SAMSUNG Series 3 NP355V5C-S01US Notebook AMD A-Series A10-4600M(2.30GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1600 750GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi AMD Radeon HD 7660G + HD 7670M Dual Graphics

Pros: really nice machine. got it for my wife and she enjoys it.

Cons: none so far , i have not tested it for games but good for everything else.

Pros: It's nice.

Cons: Someone should tell me how to boost my internet connection from this laptop. I'm not that knowledgeable about computer stuff. I tried speedtesting this new laptop and i'm getting .16Mbps of Download speed. >.<

Pros: Let me start of with just how this unit hits you from right out of the box... The case feels sturdy and durable. When you flip the laptop onto it's top, there's almost an immediate confidence boost when you notice the cooling solution - three individual and fairly large ports for airflow intake are positioned around the standalone GPU card and the APU itself, the exhaust is located on the left hand facing side of the laptop, and it is equally generous in terms of size. The peripheral ports (2 x USB 3.0, HDMI, Ethernet, VGA, Audio In and Out, and 2 x USB 2.0) are very well inline, and add a clean overall look to the laptop. Opening the laptop, you'll see the chiclet style keyboard and number pad, a decently large touchpad, and a nice little webcam with one microphone mounted on each side at the top of the screen. Let's talk about features. This unit comes standard with Windows 8, which some of you may view as a con (as I did, at first) but after getting used to it I realized that personally the new user interface allowed me to work faster than I have been able to on my Windows 7 or Linux machines... Personal taste there... On first boot, it will take some time for Windows to get everything set up - essentially it's completing the installation process that was started at the factory. After that, and after logging in, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire 750Gb HDD wasn't filled up with bloatware. That's not to say there wasn't any, but it took maybe 5 min for me to remove the apps that I didn't want, and I actually ended up keeping a few. After a few minutes of using the touch pad, I noticed that the buttons on it didn't really inspire confidence in regards to theoretical longevity... But as I always use a bluetooth mouse anyway this isn't a problem for me. In terms of what the hardware on this system can do... I'm impressed. (For those users who report having trouble with your graphics in games, two pieces of advice. #1: Before breaking out the CODBO2, you should run updates on this unit, or any unit for that matter. Most notably, you may need to update the AMD Catalyst Control Center, which is the utility and drivers behind any Radeon HD graphics card. 2# Ensure that any high level games are set under "Switchable Graphics" to "Prioritize High Performance", otherwise in most cases the laptop will use the integrated APU instead of the standalone Radeon HD 6770M graphics. The trade off is power for battery life.) Although I haven't had the chance to run any of my newer games on it (Dirt3 is downloading now), TF2 runs on all around max settings, and it runs buttery smooth. For everyday use, the system is pretty snappy. The 6Gb of RAM make having a ton of tabs open on your browser seem like they aren't even there, and switching between a ton of different apps is seamless... Unfortunately, such a stellar performance cannot be attributed to the speaker system... *Read More Below*

Cons: The included speakers are quite pathetic, even for a laptop, and carry about as much bass as an old landline phone on speakerphone. :P But hey, that's what headphones are for right? In contrast, the power adapter design reflects quite well on Samsung. We've all done it, jumped up out of our chairs with a laptop on our laps only to realize the cord had wound it's way around either one leg or the both of them. The temperature in the room drops by 30oF, and your heart sounds like someone running all alone in a basketball gym at night... With a defeating "crunch" sound the laptop lands on the power port first, either shoving the adapter into the case or snapping the DC jack in half, ruining an otherwise perfectly good week. The DC adapter on this unit is quite shorter than on most of the laptops I've owned, which means that while it fits snugly, if a mystical force should cause my leg to yank on the cord aside from it's own volition, the adapter would probably just pop out instead of sending the entire laptop into a plummet of doom... The DVD/CD-ROM drive seems to function within specs, which shouldn't be hard for a DVD/CD-ROM drive... To be honest, it wouldn't have hurt my feelings if this laptop had shipped with a Blu-Ray burner, but I guess I probably wouldn't really use it anyway. Probably the most disatisfactory element in the whole system would be the 5400rpm WDC 750gb Hard Drive... This is also the most common manufacturer default. While the drive functions as it should and definitely offers more storage space than an SSD at comparable prices, it's definitely the bottleneck in the system and posses a nuance if you try to do any serious gaming. In my situation, this isn't much of a problem because I am buying a Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb SSD and an external HDD case anyway. The SSD will go in the laptop, and the current HDD will go in the case to be used as data storage. This was not enough for me to take an egg off because normally most manufacturers only include an SSD in a unit as a special option. All things considered though, I've personally found this unit to be a good solid buy/investment. And for the price especially, I don't think it can be beat.

