the ports and optical drive missing from its peers.

Those after the slimmest, sexiest Ultrabook on the market will come away disappointed. At 22mm from base to lid, this is no slender stunner. It’s more thick-set than your average Ultrabook, and a weight of 1.76kg is on the high side, too: every other machine in our recent Ultrabook Labs tipped the scales at less than 1.4kg. And despite the relative hefty figure, the Series 5 isn’t the sturdiest around. Grapple with the Series 5’s silvery chassis, and the flexible plastic is nowhere near as bombproof as Asus’s Zenbooks or Dell’s XPS 13.

There’s plenty to like, though: the Scrabble-tile keyboard has an entirely sensible layout, with well-spaced keys and a seriously wide right-Shift key making it easy to quickly get up to speed. The slight bounce in the base puts it behind the best of the Ultrabook bunch, but the keys feel responsive enough for it not to matter.

The touchpad also sees the Series 5’s sensible streak shine through, and where rivals ape Apple’s Macbook Airs with their large clickable glass touchpads, the Samsung has separate, physical buttons. We’ve only seen one other Ultrabook include these – the Toshiba Portégé Z830 – and the Samsung’s are just as good. They’re pleasingly wide and respond with the same crisp click.

Samsung has packed in plenty of connectivity, too. Most of the ports are bunched up on the left side of the machine (the right-hand edge is largely occupied by the DVD writer), and there are two USB 3 ports, one USB 2, a Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI, D-SUB and a 4-in-1 card reader. It’s a welcome departure from the Ultrabook norm.

Sitting above the keyboard is the Samsung’s 14in display. With a 1,366 x 768 native resolution and a seriously bright LED backlight – we measured it at 351cd/m2 – this matte panel delivers eyeball-searing images without the intrusive reflections of its glossy rivals. It’s great for more serious pursuits, with the high brightness and matte finish maintaining legibility even under bright sunlight.

Image quality could be improved, however, with greyish blacks robbing darker images of depth and detail. The Samsung’s contrast ratio of 158:1 is seriously disappointing. Colours aren’t particularly accurate, either, and the Series 5’s different screen modes only offer only a slight improvement. We found its “Sharp” mode to be the best bet: while it didn’t improve contrast or black levels, there was a slight improvement in colour accuracy.

Under the hood is a familiar Intel Core i5-2467M. It’s one of Intel’s ultra-low power Sandy Bridge chips, running at 1.6GHz, and it scored 0.53 in our benchmarks. That’s enough for basic tasks, but it’s a tad slower than other Ultrabooks that use the same chip.

The disparity is doubtless due to the 500GB mechanical hard disk, which the Series 5’s rivals generally replace with a dedicated SSD. Still, Samsung has fitted a 16GB SanDisk SSD, which is used exclusively by its ExpressCache system. This is designed to improve boot times, and here it works: with ExpressCache activated, the Samsung averaged a boot time of 20.7secs; with it turned off, this figure dropped to 37.2secs.

The rest of the hardware is standard Ultrabook fare. The integrated Intel graphics can handle little more than light gaming, and connectivity consists of dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 2.1. The audio kit does little to set the Samsung out from its rivals, either, with speakers that go loud but offer little bass and depth. Samsung’s SoundAlive software is supposed to help, but in our tests it made little difference.

Battery life is the final hurdle, and here the Samsung fails to impress. The 6,120mAh battery is hidden away inside the Series 5’s chassis – you’ll need to break out the screwdriver to get inside and replace it – and it managed only 6hrs 37mins in our light-use test. That’s merely average by Ultrabook standards.

Samsung’s Series 5 is a solid proposition: it’s slim, sensible and manages to cram in an unusual amount of connectivity. At £853 inc VAT, though, it has its work cut out. It isn’t much cheaper than its competitors, and the plasticky chassis and washed-out display leave it sorely lacking in pizzazz.

It might be the most sensible Ultrabook on the market, but with the Asus Zenbook UX31E proving swifter, sexier and much longer lasting for around £150 more, we’d be tempted to save up for something a little more special.

Related Posts

How To Fix an Xbox Series X Controller That Keeps Blinking Series How to Turn Off Quick Resume on a Xbox Series X How to Change the NAT Type on an Xbox Series X Xbox Series X: How to Fix No Sound in Menu Issue Samsung Galaxy S7 Review: A Great Phone in its Day, but Don’t Buy One How to Transfer Data from an iPhone to a Samsung Phone How to Change your Location on a Samsung Galaxy S8 How to Recover Deleted Messages from a Samsung Phone How To Fix Samsung Wi-Fi Calling Not Working