Samsung ATIV Book 9 Spin Attempts To Crush Surface Pro, Surface Book, And MacBook Air

Samsung has never been known for their laptops, but that is all about to change. The Korean company just announced its new ATIV Book 9 Spin laptop and it looks as fascinating as Samsung’s other products.

The ATIV Book 9 Spin has a screen that can rotate 360 degrees, a QHD+ touch screen, a 6th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD storage. CNET believes Samsung is definitely giving Apple a run for its money, noting that although the laptop is ultra-thin, it’s not ultra-cheap; it has a rigid aluminum unibody frame and feels like it could withstand a rough ride in a backpack. They are also very impressed with the touchpad on the device.

Techradar is also impressed with the ATIV Book 9 Spin.

“Lightweight, high in resolution and performance, Samsung’s latest Ativ Book 9 Spin delivers on everything you want from an Ultrabook with an extra hybridization feature.”

The article notes that the ATIV Book 9 Spin is actually almost a pound lighter than the current MacBook Air and has more than twice the resolution. They say that the Spin is also built like a razor, with a sharp front edge and made completely out of aluminum.

Samsung’s new laptop is on display at some Best Buy retail locations. After using the device for about 15 minutes, one of the few negative aspects of the device, the keyboard, starts to show. It feels good at first. But after a while, the short travel distance of the keys and the mushy feel (the best way to describe the typing experience) is very noticeable.

Although the touchscreen looks gorgeous, it also has that light grease background that you see on many touchscreen laptops. The early 2015 version of the Dell XPS 13 was notorious for this, but Dell fixed this in their latest version. Although the laptop is bright, colorful, and has excellent viewing angles, the colors don’t appear as accurate as they do on Dell or Microsoft’s latest laptops.

The ATIV Book 9 Spin runs a powerful Intel Core i7 processor under its thin hood and it shows. Launching several apps at the same time (including both Firefox and Microsoft Edge) was flawless. There didn’t appear to be any screen flickering problems that have been found on other Windows 10 laptops such as the Dell XPS 13, the Dell XPS 15, the Surface Pro 4, and the Surface Book.

One thing that is very noticeable is the absolutely huge space underneath the screen. As TechRadar indicates, this is supposed to create a solid transition between the screen and the keyboard deck, but it’s hard to get used to.

It’s very easy to recommend the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Spin over the 13-inch MacBook Air, but definitely not the 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina, which has a much better keyboard for blogging and other typing tasks. Of course, the 13-inch MacBook Pro has gone through several iterations in order to become almost perfect.

The ATIV Book 9 Spin is a first-generation product and it’s a good one at that — but besides being able to bend the device fully into a tablet, there’s not much here that stands out over other laptops. The Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, or MacBook Pro Retina are still the best choices when it comes to full-powered and high resolution ultraportable laptops.

[Photo via Daryl Deino]