Other Thoughts: Now, to answer the question I'm sure many of you are asking. "Benchmarks?" Without further ado...

This unit got a Passmark score of 1437 - which was obviously negatively effected by the slow HDD and Passmark also pulled 29% of the graphics score because the 15.6 screen couldn't handle a 1920 x 1080 resolution. Still though, a score of 1437 isn't at all bad for a laptop...

3DMark also showed some promising results: Under Ice Storm (designed for benching tablets and low-powered Laptops using DirectX 9) this unit pumped out a Total Score of 43949, Graphics Score of 62606, and Physics Score of 21512. Under Cloud Gate (designed for light to middle weight PC's using DirectX 11) it received a decent Total Score of 5161, Graphics Score of 11625, and Physics Score of 1752. Under Fire Strike (designed for high end gaming platforms using multiple threaded instances of DirectX 11) this unit did struggle, and was not able to consistently produce <10 render frame rates. None the less, it scored a Total Score of 1188, Graphics Score of 1476, and Physics Score of 2451.

Before completing my review, I did run into a problem that made me take one egg off. Whilst running benchmarks, and thus looking for the configuration settings I realized that Catalyst Control Center did not have an option to configure (or in my case, disable) the crossfire (or, Dual Graphics configuration as it is now called) at all! I contacted Samsung Customer Support and the CS rep confirmed that this model doesn't really support manipulation of the crossfire array out of the box. The closest this unit comes is that you can manually select what programs you want to run on either the APU or the standalone HD 6770M, or you can also use a global rule set (e.g on battery power all programs run on APU). Currently the crossfire process is "automated", which means that if you're running a game the system will try to run it off the APU, and the crossfire will (supposedly) kick in automatically if your system decides that it needs more juice. I personally like to be able to not run a game under crossfire if I so chose (as some games don't play well with dual gpu configurations) and then choose which GPU I would like to use instead. All this to say, Samsung: If you release the required BIOS firmware to allow conventional manipulation of the Dual Graphics configuration I will personally fly to South Korea and give the loneliest [female] worker in your main office the most passionate kiss ever known to the entire knowledge database of mankind... No seriously, I live in Thailand, it's not a long flight...

Last thoughts: This laptop might not meet the pixelgasim lusts of diehard gamers. But for chumps like me who don't have 2k to spend on a gaming laptop, this may be a viable solution offering decent frame rates on average to new games provided you don't have your heart set on running them at Max Settings. All this as a very reasonable price and I'd say we have a winner ladies and gentlemen. :

Pros: I bought this laptop to take with me to gaming events. So far I've been impressed with how well it handles games. I've tested a few including Orcs Must die 2, TF2 and CS: Source. All were running at high settings and got very respectable frame rates. For the price you really can't beat this machine.

Cons: It came with Windows 8. It took some adjustments in the BIOS for it allow me to install Windows 7 and then format the drive again (not recommend unless you know what you're doing. )I had to download the drivers onto a USB from another machine to get it up and running but once completed it was smooth sailing. Not a huge issue but I'm surprised at the lacking image quality of the laptops LCD. It looks somewhat rough/grainy. Its not enough to ruin gaming or watching movies but its noticeable when I compare it to the Samsung LCD desktop monitor and TV's I own. Minor complaints though.

Other Thoughts: Overall if you're on a budget and want something to take to LAN events to play games with your friends then I'd recommend this laptop.

Pros: Cheap, but not cheap quality. I love AMD because they give you all the power you need for far less than intel. This lap top has an a10 and dedicated GPU. I use it for homework and some gaming when I have to be away from my desktop. Runs World of Warcraft at about 30fps on mid to high settings and around 20s on full settings.

Cons: Windows 8 is very annoying. Aspect ratio is kind of funky but then again that's because my desktop is 1920x1080. Colors aren't really represented very well on this monitor either making games look a little muddy. Some blacks are too black while the whites and mid tones seem very subdued giving the overall picture a very flat look. I am also a photographer and I just can't edit photos on this because they don't look right.

Other Thoughts: Haven't gotten around to testing many other games as this isn't my dedicated gaming computer.

