Samsung Ativ Book 7 review: The look is fine; the feel is not

August 09, 2013

Benchmarks are the best way to gauge a notebook’s prowess with applications such as office suites, photo and video editors, video players, games, and the like. Aesthetics are another important consideration, because you'll likely be staring at the thing for the next several years. By those measures, Samsung’s $1060 Ativ Book 7 Ultrabook (model NP740U3E-K01UB) is a fine machine. But a notebook must also feel good in your hands—unless you rely on dictation software, you have no other way to use it. And on that score, I found this laptop a major disappointment. ROBERT CARDINSamsung Ativ Book 7 is pretty enough to look at, but actually using it can be problematic for touch-typists. The Ativ Book 7 has a gorgeous brushed-aluminum finish. But if you wear a watch with a metal wristband, take it off before you lay hands on this computer’s keyboard. The noise produced as one metal scrapes the other is enough to curdle a glass of milk into cottage cheese. Reliance on integrated graphics doomed the Ativ Book 7's gaming performance. After my ears recovered from the horror, I once again laid my hands on the home row of the Chiclet-style keyboard. Such shallow-travel keyboards are common among Ultrabooks—they’re practically a necessity to achieve the required thinness—and I’ve touch-typed on more than my fair share of them. But the keys on the Ativ Book 7 travel such a short distance and deliver so little tactile feedback that I found myself constantly making typos. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046030/samsung-ativ-book-7-review-the-look-is-fine-the-feel-is-not.html#tk.rss_reviews