Samsung Enters Crowded Kaby Lake Gaming PC Fray With Odyssey Notebook Series
Samsung is no stranger to the laptop category, having served nearly every product category from Chromebooks for education on up to premium thin and light systems for professionals and mainstream users alike. But what about gaming laptops? That has been one the segment to elude Samsung, at least until now. Samsung today unveiled the Odyssey, its first notebook line for gamers
There are two versions of the Odyssey, one with a 17.3-inch display with 300 nits brightness and the other with a 15.6-inch panel rated at 280 nits. Both feature a Full HD 1080p (1,920x1,080) resolution with supposedly wide viewing angles, an anti-glare coating, and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) visuals, or so it seems—Samsung doesn't list HDR support in its spec sheet but states in its press release that the Odyssey "offers high-quality vibrant images to provide an immersive and dynamic cinema-quality HDR video experience."
As with most new laptops being announced at CES, the Odyssey features up to a quad-core processor based on Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. The 15.6-inch model pairs the CPU with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, and up to 256GB PCIe SSD + 1TB HDD storage.
Samsung kicks things up a notch on the 17.3-inch model by bumping up the maximum amount of RAM to 64GB and doubling the amount of SSD storage. Graphics will also presumably get an upgrade over the 15.6-inch model, though Samsung has not yet decided exactly which GPU to roll with just yet.
Keycaps also vary by model. The smaller of the two features 0.3mm crater keycaps and backlit WASD keys while the bigger model sports 0.5mm volcano keycaps with per-key backlighting. Both types are ergonomically curved.
Connectivity on the 17.3-inch model consists of a Type-C (Thunderbolt 3) port, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, GbE LAN, 3-in-1 memory card reader, and separate headphone and microphone jacks. On the 15.6-inch model, Samsung includes a single USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, GbE LAN, 3-in-1 memory card reader, and a headphone/microphone combo port.
Samsung did not say when its Odyssey laptops will be available or for how much.
There are two versions of the Odyssey, one with a 17.3-inch display with 300 nits brightness and the other with a 15.6-inch panel rated at 280 nits. Both feature a Full HD 1080p (1,920x1,080) resolution with supposedly wide viewing angles, an anti-glare coating, and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) visuals, or so it seems—Samsung doesn't list HDR support in its spec sheet but states in its press release that the Odyssey "offers high-quality vibrant images to provide an immersive and dynamic cinema-quality HDR video experience."
As with most new laptops being announced at CES, the Odyssey features up to a quad-core processor based on Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. The 15.6-inch model pairs the CPU with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, and up to 256GB PCIe SSD + 1TB HDD storage.
Samsung kicks things up a notch on the 17.3-inch model by bumping up the maximum amount of RAM to 64GB and doubling the amount of SSD storage. Graphics will also presumably get an upgrade over the 15.6-inch model, though Samsung has not yet decided exactly which GPU to roll with just yet.
Keycaps also vary by model. The smaller of the two features 0.3mm crater keycaps and backlit WASD keys while the bigger model sports 0.5mm volcano keycaps with per-key backlighting. Both types are ergonomically curved.
Connectivity on the 17.3-inch model consists of a Type-C (Thunderbolt 3) port, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, GbE LAN, 3-in-1 memory card reader, and separate headphone and microphone jacks. On the 15.6-inch model, Samsung includes a single USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, GbE LAN, 3-in-1 memory card reader, and a headphone/microphone combo port.
Samsung did not say when its Odyssey laptops will be available or for how much.
