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Samsung announces a curved-screen all-in-one and its thinnest laptop yet
We hope you like super skinny laptops, because you're going to be seeing a hell of a lot more of them in 2015. Samsung just took the veil off its new ATIV Book 9 Ultrabook, which comes in at just 0.45 inch thick and 2.09 pounds. That's insanely compact for a 12.2-inch machine and indeed, it's the thinnest and lightest notebook Samsung has released yet. (Given Sammy's history with razor-thin laptops, that's saying a lot.) Like so many other slim machines that have come out lately, the Book 9 uses one of Intel's new Core M processors, which were designed specifically to allow for skinnier designs.
Samsung updates its 15-inch ATIV Book 9 Ultrabook with touch, a higher-res screen and lossless audio
Samsung launched its 13-inch ATIV Book 9 Plus Ultrabook with so much fanfare that it was easy to overlook the not-so-good news: The 15-inch Series 9 wasn't getting any updates. In fact, you can still buy it today, but with last year's Ivy Bridge chip and a 1,600 x 900 screen that doesn't support touch. Great deal, right? Finally, though, Samsung is catching up: The company just announced a new version, the ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition, which ushers in an updated design and more current specs. Of note, Samsung made the screen slightly bigger, stretching it from 15 inches to 15.6, and boosted the resolution to 1,920 x 1,080. That might come as a bit of a disappointment to some, given that the 13-inch version has a 3,200 x 1,800 screen, but Samsung notes that ultra-high-res screens in larger sizes aren't exactly easy to come by. So maybe you'll see that in the next-next-gen version. For now, at least, the screen is a bit brighter (300 nits vs. 250 in last year's model) and you also get a regular HDMI port this time, as opposed to a micro-sized one. As you can imagine, the addition of the touchscreen, plus that slightly larger footprint, means the ATIV Book 9 is a good deal heavier -- four pounds and 0.63 inch thick, versus 3.5 pounds/0.58 inch on last year's model. The battery size is the same as ever, but thanks to Intel's newfangled Haswell processors, runtime is now rated at 14 hours, up from 10. Samsung hasn't revealed pricing yet, but we do know there will be at least two configurations: a Core i5 model with a 128GB SSD, and a Core i7 version with 256GB of storage.
Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite launching on July 28th for $800
Last month, Samsung gave us a look at two new ATIV Book 9 Ultrabooks, both of which will replace the company's famed Series 9 lineup. While the ATIV Book 9 Plus, with its QHD+ display and brand-new Haswell chip, may be a tad more exciting than the Book 9 Lite with its unspecified quad-core processor, it's the latter machine that's getting US pricing info today. At the end of the month, Samsung will offer the Book 9 Lite for $800. That relatively affordable sum gets you a 13.3-inch, 1,366 x 768 capacitive touchscreen, 128 gigs of SSD storage, AMD Radeon graphics and up to 5.5 hours of battery life (according to Sammy's Mobile Mark 12 tests, that is; the company saw 8.5 hours on Mobile Mark 7). In our brief hands-on time, we found both the Plus and Lite models to be comfortable; the main differences are the Plus' superior processor, higher-res display and slightly sleeker design. While both machines seem like solid options, we'd be remiss not to mention that the Plus will likely get a US launch date of its own very soon -- and its higher-end specs could make it worth the wait. If you're already set on the ATIV Book 9 Lite, though, you can get your pre-order on now at Samsung's site, or look for the machine in stores starting on July 28th.
