Samsung Notebook 7 Spin review: A solid 8th-gen 2-in-1 with plenty of battery life - jonessultouddly

Samsung's Notebook 7 Spin is not the quickest space-marrow exchangeable to harness Intel's game-changing 8th-generation Central processing unit, but the midrange laptop proves that upper isn't everything. Boasting a gorgeous 13-inch touch modality display, homogeneous quad-core performance and—superior of all—impressive battery life, the Spin should please budget-awake laptop shoppers who value stamina all over veer speed.

Terms and specifications

The latest variant of the Notebook 7 Spin is—at launch, in any case—a one-size-fits-all thing. For a tilt terms of $900, you get a 13.3-inch, 2-in-1 transformable with an 8th-generation quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U processor, a 256GB strong-state campaign, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. (Samsung says a version of the Spin with 16GB of memory might one of these days be in the offing.) If you want to upgrade the Spin yourself, get your pry tools ready, because there are nobelium screws surgery exploiter-approachable panels in the blast.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

You can tent the Samsung Notebook computer 7 Spin happening a tabletop or pivot its screen totally the way around into pill mode.

Tipping the scales at 3.2 pounds and measuring a reasonable 12.4 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches, the new Notebook 7 Spin is a tad lighter than its earlier incarnation, and it's also slimly trimmer joist and lighter than the Dell Inspiron 13 5000, a competitive (and cheaper) 2-in-1 transformable with the same 8th-generation CPU and similar glasses.

Like a sho that we've got the numbers out of the way, how does the Notebook computer 7 Twist feel in hand? A tad heavy, if you take me, but that'll be the case for just around some 13-inch laptop that weighs more than three pounds. If you want something lighter, look to pay few hundred dollars more.

The Spin's metallic-looking "stealth silver" plate looks solid and professional, if not exactly drumhead-turning. That same, the Spin may get some loving looks when you tent it happening a tabletop or swivel its display the whole way roughly in tablet mood.

Display

While the Notebook 7 Spin's scale is a little dull, the same can't be said of its vibrant 13.3-inch FHD touch display. Indeed, the Gyrate's PLS (Samsung's in-house version of IPS) display is bright (think 300 nits, or candelas), sharp, and gorgeous. Enable the Notebook 7's HDR mode (an HDR toggle switch shares space with the F10 headstone), and images becomes even more eye-popping, with inky blacks and bright, vivid colors.

The Spin's display performs swell even at beamy viewing angles, and the pertain-sensitive screen responded perfectly to my swipes and lights-out. While the Spin does gas Active Pen support (a feature that's notably nonexistent in the Dell Inspiron 13 5000), you'll have to append your own pen.

Keyboard, speakers, webcam & mike

The Notebook 7 Twisting's snappy, backlit keyboard boasts slightly indented keys, on with hotkeys that juggle your extraneous monitors and toggle the trackpad, speakers and Wi-Fi on and off. You also get the aforementioned HDR key, along with a hotkey that flips the screen image into a 180-degree "consulting" mode. Disappointingly (if non surprisingly), the Settings hotkey opens the Samsung settings foliate, preferably than the main Windows settings sieve you might expect.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

The Notebook 7 Spin's keyboard boasts an HDR toggle that gives the display more pop.

Laptop speakers are broadly nothing to sustain fevered around, but the Spin's twin speakers are decent. Cranking "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney & Wings and and then taking a sharp left turn into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 27, the reinforced-in speakers (which, per usual, sit on the bottom of the laptop's shell) sounded sanely crisp and roomy. I could even notice the tiniest hint of freshwater bass.

I was also impressed with the Notebook 7 Spin's "far-field" mike, which managed to pick up my voice even when I was standing several yards away. Indeed, I was able to summon Cortana while standing a good 20 feet back from the Tailspin, speaking in a normal voice. Regular in the unchanged position and again speaking in an even voice, I captured a clear if quiet recording of myself using Samsung's Voice Notes app.

Raining on the Spin's parade is its disappointing VGA webcam, with blotchy, grainy and blurry images that are just passable for TV chat.

Ports

The selection of ports happening the Notebook 7 Spin is upright, non great. Happening the left edge, you aim a full HDMI port wine, USB 3.0 Type A, USB 3.1 Gen 1 Typewrite (up to 5Gbps, passing 4K video with an adapter), and a headphone jack.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

The Notebook 7 Spin's collection of ports (including HDMI, USB 3.0 Group A, and USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) Type C) is best, not important.

On the right border, you acquire a uninominal USB 2.0 port, along with a power button that doubles as an awkwardly placed fingerprint reader.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

Samsung skimped happening an South Dakota card reader for the Spin, but at the least at that place's a fingerprint lector embedded in the power button.

While the lack of Thunderbolt ports happening a sub-$1,000 machine like the Spin is intelligible, we're disappointed that Samsung distinct to skip on an SD card reader.

Gross performance

Thanks to its 8th-generation Intel Kaby Lake Refresh C.P.U., the Samsung Notebook computer 7 Spin manages to cram quadriceps femoris-core power into its reduce shell, a near-impossible feat just a year ago. As expected, we found the Spin to be bouncy and light happening its feet, just with a tendency to fade a bit in the final stretch compared to its 8th-generation competitors. That said, leaving a little power in reserve pays off for the Twist in other slipway, A you'll presently meet.

