Samsung - Notebook 9 Pro 13.3" Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - 256GB Solid State Drive - Titan Silver

Pros +Flexible as a 2-in-1 and very portable +Included S-Pen works well and stores in the case +Comfortable keyboard and accurate touchpad +Has a USB-C port that supports charging +Excellent build quality Cons -Battery life has been a bit inconsistent and is only average -Some bloatware -Speakers could have more bass Summary This is a very good 2-in-1 from Samsung. While I would have liked a more optimized battery life, it doesn't have any noticeable weak spots. It has a good mix of ports that includes USB-C, is light, and very well constructed. The pricing is on par as well when compared to others with similar build quality. This device is recommended for business travelers and students. Background I picked up the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13.3 from my local Best Buy. I wanted a travel friendly Windows 2-in-1 with a good screen, keyboard, touchpad, USB-C compatibility, and battery life. My daily driver to this point has been a 2016 MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar and I have been testing out many recent Windows laptops including the 2017 models of the Dell XPS 13 (regular and 2-in-1), 2017 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, 2017 Surface Pro, 2017 Galaxy Book, 2017 Spectre x360 13, and others. My thoughts are based on being a frequent business traveler that spends a lot of time in Microsoft Office & Office 365 and the web. I also play some light games like World of Warcraft and League of Legends. Design I really like the design. It's a professional and clean silver aluminum body with a dark interior that makes the key lettering pop. The hinges are sturdy and fairly firm to minimize screen wobble. Fingerprints tend to show up on the inside in the keyboard deck area, but are easy to wipe clean. The rounded edges of the body make it easy to carry and nothing digs into your hands. It weighs under 3 pounds, is thin, and very easy to carry around or toss into a bag. The fit and finish is excellent. Display The laptop comes with a 13.3-inch touchscreen at 1080p resolution. It looks good and I think is the perfect resolution for this screen size. A higher resolution would draw more power and I don't think the tradeoff is worth it for a mobile device. Plus, there is less of a chance of running into Windows text scaling issues. While it doesn't have the thinnest bezels, they are still quite slim and look good. Light bleed is very minimal. Text and video are both clear and HDR is supported. The panel is pleasing to look at and is plenty sharp for standard use. Input devices The 3-stage backlit keyboard has a good amount of travel, is relatively quiet, and is easy to type on. My biggest gripe with it is the fact that functions like volume and screen brightness are not the default action for the function key row. I checked the BIOS and there doesn't seem to be a way to enable these by default. The touchpad glides well and makes satisfying click. It supports gestures and tracks accurately. The device includes the S Pen that slides into the case which is very convenient so you always have it with you and you don't have to worry about figuring out how to attach or secure it to the device like other similar devices. The S Pen does not require batteries and while thin, provides a good mark-up experience. Having used the Apple Pencil and new 2017 Surface Pen, I find it works just as well as those two for casual use. Ports 2 USB 3.0 1 HDMI 1 DC Power (1.5mm) 1 USB-C that supports charging and display port - Note - I use the Apple USB-C to HDMI adapter to charge the device and plug it into my monitor with one cable. 1 Headphone/Mic combo port 1 micro SD card Audio There are two downward firing speakers on the bottom of the case that get loud enough. The audio is clear, but there is a distinct lack of bass that is common in most laptops. They are fine most casual use, but not as good as the newer MacBook Pro models which have amazing audio. Performance A dual core i7-7500 powers the device and I have not run into any issues with daily tasks. It scored a 4352 on the single core and 8548 on the multi-core Geekbench 4 tests. The integrated Intel HD 620 graphics are ok for light games, but you are going to have to turn details way down to achieve a decent frame rate. I would have preferred to see an option for Iris graphics for a bit of added game power, but it still drives multiple windows, including streaming video, across my Dell 34 inch ultrawide with no problems. The included 8GB of DDR4 RAM and SATA 3 256GB SSD are not upgradeable. Wireless performance is good and uses the Intel 8265 card. Bluetooth 4.1 works as expected. Battery Life Battery life is just ok. It has a decent sized 54Wh battery and gets about 8 hours of casual use with battery save on. It's not quite as strong as competitors in the early stages of ownership, so I may need to dig into the power plan settings to see if I can make some tweaks. Since the device can charge over USB-C, a portable power bank is an option to help augment the battery. Webcam The front facing 720p webcam can best be describes as serviceable. It's fine for web conferences, but it's not going to win any awards. Windows Hello facial recognition is supported and works very well. Heat & Fans The device gets warm towards the middle back when under load, but the keyboard and touchpad are still comfortable to type on. If you are doing some heavy processing, it will get warm on your lap. The fans are not audible doing normal tasks, but do ramp up if playing a game or other processor intensive tasks. I was not able to detect any coil whine (the bane of every Dell laptop I have used). OS/Bloatware The device ships with Windows 10 Home and the Creator Update. There is quite a bit of bloatware installed including McAfee, Samsung Apps, and various Windows store games. The first thing I did was clear all of that stuff off. I would much rather have the Microsoft Signature edition install that you typically only get from the Microsoft Store and other vendors like Lenovo, but a little time doing app housekeeping or a fresh install resolves this. Samsung includes an app for driver updates, but it can also pull from the standard Windows 10 update process.

