There’s no mistaking the excitement over ultrabooks nowadays, but
lest people forget, there’s still a large market for notebooks that can
deliver that extra oomph that ultrabooks can’t. That’s why there are
still notebooks like Samsung’s Series 7 Chronos – large, powerful
machines that are built for day-to-day computing that can handle
occasional bursts of high performance computing.
Once you take out the Chronos out of the box, you’re greeted by a
smooth, elegant aluminum design that just screams quality. The bezel,
lid and keyboard deck is swathed in aluminum, and is certainly pleasant
to look at. The Chronos is a 15-inch deal, though if you look closely at
the bezel and the actual size of the device, its overall size (363 x
238.7 x 23.8mm) is closer to a 14-inch notebook.
Samsung managed to accomplish this by reducing the overall size of
the bezel to accommodate the 15-inch screen into a space that’s usually
reserved for smaller, 14-inchers.
There are plenty of USB ports on the Chronos – two in the left (which
are USB 3.0), one on the right – which is fantastic, as we’re tired of
sparse connection options on the previous devices we reviewed earlier.
You also get a full sized HDMI port, Ethernet as well as a slot loading
optical disk drive located on the right of the device.
The keyboard on the Chronos is a backlit, island-type deal with just the right travel.
The trackpad is a clickpad made by Elan, which means there’s no
physical separator for left and right clicks. If you’ve handled one of
these things before, you’d know that they’re far from the perfect
pointing solution for notebooks, as they’re prone to misclicks and
whatnot.
The Chronos is also capable of some heavy duty number crunching and
graphical grunt work, thanks to its AMD Radeon 6750M discrete graphics. A
750GB HDD finishes off the specs.
As we expected, the Chronos performed admirably during its time with
us. The notebook didn’t even blink when we went through our daily
browsing routine, and even with almost 20 tabs open in chrome (2 of
which were playing HD videos) the Chronos didn’t even slow down. The
discrete graphics option gave the device quite a bit of oomph, allowing
us to play games on the road which was especially helpful when you’re at
the airport trying to pass away the time.
Battery life is pretty great too, as the Chronos managed to post an
impressive 6 hours of battery life with moderate use, and about 4 and a
half hours with heavy use. For a notebook with as much raw number
crunching power as the Chronos, those numbers are pretty impressive.
Typing is also pretty pleasant with the Chronos, as the island style
keyboard had excellent throw and was pretty damn comfortable to use.
Possibly the only nitpick we had with the input was the trackpad – it’s
woefully inaccurate, and had us misclicking things left and right. If
you ever decide to buy this particular notebook, it’d be a good idea to
pair it up with its own mouse.
When all is said and done, Samsung has hit another one out of the
ballpark with the Series 7 Chronos. Great, solid design, excellent
battery life and fantastic performance make it one of the better
notebooks to come out of the Korean stable this year. Unfortunately,
you’ll be forking over a bit of cash for the privilege of owning one –
the Series 7 Chronos starts at Php 59,990 – which is an amount of money
that not all of us are willing to spend on a notebook.
What’s Hot:
Solidly built, excellent design
Powerful processor
Discrete graphics
Excellent battery life
What’s Not:
Expensive
Trackpad is problematic, prone to misclicks
Bottomline:
The Samsung Series 7 Chronos is a bit expensive, but is totally worth every cent.
Buymeter: 4
Tech Specs:
- Screen: 15-inch HD LED, 300 nits of brightness, 1600 x 900 resolution
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2430M (2.4GHz)
- Physical Dimensions: 363 x 238.7 x 23.8mm
- Warranty: 1 year on parts and labor
