Samsung Series 9

Duralumin is an aluminium-copper alloy. It was patented in 1910. Because of its high strength and low weight, it was even used in Zeppelin airships—including the doomed Hindenburg that crashed after a successful Atlantic Ocean crossing

It’s thin, light, black, breezy and very smart. No, I am not talking of the new Miss Universe. This is the Samsung Series 9 laptop. It is thinner and lighter than the Mac Book Air, and runs on the latest series of processors from Intel that are based on the Sandy Bridge architecture: the Core i5s and Core i7s.

The Series 9’s body is made of Duralumin (also called duraluminium), which is lightweight, strong and therefore commonly used in the making of rockets and aircraft. While the laptop’s body can withstand a lot of abuse, don’t drop it off the table as its screen can still shatter. 

The Superbright Plus display supports 400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than most laptops in the market. Its 13 inch wide screen supports a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. What is wonderful is that the display has a matte finish, so it’s easier to use both indoors and outdoors. The backlit keyboard is a bonus. For storage, it has solid state drives (SSDs). The entry-level models have 128 GB of storage. Samsung says the laptop offers up to 7 hours of battery life. The missing Ethernet port is a bit of a hassle, but the built-in Mini HDMI port allows you to hook up a TV or projector.

The laptop takes 10-20 seconds to boot up with a Windows OS, which is very good on any machine. This is made possible by the SSD, Core series Intel processors and 4 GB of Ram. I will not call it the best Windows laptop around, but this machine can give others a run for the money.

Samsung has obviously spent a lot of time designing this machine. It is pretty, fast and strong. But the company seems to have slipped up on two counts, at least. First, the power brick needs to be used with a converter in India. Secondly, the machine’s drivers are on a CD—but the laptop has no optical drive.

DuraluminlaptopSamsung