This is a great laptop that I'd recommend to anyone~! *Summary: The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is a very nice laptop that is thin, light, speedy, and well-constructed with a beautiful and bright display. It also offers useful extras such as the S Pen for the artistic types as well as active pen note-takers. < PROS > *Build quality. The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is a solid and well-constructed laptop. It is made of premium materials with a premium feel when you touch it and use it. Everything is fitted very well and there are no annoying creaks or noises that distract from the user experience. Similar to Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series of phones, this laptop is solidly built. The hinge works quietly and smoothly and is easy to convert into its Tablet mode. It is also very thin and light, weighing only ~2.5 lbs. Perfect for students and business travelers alike. *Display. The 1080P Full HD display is bright and crispy with great viewing angles, color fidelity, and accuracy. There are absolutely no complaints here as it is all wonderful. *Keyboard and Touchpad. The keys have a nice matte feeling to it and is very easy to type on despite its relatively short keystroke travel. I had no problem adjusting to it from my previous daily-driver laptop, the HP Pavilion dv4. I especially appreciate the location of the Arrow keys on the lower-right hand corner since it's easy to access and use. It would've been nice if the Pg Up & Pg Dn keys had their own separate physical keys (instead of using the Fn key with the arrow keys) but due to the smaller form-factor of this 13.3" laptop, it is understandable. To make it more convenient for myself, I went into Settings then Advanced Gesture Configuration and created custom gesture shortcuts for Home, End, Pg Up, and Pg Down. The Touchpad sensitivity and responsiveness are also great. Two-finger, three-finger, and four-finger shortcuts and gestures all work very well and makes navigating between and within applications very seamless and smooth. *Connectivity options. Wifi and Bluetooth performance are excellent. *Ports. With 1x HDMI, 1x USB Type C, 1x card reader, and 2x USB ports, the Notebook 9 Pro easily fulfills most people's port connectivity needs. I'm certainly satisfied. *Speakers. The sound comes out nice and decently loud. The bass, as expected, isn't great but that is to be expected from such a thin and light laptop chassis. *Performance. With the Intel Core i7 7500U (2 cores, 4 threads), 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, and the Intel HD Graphics 620, the laptop will plow through everything very fast except for graphic-intensive 3D games. Opening Chrome or Firefox with ~20 tabs doesn't slow the machine down. Multi-tasking with multiple applications and background processes is also very good. Installation of large filesize applications, such as Office 2013, goes by very fast. Love it~! *S-Pen. For those that want or need it, the S Pen is a definite plus. With its fine-grain control and sensitivity, those who like to draw on the screen or take notes during classes or meetings will have no issues. It just works and works very well. *Battery life & charging options. Running on my own copy of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (upgraded from the default Windows 10 Home), I have experienced very good battery life. I can easily obtain 6 to 8 hours of battery life before needing a recharge, which is more than good enough for me. In addition to charging the laptop via the included wall power adapter, one can also charge up with a power bank and a USB Type C cable which is very, very cool. Fast Charge is also possible and much appreciated. *Samsung software. Samsung has included some very useful and easy-to-use software for users that are truly helpful and are NOT bloatware. I like the Samsung Update app because it allows one to easily discover, download, and install important system drivers and software updates. I like that I don't have to visit a separate website, go through multiple menues, and individually find and download each driver and software package. The Samsung Update app makes it very simple to manage important downloads. Another useful Samsung app is the Samsung Settings app. From within the app, one can quickly toggle On and Off features such as Auto Booting (boot the laptop when the lid is opened), USB charging, Display Color mode (similar to Samsung smartphone display options), Video HDR, Keyboard Light control, and Sound Effects. The Samsung Recovery app is a dead-simple backup management software one can use to restore your laptop to its Factory Default state, make a disk copy backup of your SSD to another SSD, and also perform data backup to external storage. Finally, there is the Samsung Security app. With it, you can create a Privacy Folder that prevents others from accessing your personal content (similar to Samsung smartphone's Knox app), activate a software screen filter that obscures the laptop's display so others nearby cannot get a clear look, and a Block Recording mode that protects you from unauthorized recordings and wiretaps through the laptop's camera and microphone. I don't know how well this works in the real world but it is a nice feature to have as extra protection. *Memory upgrade options. With