Engadget
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Engadget Review
Samsung ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition review: big screen, even bigger price
Summary
The ATIV Book 9 Edition is one of the only 15-inch Ultrabooks available right now, and it's a fine product indeed, with long battery life, a thin and light design and unmatched audio quality. It's expensive for what it is, though, particularly considering cheaper models offer superior screen quality and similar performance.
$1199+
Pros
- Best-in-class audio quality
- Thin and light for a 15-inch laptop
- Long battery life
- Comfortable keyboard and trackpad
- One of the few 15-inch Ultrabooks available
Cons
- Expensive, even for a flagship Ultrabook
- Screen isn't as sharp as what you'll find on competing 13-inch Ultrabooks
- You could enjoy the same performance on a much cheaper machine
So many Ultrabooks in our laptop buyer's guide: Not one with a 15-inch screen. Which is strange, because it seemed for a while that bigger-screen ultraportables were going to become a thing; HP, Sony and ASUS all tried their hand at super-light 15-inch machines. Two years later, though, Samsung is one of the only companies that's still at it. The company recently came out with the ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition, an update to the 15-inch Series 9 laptop from 2012. Like the original, it's insanely thin and light for a machine with this screen size, except now, it graduates to a full HD touchscreen, longer battery life and updated processors. Most notable of all, it features an improved audio setup with a built-in digital-to-analog converter allowing you to play back lossless, or "studio-quality" audio formats. The thing is, even for a flagship it's pretty expensive: At $1,500, it has one of the highest starting prices we've seen, and there are plenty of similarly specced machines that cost less. That raises an interesting question, then: Who should buy this?