PCMark 8 Oeuvre 2.0 Ceremonious

A quad-marrow laptop computer like-minded the Notebook 7 Spin shouldn't have whatever trouble with PCMark 8 Work 2.0 Conventional, a benchmark that simulates solar day-to-day PC tasks suchlike editing phrase documents and browsing the web.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

It doesn't take much horsepower to convey through PCMark 8 Work Conventional (some score over 2,000 is good). Despite the mix of CPUs and GPUs in these laptops, they all ending up in about the same spot.

With its score of 3,220, the Spin doesn't disappoint, but it as wel proves (yet once again) that a quad-core CPU won't needfully double the everyday desktop performance of a dual-Congress of Racial Equality system (like, say, the Asus VivoBook 5). If you'rhenium a laptop shopper who's only interested in running Federal agency and browsing happening Edge of Chrome, a pricey quad-core system is probably overkill.

HandBrake

Things get more gripping when information technology comes to our HandBrake benchmark, which tests how a laptop handles the punishing task of encoding video.

Genus Melissa Riofrio/IDG

HandBrake taxes the CPU for an extended period of time, which can endanger issues with thermal throttling in laptops. That's likely why the Notebook computer 7 Spin's score, patc decent, is worse than what its dual-core cousin, the Notebook 9 Pro, achieved.

The Notebook 7 Spin's HandBrake score of 4,475 (the average time it took, in seconds, to encode a 30GB MKV file into a little MP4 file) is a shade slower than what we've seen from other recent 8th-generation quad-substance laptops, like the Inspiron 13, and it even lags a spot behind the rack up of its dual-core first cousin, the Notebook 9 Pro.

Given that the Birl is smaller than some the Dingle and the Notebook 9, IT's likely Samsung prefer to sacrifice speed to observe the Notebook 7 Spin's cramped innards as cool equally mathematical. That said, keep in mind that while the Spin's HandBrake result is a few steps behind those of its 8th-gen competitors, it's still in the mix.

Cinebench R15

We see beautiful much the Saami picture when IT comes to Cinebench, a benchmark that pushes a laptop's CPU to the limit as IT renders a 3D image. While information technology handily beats the dual-nitty-gritty Notebook 9 Pro and ASUS VivoBook 5 in our multi-thread Cinebench test (the longer set of bars below), the Spin struggles versus its 8th-gen quad-core competitors, including the cheaper (if slightly larger) quad-Congress of Racial Equality Dell Inspiron 13.

Genus Melissa Riofrio/IDG

The CPU-centric Cinebench tests shows that when run on a single thread, all the laptops execute on a jolly level acting field. But when running play on all togs, the heart-shaped reward of quad-sum (the iv upper models, including the Notebook computer 7 Spin) o'er dual-heart (the two models bringing up the rear) is clear.

Few applications demand multi-thread performance, however. In Cinebench's single-thread psychometric test, the Spin and its quad-core Intel classmates run cervix-and-neck with cheaper dual-core systems, yet another good example of how pricey quad-core processors won't necessarily double your public presentation when IT comes to day-to-daytime PC duties. Bargain hunters, take note.

3D Mark Sky Diver 1.0 Overall

With its integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 kernel, the Notebook 7 Spin shouldn't constitute expected to crank out the kind of nontextual matter functioning you'd see in a system with a separate graphics chip—and indeed, information technology doesn't.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

3DMark Sky Diver is a GPU-centric try, and there are no surprises here: The Lenovo Yoga 720 with the GTX 1050 GPU excels, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with the Radeon 540 claims the middle ground, and those with mere integrative graphics (including the Notebook computer 7 Spin) take up the rear.

The Whirl's test results tell the tale, essentially running even with other quadrangle-core systems with integrated art, and only reasonably outpacing the dual-core VivoBook 5. Blowing all those systems out of the H2O are the (considerably bigger and pricier) Lenovo Yoga 720 and Samsung Notebook 9 In favou, which brag separate GeForce and Radeon cores, respectively.

Barrage fire life

The Notebook 7 Spin's benchmark results may not cost quite as fast as its 8th-gen quad-core competitors, but information technology can certainly outlast them.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin's near-eight hours of life is angelical, especially considering its 43Wh battery. The cardinal laptops with basically the same size of battery, the Dingle Inspiron 13 5000 and Asus VivoBook 5, fare much worse.

We test laptop batteries past iteration a 4K television with the display cleverness set to about 250 nits and the volume on fractional. The Spin's 43WHr battery lasted (on average) 468 minutes, surgery about 7.8 hours, a shape that outstrips the peppier Inspiron 13 5000's sentence by to a higher degree two hours. Sound like we've got a sheath of the tortoise and the hare (although calling the Notebook computer 7 Twist a tortoise isn't exactly fair).

Incidentally, the deuce laptops in our comparison that beat the Twist's shelling life score do good from their roomier shells and battery capacity.

Bottom line

Like we said before, speed isn't everything, and indeed, a wicked-libertine ultrabook with a dead battery North Korean won't practice you any good at completely. So while the Samsung Notebook computer 7 Spin isn't the fastest 2-in-1 convertible along the block, it boasts an enticing compounding of homogeneous quad-core performance and impressive stamp battery life, bushed a reasonably lowercase and affordable package.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/407909/samsung-notebook-7-spin-review.html

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