the RAM soldered to the laptop, one cannot upgrade the RAM. Since this isn't a gaming laptop, however, I don't count this as a serious issue. I think 8GB will be enough for most people. It is for me. *SSD interface. Too bad the SSD uses the older and slower SATA-III interface. It would've been nicer if the Notebook 9 Pro used the more future-proof NVME PCI-Express interface. With that said, however, the laptop still boots up very, very quickly and I don't think most people will notice any difference between using a SATA-III SSD and a PCI-E SSD (unless one copies/accesses large amounts of data very frequently). I also wish the size of the SSD was at least 512 GB. On the positive size, the SSD is user-upgradeable and I'm planning on upgrading to a 1TB Samsung 850 Evo drive (M.2 SATA-III) in the near future. Out of 10, I rate the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13.3" laptop a 9.5 out of 10. It gets right the main crucial and important aspects of a good laptop experience - easy portability (thin, light, and good battery life), bright & crispy display, superb fit-and-finish with premium build materials, excellent touchpad and keyboard, useful connectivity ports, fast storage (user-upgradeable), fast performance, and stable software. The icing on the cake is the very handy and useful S Pen that is integrated neatly into the laptop chassis. This is a quality machine from Samsung.

This is a very nice laptop. It's quit possible the thinnest and lightest without skimping on performance. While it does not contain a discrete graphics card like my thinkpad, it does 90% of what my thinkpad does but in a more svelte profile. While it doesn't look quite as nice as a Razer Blade or the new HP Envys, it does bring to the table an included stylus, something that i'm familiar with especialy since the Samasung Galaxy Note has been one of my pair of phone I've carried since its inception. Again, very solid ultrabook that can do light games and light editing work. You won't be disappointed. It ieven has an microSD slot, USB port and USB C + HDMI. Take that apple, Samsung shows that you can make a MacBook Air and not skimp out on ports.

My current laptop is a 17" Dell that I purchased 6 or 7 years ago. It's big, bulky and has slowed way down over the years. However, it's still useful so what I was looking for was a small, portable machine that was fast, light, and didn't break the bank to buy. This computer met all of those criteria and more. The laptop is small and thin but it feels very sturdy and well made. There is zero screen wobble and the backlit keyboard provides a nice feeling, quick response. Flipping the screen over instantly turns the laptop into either a tablet or "tent" mode, depending on how far you go with it. Boot time is incredible to me. The power comes on automatically when you open the lid and the computer is fully booted and ready to go in about 10 seconds. Shut down is less than 10 seconds as well. This is due to the SSD memory, which is only 256GB. There is a larger 15" model of this notebook that has 500GB, but 256GB is more than enough for what I need and I also use a standalone hard drive anyway for backup and storage of old files. So no problems for me but the memory is not upgradeable so if you need more, spend a little extra for the 15" model or invest in a stand alone drive to go with this computer. Being a new computer, the wireless is the newest AC standard and it is lighting fast as well. Overall, the entire computer is just extremely fast. Granted I'm coming from an older computer with a regular hard drive, but I have a 2 month old laptop from work that is nowhere near as fast as this. As far as the S-pen goes, people will either love it or never need it. I've had Samsung phones since the Galaxy S3 and am currently 4 years into owning Galaxy Note's, so I am very familiar with the S-Pen and I can say that it really is a useful piece of equipment. Aside from the drawing aspects or note taking, most people would find use of it from being able to use this in tablet mode without marking up the screen with fingerprints. But the S-pen does have some really neat tricks like Smart Select or screen write. I know people who have a Surface and they were impressed with the S-pen, especially with it being built in. The track pad is accurate and has no major flaws. There are dedicated Pg Up/Pg Down buttons along with Home and End. I noticed another reviewer was disappointed that the functions on the Fn keys weren't the default option and you had to press Fn and then the button. However, at the top of the keyboard, to the right is a Fn Lock button that makes all your F buttons default to their function. Yes, it would be nice to not have to press the lock button, but it's not really an inconvenience in my world. I'm not sure what else I can say about this machine. I needed something that was quick and easy to use for everyday use email and web surfing, along with watching videos or streaming Netflix through Chromecast. I'm not doing any heavy gaming so I can't comment on that but for an everyday computer that has a great screen, is easy to use and ultra portable, this is fantastic. There is some minor bloatware but it is easily uninstalled to free up space. Battery life has been good and I really have no complaints. I would highly recommend this computer to anyone.

