Samsung X60 Studentbook Review (pics, specs)

It’s now more than a month since my Samsung X60 arrived.  It’s a nice little demon I tell you.  I purchased it from http://www.studentbook.de, since it was a very competitive offer (at that time) I went ahead and ordered it with the following specs:

I had to wait for more than a month for the notebook to arrive after ordering, since it was in a very high demand, and the company had to back order it.  However, I still think it was worth the wait.  The main reason I decided to buy this book was its features to weight ratio.  I was willing to pay more for a lighter notebook and still be able to play some games, so I chose the X60 over the Acer Aspire 5672 and the ASUS A6JM (which you can get also for a very good student price here: http://www.campuspoint.de/shop/pi516690660.htm?categoryId=15).  Two months after my decision, I still don’t think there is a laptop beating the X60 in the above mentioned qualities. 

The laptop arrived in a coal-black box, with a shining picture of the silver machine.  And indeed, after tearing the box apart, the content was a dazzling view too.  The first touch said it was a really LIGHT notebook.  Unfortunately this impression lasted only until I realized the battery is missing.  After attaching the battery it was more or less the expected weight, around 2.5kg.  The battery is at the back, so if you’re going to lift the laptop grabbing it in the front it will make it appear heavier that it actually is, but believe me, it is still very convenient to carry it around.  Having used it only for a month I can’t tell too much about the quality of the magnesium case, but seems to be quite resistant to my operating environment. 

Display:

There are no dead pixels on the display, however, there are some interesting artifacts which are visible on a black background when viewed from the side.  See the picture below. 

The resolution is 1600×1050 and I am actually running it on this resolution despite having less than perfect eyes.  It’s self-surprising that I don’t want to lower the resolution.  When lowering the resolution the text is still crisp and clear and I don’t think this is just ClearType’s merit.  Adjusting resolution was something I was always afraid of doing on LCDs, based on my former experiences.  However, this display can take just ANY resolution you fancy. 

Regarding the brightness, I am using it mostly indoors, where it is conveniently bright or dim – as I want it.  In direct sunlight it is usable, but not bright at all, colors are hardly visible.  The brightness setting is not remembered across restarts, unless one uses the Battery Manager – more on this later.  There is no major light leakage or uneven backlighting. 

Keyboard:

This is something I am not happy with.  First of all, it has got the German markings on it, but this is the least annoying thing.  Annoyance #1: The PageUp/Down/Home/End/Del/Insert keys are just very unsuitably placed, see the picture below. 

And there is no option in the BIOS to correct this.  Keyboard combinations like CTRL/SHIFT-X are a real headache with my established and proven finger-layout.  The left SHIFT key is also very short, on the other hand the right one is oversized in my opinion.  Although these are annoying, as time passes, I will surely get used to the layout.  There is something however, that time won’t solve: sensitivity.  Annoyance “Principal” is the keyboard sensitivity in general, but most notably the SPACE BAR.  If I am to touch it on its right side, I hear the ‘click’, however, there is no effect.  I ended up several times writing words together without spaces – even when typing this review.  Somehow it really needs the hard touch I am not used to. 

Touchpad:

I started using a mouse starting with day 1 with this notebook, but a quick test did not reveal any problems with the touchpad.  The buttons are conveniently stiff, but not too stiff.  The Synaptics drivers can be installed, but it is working pretty well even without them.  The sensitivity of the touchpad can not be set without using the Synaptics driver suite, therefore most of the time I keep the touchpad disabled completely.  Thing is, I’ve found myself moving the cursor unintentionally with my hands just too often.  This setting is however not remembered between restarts. 

Ports:

The X60 has a whole regiment of ports, unfortunately there are only 3 USB ports (two on the back) – this is a bit of a disadvantage.  If one is used for the mouse, and one for the webcam, there is only one remaining on the right side.  This is a bit annoying, but then again, it’s not that difficult to live with it. 

There is no DVI port, however, it is present in the port replicator which is where you really need it.  I don’t expect to use a notebook with an external LCD panel without a port replicator.  For ocassional connects the VGA is satisfactory.  In your “office” however, where your notebook will be the most of the time, it is indeed convenient to just push your notebook into the dock and have all the devices connected. 

On the left-hand side you’ll find the VGA connector, ExpressCard slot, phone line, a firewire port and the audio connectors: Mic-in, Headphone-out and SPDIF.  It is important to note that SPDIF is actually combined with the headphone-out’s 3.5 jack connector.  This was the first time I came across such a solution, but I like it as it saves space!  The ExpressCard slot is the home of the slim remote control.  This is an other handy tool.  You can start and manipulate your favourite media player (but mostly only AVS) from your bed 🙂

There is an Infrared port right in the front, next to the card reader.  Don’t expect FIR data transfers though, it behaves like a HID (Human Interface Device) compliant USB device.  It receives the signals of the bundled remote and behaves sort of a keyboard.  This also means that it’s very unlikely that you’ll succeed hooking WinLIRC on it.  However, if you make it work, don’t forget to post the “How To” in the NotebookReview.com forums. 

In addition we have an S-video out, a gigabit Ethernet connector, a hole for the Kensington lock and the AC power plug on the backside.  The right side of the notebook is completely occupied by the DVD combo, leaving a little place only for a single USB port and the WiFi switch. 

