Samsung - Notebook 3 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 4GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Black

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• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Very good deal if you upgrade the laptop

  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Elite Plus Member

  I am posting this because this is a much more interesting Windows laptop than it appears to be on first blush. For the price, this is one of the few laptops that has an open M.2 SATA IIII slot for an SSD. For a total of about $800 and a little invested time, this laptop can be easily upgraded to a configuration with 16gb RAM with 500GB SSD + 2tb HD. Here are the Pros and Cons, as I see them: PROS 1. Laptop has an open M.2 SATA IIII slot for an SSD . I purchased a Crucal MX300 525gb M.2 SSD for $125 and installed it. It requires a 2280 size M.2 SSD. The installation requires a little bit of patience (described below in Cons), but it is not hard. 2. Easily accessible HD and RAM. This laptop is old school in a very good way in this regard: I upgraded the HD to 2TB and the RAM to 16GB. I purchased 2 x 8GB Kingston Memory HX318LS11IBK2 HyperX DDR3L 1866 SODIMMs (PC3L 14900 RAM) for $90. There are cheaper versions, but I'm happy with this. I had an extra 2.5" 2tb internal hard drive and installed it. A new one can be purchased for $90-$100. Be aware that upgrading to include an SSD requires more effort than this (see below in CONS), but it is not particularly hard. 3. Full HD 1920x1080 display: nice brightness and clarity compared to other budget laptops, which are often 1386x720. 4. Good keyboard: responsive and easy to type. No "dead" keys, which I have experienced on other budget laptops, such as the low-end Acers. The keyboard includes an "Fn Lock" key next to F12 that allows toggling between traditional F key functions and more recent functions. Thus, the volume, screen brightness, etc. controls can be left in place until the Fn Lock key is pushed, when the traditional F key functions are put into use until the Fn Lock key is pushed again (works like the Caps Lock button); This is a typical feature on Samsung laptops, and I find it useful. 5. Good touchpad for budget laptop: responsive with dedicated right and left buttons. Two-finger scrolling is acceptable--not as good as my retina Macbook Pro 15, but good for a Windows laptop. 6. Lightweight: 4.4 lbs is about a pound less than comparable budget laptops. The power adapter is small and easily portable. 7. Connectivity: 3 USB ports - 1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0 is reasonable; HDMI port and dedicated Ethernet port, for those who need it 8. Auto power on when the lid is opened: a nice feature in Samsung laptops that I personally like. It can be turned off for those who don't like it. 9. Decent sound: speakers are pretty loud, though certainly not audiophile-quality. 10. Samsung quality: Most Samsung notebooks are high-end or mid-level, so this is a well-made budget laptop. I have a Samsung Notebook 9 15, and I can see the family resemblance in quality (even though Notebook 9 15 is a much higher end laptop). CONS: 1. Budget level quality - The case is plastic, and it picks up fingerprints and oil from fingers easily. I wipe down the case, keyboard, and touchpad regularly with a faintly damp paper towel to keep it clean. Any laptop with black keys requires frequent wipe downs of this sort, in my experience, unless you want finger oil to stain your keyboard. The only exceptions that I have seen are laptops with silver keys, such as my HP Envy 15t, which I still wipe down occasionally--just not as much as with black keyboards. 2. TN screen: The screen is not IPS, so the clarity cannot compare with higher end laptops. Still, at 100% brighness, the screen looks nice with clear text. At 50% brighness, it remains very usable and extends battery life. 3. Smallish touchpad:some current models have much larger touchpads, but I find it acceptable for use. 4. Low-mid battery life: For me (at 50% screen brightness), the 43.3 mWh battery delivers 5-6 hours of light use, 3 hours of continuous wifi video screening (Netflix or Internet TV). Battery is internal and cannot be swapped out for a spare. An external battery would be needed for those who want more battery life. 5. SSD upgrade requires removal of the bottom panel. This is not as easily accessible as the RAM and HD slots, both of which require removing only one screw and a plastic panel on the bottom of the laptop. Removal requires unscrewing 10 screws with a small Phillips head screwdriver on the bottom (the HD must also be removed, although the RAM and its slot cover can be left in place). The tricky (but still easy part) lies in snapping off the bottom panel. Pull gently but firmly at one of the front corners to make enough space to slide an old credit card between the bottom panel and the top of the case. Then slide the old credit card back and forth along the seams: this will easily and gently open the case without creating any damage. There are various videos of this procedure available on YouTube (many use a guitair pick), but I find that an old credit card is fine for this purpose, especially on this laptop. Remember to use a 2280 sized SSD and that it will require one screw to be fixed firmly into place (2 installation screws should come with the SSD when purchased). Unlike other laptops of recent vintage, once the bottom is removed, there are no cables to be particularly concerned about breaking--the bottom lifts easily off, and the M.2 slot is easily accessed at this point. 6. This laptop has the older Realtek audio drivers for Windows 10, and the volume warning is implemented: when headphones or external speakers are plugged into the mini stereo input, the volume is automatically set to below 40. When one tries to increase the volume, a warning screen about listening to loud volume comes up EVERY TIME. There is a way to easily disable this by changing the audio driver to Microsoft HD audio drivers in device manager (there are a number of instructional sites on the Internet for this), but then Stereo Mix functionality is lost. I use Stereo Mix, so I left the Realtek audio drivers in place and accept that I have to click on "Allow" every time I want to increase the volume with headphones or external speaker. On the other hand, use of a Bluetooth speaker does not bring up this annoying message. FYI, this annoying "feature" is not on my Samsung Notebook 9 15. 7. Older 802.11bgn wifi. I purchased a Motoraux 600Mbps Dual Band wireless USB wifi adapter for $20, and it works great. It sticks out only 1/2 inch, so it's quite small and can be left inside the notebook at all times. 8. External monitor support: I did a clean install of Windows 10 on the SSD, and Samsung does not supply driver downloads on its website for this model. Thus, while Samsung-specific drivers may support higher external monitor resolution, I get a maximum of 1920x1200 via HDMI after installing video drivers via Windows 10 installation and DriverMax. Unfortunately, my external monitor is a 4k Samsung, so this laptop does not support enough resolution for me. I haven't put a lot of time into resolving this issue because I use this laptop as a pure mobile computing device, but this may be annoying for those who want to output to 2k or 4k external monitors after a clean install of Windows 10. Overall, this is good opportunity to buy a nice budget laptop from a quality laptop maker. Installing an M.2 SSD and upgrading the RAM and HD makes this into a system that that has a high-end configuration for a fraction of the cost of other systems. There are other laptops that can be upgraded to similar specs at even lower cost, but this is the cheapest combination that I have found with FHD screen resolution, easy RAM upgrade, and good keyboard and touchpad.

  Posted 9 years ago by SamsungBuyer