This is an excellent overall laptop for college! It is lightweight, great battery life, and definitely powerful for it's compact size! Though it can be used for light gaming (think Civ V, The Sims 2/3/4 series), it should will not perform well under heavier graphics and high end gaming loads. The keyboard is back-lit and very comfortable to type with, very solid feel and great key travel. Screen is bright when it needs to be, responsive to the included S-Pen and fingers, very nice colors, and a night mode that reduce eye strain by limiting excess blue light. The system weighs about the same as my Surface 3 tablet and in a classroom setting (heavy notes typing, some screen drawing) it usually achieves about 8-9 hours of battery life. Keep in mind, this is NOT with the brightness turned all the way up or 25 browser tabs open! I have read some of the other reviews, here and elsewhere on the internet slamming the Notebook 9 Pro for it's "lackluster" battery performance and that is simply untrue. All I can imagine is those reviewers have the brightness all the way up to an uncomfortable level while streaming heavy amount of media in the background. My experience has been the 8-9 hours throughout a day of classes (summer to get ahead in my major) that includes some light gaming in between classes, playing Pandora or YouTube in the background, and lots of typing/web based research! I would highly recommend this laptop for college students or professionals who travel a lot.

My position in Info Tech requires that I regularly review computer specifications for our organization. When researching the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13, I was searching for a personal computer for everyday use at home where I put the computer through a completely different workload that is often driven by more creative or "fun" activities rather than slideshows, spreadsheets and systems management tools. The Notebook 9 Pro 13 caught my eye because of its sturdy, slim, lightweight, touchscreen, laptop/tablet...WITH A PEN. I previously had a competitor's laptop that was virtually identical in design to the Notebook 9 only slightly smaller in footprint and hard drive--and did NOT include a pen (although the technology was optional). Even with cloud storage for my personal photos, music, and documents I quickly maxed out the 128GB SSD in my old laptop so I knew I needed at least 256GB in my next machine. The Notebook 9 Pro 13 (NP940X3M) comes with a 256GB SSD hard drive. Out of the box that leaves 195GB of free space on the hard drive. Ideally I would have preferred a 512GB hard drive but that would drive up the price. 256GB with photos & music in the cloud should still leave me enough room to install MS Office, graphics editing programs, a video editor--and leave room for more apps down the road. The i7 processor was an upgrade from my old laptop and I must say the Notebook 9 with i7 is plenty fast. I don't game beyond "Candy Crush" (which performed just fine on this machine). I did have my son install Call of Duty via Steam on the laptop for testing purposes. He had no difficulties gaming on the Notebook 9 Pro (as compared to his souped up gaming computer with a discrete graphics card) but he did note that a gamer would need way more hard drive capacity. The touchscreen is responsive both to fingers and the pen. In fact, I really like the pen. It seems to work just as well as the Surface Pro pen. It is a nice touch that Samsung lets you store the pen in the laptop for safe keeping. Doodling and handwriting-to-text are about all I have done with the pen so far, but I did let an artist play with the pen. He was able to create some very nice freehand images with the built-in sketching programs. I am sure with a more robust drawing or CAD program you can do much more with the pen. The keyboard is illuminated (something lacking from my previous laptop) which is very helpful in poorly lit rooms. It has the latest USB-C port which supposedly lets you power the laptop from an external battery. (Battery life has been average to good in first week of ownership.) Graphics from the webcam and screen are fine for the average user. The only "cons" keeping this laptop from getting 5* are the lack of dedicated page up/down keys, 8GB RAM instead of 16 (especially since you cannot add memory to this model) and the 256GB hard drive--but if I really wanted to I could have paid more for those options. If you can survive the next 4-5 years with a 256GB hard drive you should definitely consider buying this laptop. It is portable, functional and fun to use.

