Samsung Series 7 user reviews (15-inch)

3.5 stars

"Overall good, but a couple of major annoyances." on December 23, 2011 by jimmy_007leo

Pros: - Smooth all-metal lid
- Metal palm rest
- 1600x900 resolution
- Anti-Glare Screen
- Fast Boot-Up (has an 8GB SSD)
- Svelte & Lightweight
- Small screen bezel and chassis
- Backlit keyboard
- Included Samsung Software Manager

Cons: - The mouse touchpad is practically unusable!
- Cheap plastic bottom
- The ATI switchable graphics is buggy/unstable (I got a BSOD)

Summary: Overall, this is a laptop with the right idea, but a few of the features were poorly executed and they can potentially take away all the luster of this laptop.

The list of cons for this laptop is pretty small. However, after using this laptop for a month, I've come to a realization that the cons are EXTREMELY annoying. I'll start off with the plastic tray that Samsung chose to use on the bottom of this laptop. Why O why would you wrap this laptop in a nice aluminum chassis on top and put cheap plastic on the bottom? They probably opted for the cheap thin plastic in order to keep the laptop thin or to save money, but I will take a little thickness (and hence, durability) any day over flimsy material. Furthermore, this plastic comes up and wraps around the top aluminum edges of the laptop and is slightly higher than the aluminum palm rest base. This means that the plastic sticks up just enough to bite into the bottom of your palms or your wrists when you're typing or resting your hands at the edge of the laptop.

That is no big deal for short sessions, but it will become an annoyance and a discomfort fairly quickly if you use your laptop for long durations.

The 2nd con (and the main reason I may return this laptop) is the mouse touchpad. This laptop's mouse touchpad is a HUGE piece of junk. The actual material of this mouse touchpad is not smooth like many other touchpads. It is prone to more friction and becomes harder to use as time goes by. I like to effortlessly glide my finger across a mouse touchpad. However, this touchpad causes unintended taps/double-taps and palm clicks. There is no option for palm-detection. Furthermore, the entire touchpad presses down like a button, yet it also functions for touch so the cursor jumps/moves if you're trying to click on a particular area because it will recognize your finger moving slightly when pressing down. FAIL.

Again, this is not a big deal for light casual use and one could definitely reduce the touchpad sensitivity all the way or completely remove the tap-click functionality (I've found out that helps), but I don't want to have to handicap my product in order to use it! I paid for the full product features so I want to be able to use all the features!

The mouse touchpad and the cheap bottom plastic tray are huge drawbacks on this laptop and I hope Samsung corrects this mistake going forward. Also, the ability to upgrade the internal HDD would be nice, but not a deal-breaker.

On the bright side, the pre installed Samsung software is on the money. It has a pleasant GUI. It is easy to use and configure, and there is pretty much no bloatware on this laptop. Samsung has included an in-built 8GB Solid State Drive which does improve shut down and boot up speeds of this laptop as well as the performance of the core Windows system files. The Anti-Glare screen is a HUGE plus on this laptop and almost good enough for me to forgive the horrendous mouse touchpad functionality.

One final thing I will add is that the laptop screen recently flickered on me while I was watching a youtube video and that was followed by a blue screen error so something is definitely amiss with the ATI or Intel video card or the synergy thereof.

Anyway, if you're a fairly light user and don't need any accurate or important use of the mouse touchpad then I can recommend this laptop, but otherwise, be weary of the things I've mentioned.