review The ultraportable laptop market seems to be going gangbusters at the moment. Between the lovely MacBook Air, luxury thin-and-lights like the Sony VAIO Z and Samsung Series 9, and the recently launched ultrabooks, most of the action in mobile computing – at least so far as notebooks go – seems to be seems to be happening in the 1-1.5kg weight class.
The Series 9 originally launched in April in a 13.3” Intel Core i5 version, and Samsung followed it up a couple of months ago with variants of the 13.3” model with Core i3 and Core i7 processors, as well as a smaller 11.6” version with a Core i3 processor, the latter of which we’ve gotten in for review.
Like every other ultraportable, the Series 9 has a strong competitor in the MacBook Air, and even more so in the 11.6” space, given Apple is one of the few manufacturers with a notebook in this screen size. Samsung has had a lot of luck challenging Apple in the smartphone and tablet spaces, but can it pull the same thing off for ultraportable laptops?