The speakers really disappointed me.  Not that I was expecting BOSE or Harmann Kardon, but even my former HP NC6000 had better sound.  And if not better, than at least by a couple of dBs louder.  The speakers situated on both ends of the black strip above the keyboard are just beepers.  The internal soundcard is of very high quality though.  Connecting my KOSS headphones, the music is truly inspiring.  No hiss, no ambient noise, just pure sound, though rather plain.  Fortunately, if the regular bass just would not do, there is always SRS!!!  This makes lower frequencies indeed trembling.  The built-in stereo mic does a really good job with Skype, especially with the “Voice” settings.  There is absolutely no need for a mic on the headset. 

Heat & Noise:

The heat output is also on the left hand side, which is good!  The wristpad does not get warm even when gaming (also good).  The new BIOS 08XA allows for completely fanless operation – you can’t hear you notebook running.  The HDD is also nice and quiet.  You can leave the laptop running during the night next to your bed for some P2P and it won’t disturb your sleep. 

Software:

The preinstalled operating system was German.  Although I speak German, I just can’t stand anything on the computer that is not English (I am of Hungarian nationality), so the first thing was to reinstall the OS with Windows XP Pro.  Not sure if I really needed ‘Pro’, but since I had it, it was the obvious choice.  The installation was straightforward, all the drivers were supplied on a DVD, and apart from that, you can download them from http://www.samsungpc.com.  Samsung bundles a couple of utilities, though I did not find all of them useful.  The most important (for me) were the following:

MagicKB – ensures the additional keys on the keyboard work and adds a simplistic OSD

DisplayManager – Is meant to replace the simplistic OSD of MagicKB with a nicely alpha-blended graphic.  I especially like this! 

Samsung Battery Manager – I have this installed, but to be honest, I am not using it.  At this point (version 2.0.1.7), the “Custom” profile does not allow you to define different settings based on the battery status – this is disappointing.  Only the predefined profile have this capability, but than again: max brightness is just too much for AC and the minimum LCD brightness is just not enough for a pleasant view when on DC.  The auto-dim feature is neat though. 

Samsung Network Manager – I found it difficult to use this application and I don’t really need it.  It may be still a useful application for some – allows to switch networks/proxies and probably Wifi settings, though I had problems with the latter one.  I just could not set the Wifi as I wanted using this utility.  The built-in Windows Wifi administrator did the job instead. 

Firstware Recovery Pro – This created quite a disaster.  Personally I would suggest you avoid it by all means.  When I had my new OS installed, I wanted to take a snapshot of it using this software, since it was bundled.  This app allows you to create a specially designated partition for backup purposes.  Myself, being the picky person I am, wanted to use the first partition (normally belonging to AVS NOW – correct me if I am wrong).  Firstware did not allow that, instead, it insisted to chop the back of my Data partition [D:].  All right then, take some GB from the back of my drive.  The chop was all right, but when I decided to remove THAT partition, because I just was not happy with Firstware.  Suddenly my whole D: drive disappeared with all my data on it.  I had to get the better of my knowledge and tools to recover the partition and at least some of the more important files I already had there.  From that point, i just returned to my proven utility: Acronis TrueImage. 

AVS Premium – Installed.  A very nice, full screen application with a media DB.  I like it, but then again, I find it too bulky, plus it is not able to play Quicktime and REALMedia.  Unfortunately this is the only application that is able to respond to those 3 special keys on the side (Videoo, Slideshow, Music). 

Cyberlink DVD Solution – Installed, but I haven’t used it … yet.  The HDD is big enough to keep all my files, and whenever I need a media player, well, nothing can beat MediaPlayerClassic. 

Performance:

SuperPi and all the benchmarking applications have been presented by earlier reviewers, so I will omit this part.  What really matters to me, is that running ReplayGain in foobar2000 does the job in speeds about 150x realtime, my favourite game (LiveforSpeed) achieves 60-70 fps with 4xAA, 4xAF in 1400×1024, and that the SFZ soundfont player from rgc:audio is able to do 64 polyphony with quality setting of 32 with a 150MB sound font.  If you don’t know what’s SFZ and what’s a soundfont, you obviously don’t need it, and stop wondering about 🙂

But then again, I can’t omit the HD benchmark.  The processor is always the same in a given laptop, but the included HDD varies very often, so here it goes.  The following is taken from SIW:

The only doubts I have here, whether it is really working using NCQ.  It says the interface is ATA (as opposed to SATA), but NCQ is supported.  According to the manufacturer’s site, this drive model supports only SATA 1.5GB/s (i.e. SATA1) and as far as I know, SATAII, rev.  2.5 is required for NCQ.  So how is it??? 

A fully charged battery lasts exactly 3 hours for me, with WiFi on, display brightness on minimum and doing ‘office’ work, browsing, document editing and listening to music.  The processor utilization is almost always zero with all these processes, so it is another indicator of the performance.  Of course with full backlight or 100% CPU the battery hardly hits the 2 hour mark, but considering the powerful GPU, it is justifiable.  But not the stamina master after all. 

Conclusion:

I am happy with my purchase, despite the shortcomings I have mentioned above.  Overall it turned out to be exactly the machine I had expected.  It is definitely not a long-battery life ultraportable notebook, but a well blended mixture of a desktop-replacement multimedia PC with that of a portable notebook.  They call it studentbook.  Feature-wise, it is a student’s dream.  Everything you can think of.  As far as price is concerned, although it’s a very competitive price on the market, I still think this is a bit expensive for the average buyer..

Pros:

CPU Performance

Great GPU

Light

Build quality

Remote control

Stays cool

High resolution bright display

Quiet

Plentiful of ports

Cons:

Keyboard issues

Display artifacts

Some of the bundled utilities have yet to mature

The BIOS does not remember the settings of the brightness or touchpad status (enabled/disabled)