I've only had the Samsung Series 9 Pro 13" (June 2017 version) for a few hours but it is the laptop I always wished to have. So far everything about it is very good; easy to type on keyboard, beautiful screen, it feels very light on my lap; long battery life, keyboard layout is standard, and more. I would prefer Windows 7 but Microsoft has moved on and I have no choice.

Since Windows 10 really should run the same on all hardware, I’m going to try and concentrate on the hardware aspect of this Samsung Notebook 9 Pro and try to refrain from mentioning Windows 10 too much. Another thing I will undoubtedly do is make some comparisons to Samsung’s main competitor in a few different arenas…Apple. We have had Windows computers in our house since 1997 from a variety of manufacturers, Dell, Toshiba, Sony and HP. I have had a MacBook Pro as my “main” computer for about three years now. When I changed from an HP laptop to the MacBook, it was one of those “Wow!” moments in technology life. I just had another one of those moments when I opened and started using this Samsung Notebook. This computer and how snappy it runs Windows could be just the thing to lure me back to the “PC” world. It is seriously that good…in a number of ways. Even before booting it up, this Samsung impresses with fit and finish as good as any of the Apple products in our house, which I think says a lot considering Apple’s reputation. Nice job Samsung! And this comes from someone old enough to remember Samsung from many, many years ago when they had a reputation of being a manufacturer of low-line, discount electronics and appliances. While built-in optical drives are a thing of the past on laptop computers these days, Samsung has seen fit to still provide a full array of ports and jacks on this model that should satisfy most users. So, no CD/DVD drive, but you still get one HDMI port, one 3.5mm headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB-C port, a slot for a microSD card, and a round DC power jack. The full user manual on Samsung’s web site makes no mention of a maximum capacity for the micro SD card, so maybe this is no longer an issue like it was with some devices in the past. The connector for the AC power adapter is a little disappointing as it feels rather flimsy – only time will tell how durable it is. The other thing is that when the lid is shut and the power adapter connected, there is no light to tell you that yes, it is charging, or that it is now fully charged – I miss that, compared to my MacBook. The built-in speakers are on the bottom of the case which works better than I anticipated, but I guess this makes sense when you fold the screen back onto the case to turn the device into a tablet. The “Samsung” logo on the back of the top cover does not light up which is slightly disappointing, but I believe Apple no longer lights up their logo on the latest MacBooks either. When you first set-up the Notebook 9 Pro, you have the option of using Cortana and voice recognition. This worked pretty flawlessly and made a great first impression. Even though I prefer not to talk to my devices in public, using this feature at home was impressive. I have the computer set up to shut down when the lid is closed, and with the solid state hard drive, the time spent booting up is very minimal. If you have not yet had a computer with an SSHD, you are in for a real treat once you get one. Hands down, the coolest feature of this computer, for me anyway, is the facial recognition to unlock it. Combine this with the auto boot feature and these functions keep your computer secure from unauthorized users. The facial recognition worked really well, even with my face being back-lit by a window. It did have trouble when I did not have my glasses on since the reference image was taken while I was wearing glasses. There might be a way to save multiple images for each user…I have not researched this yet. I used this computer to write this review (I thought that was only fitting) and I have to say I was real impressed with the feel of both the physical keyboard, and of the virtual one when using the tablet function. The backlighting is well done and illuminates uniformly. I can truthfully say it is a pleasure to type on. In the one week period I have had this Samsung, I have only scratched the surface of how things work…especially in Windows 10. I suspect that as I become more acquainted with this operating system I will be even more impressed with what this little machine can do. In my opinion Samsung has a real winner here for the everyday user, especially at this price point (even more so when cross shopping to a MacBook). This computer can definitely hold its own when compared to others on the market, and if you are shopping for a new computer for the kid going off to college, they will have nothing to be ashamed of with their dorm-mates.