Rating Samsung’s first notebooks for the U.S.
Full article here
If your holiday list includes a laptop, there’s a new choice from an well-known name: Samsung. In October, Samsung announced that it was entering the U.S. market with six new notebooks, as well as a netbook. The timing wasn’t great. After several quarters of double-digit growth, the PC market cooled off in late September, but Samsung seems undeterred. So should you consider a Samsung system? Here’s what the reviews sites have to say.
Laptop Magazine has been all over Samsung’s U.S. launch, and the site just posted a review of the Samsung R610-64G, a desktop replacement with a 16-inch widescreen display. Their verdict: The R610-64G has a great design, and it is one of the lightest (6 pounds), thinnest and most inexpensive models in its class. But if you’re looking for a laptop with a 16-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, you probably expect a great multimedia experience too, and with its relatively low resolution display (1,366×768), poor audio quality, weak gaming performance, and lack of either Blu-ray or dedicated media controls, the R610-64G makes too many sacrifices to get the price below $1,000. Other choices in this category include the Acer Aspire 6930G, HP HDX 16 and Sony VAIO FW series. The Aspire 6930G-6723, which Laptop Magazine also just reviewed makes for an interesting comparison because it is also priced at $999, but includes Blu-ray and better graphics.
One thing really can’t be avoided when you’re increasing your market in terms of branching off to different products: criticism. Although plenty of companies, especially with the economic turmoil going around, think that such is the way to go, if the research does not go as well as planned, the end-product results in something that may in fact be subtle compared to what is offered by the market.
Samsung may perhaps need a new product after this one: as for anything other than the large 16″ screen? It’s pretty much what it’s only going for.
