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We recently posted our first look at Dell’s new XPS 15, a Windows-focused laptop that took more than a few design elements of the standard MacBook Pro 15. While there was plenty to like with the design and features, we’re still waiting for a final BIOS fix that will hopefully address the throttling issues many have experienced with the laptop. Today, we have a notebook from Samsung that’s very similar in many areas to the XPS 15, only it’s in a larger 17.3”-screen chassis and has slightly faster components.


First impressions of the Series 7 are definitely favorable, with a relatively thin but sturdy feeling chassis backed up by some great design choices. Given Samsung’s background in displays and related technology, we were very pleased to find a high quality matte 1080p LCD—interestingly enough, an LCD that’s not made by Samsung, though that’s not a big deal. Performance is primarily influenced by the CPU, GPU, and storage choices, and Samsung uses the standard one-two punch of a quad-core Ivy Bridge CPU with an NVIDIA Kepler GPU. Storage is the more interesting aspect: Samsung opts for a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive with an 8GB SSD and Diskeeper’s ExpressCache software providing caching of frequently used data. Let’s find out if the final result can succeed where other notebooks fall short, or if we end up with another series of compromises.






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