Pros: Delivers within a week.
Sleek design.
Decent amount of ram and HDD size.
There is hardly ANY bloatware.
It does in fact run Team Fortress 2, not at its best quality but it manages to handle it. I mainly got this for my school work.
Runs AutoCAD smoothly with out any problems.
It is very quiet, no excess fan noise that I have noticed. Light weight.
Does not get hot like previous laptops I have came in contact with.
Windows 8 is a plus.
4 USB ports was a bonus.
Battery life is pretty decent considering I have been on this for 3 hours straight and there is still 50% battery left.

Cons: Boot time seems pretty slow, not the worst part to complain about.
Sound quality is nothing to brag about but not much to expect from a laptop.
Arrow keys are very small, due to fact of keyboard size.

Other Thoughts: Get a mouse. I am not a mousepad kind of guy. Related thoughts to the mouse pad, this one was made with Windows 8 in mind. You can swipe from the right of the keyboard to the left to access certain parts of Windows 8 features.
The keyboard seems awkward at first but it is easy to get used to.
The Windows Experience Index rated this computer a 4.9 on a 9.9 scale due to the graphics.
I haven't gotten around to testing the DVD drive yet.

First laptop purchase and I am very pleased with it. After discounts it came to a little under $700. The amount of RAM is what I need to do my tasks (would have liked 8GB but 6 is close enough). The HDD is a perfect amount. I only need applications and do not plan on using it as storage for music, pictures, etc.. It launches heavy applications moderately quick. It also gives you a choice to have applications dedicated to certain processors for graphic stability (have not really worked with it all that much).

Overall rating is a 4/5:
If it could have a somewhat faster boot time, this rating would be a 5. That is the only thing that really bums me out. I would recommend this to future buyers.

Pros: Attractive, feels very substantial, good sound

Cons: Sloooooow. Slow boot up, slow installs (over broadband, no less), slow processing. Not sure if it's just Windows 8 (which *should* be user-friendly, but somehow isn't) or if it's the machine itself. "Processor speed" is scored as 3.4.

Feeling wicked disappointed.

Other Thoughts: Got this for my 16-year-old. Considering sending it back.

Manufacturer Response:

Anonymous:

Thank you for purchasing the Samsung NP355V5C-S01US. I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing slow performance.

Please call 1-800-SAMSUNG to speak with a Customer Service Representative who can help resolve your issue.

~ Samsung Printer_Monitor_PC

Pros: It was one hella bang for buck. Im glad i waited for the A10 core.... well i did get a Asus Zenbook and sold it to a friend, Hated it but loved its size and weight. I would say this was worth my 800 vs the 1300 i payed for zenbook.

Cons: when I first looked at the new start menu the first thing i said was " i didnt pay 800$ for a XBOX!"

Windows 8 was unable to finish installing when i first turned on the computer and since I have to put up with its annoying lack of userfriendlyness -1egg

I will be leaving Windows 8 on it for aslong as i can stand it since my work location is "looking into" using this annoying OS (IT guys are against it). The issue i have with it is thats ment for tablets or touch screens.

Other Thoughts: Windows 7 will be soon to come for this computer if anything.

749$ + 40$ for ram stick + tax... 800$ for a nice Laptop. might look into a SSD later but even though the RPM is slow it boots fast with 8.

Pros: Pretty lightweight for a non-ultrabook 15.6" laptop.
Full keyboard with numpad.
Good webcam.
Above average gaming performance for a laptop.
Decent viewing angles for a non-IPS screen.
Crazy easy to upgrade HD and Memory (1 screw).

Cons: Comes with Windows 8.
All the drivers on Samsung's support site for this laptop are Windows 7 and XPP, no W8 drivers at ALL.
HD is 5400rpm.
Really need a minimum of 8gb of memory for W7/W8.

Other Thoughts: Instead of buying a $1000 laptop I purchased this laptop, a 256GB Samsung SSD, and 8GB of DDR3-1600 low latency memory. The results below are after the upgrades.

Okay so here's the reason you really came here, gaming benchmarks!

Skyrim @ 720P resolution, on "high" settings, with the high-res texture pack, real sky mod, and real fire mods installed = 31fps (You could probably pull 40-50 without the high-res pack and mods).

World of Warcraft Mists of Panda @720P resolution, DX11, medium preset on most things but 2x multi sampling, high res on charaters and environments, running around various cities = 51fps

Pros: Fastest laptop you will find for this price, agreed. 5 USB ports, SD card, Quad core, AMD A10. I've been looking for this computer for a long time. Beautiful display, matte screen, sleek and lightweight. Runs like a dream.

Cons: none so far

Other Thoughts: This computer Seems to be a hot item and sells out quickly.