Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus Review
Performance Summary and Conclusion
With the ATIV Book 9 Plus, Samsung has taken a popular ultrabook and made it even better. Not only does the ATIV Book 9 Plus look great thanks to its aluminum uni-body design, but it also has the power to match its good looks. The fact that the ATIV Book 9 Plus has a Haswell processor inside isn’t a surprise—we expect it from today’s ultrabooks. Even so, that doesn’t mean we appreciate it any less—hardware that enables better performance and the promise of longer battery life is always something we appreciate.
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In addition to adding touch capabilities to the display found on the ATIV Book 9 Plus, Samsung also upgraded the panel to one that supports a significantly higher resolution. The QHD+ (3200 X 1800) display found on the ATIV Book 9 Plus is 2.8 times sharper than full HD. Although this screen is gorgeous and much appreciated when watching a movie, we did run into a few instances where the high DPI display had scaling issues with some apps.
The benchmark scores reported by the ATIV Book 9 Plus were in line with what we’d expect given the hardware that’s inside this system. There were a few tests where the ATIV Book 9 Plus shined and a few where it was slightly behind similarly equipped machines. In our real-world testing though, the ATIV Book 9 Plus ran smoothly and was very responsive. The user experience was very good.
In both of our standard battery tests, the ATIV Book 9 Plus earned second place. In our web browsing test, the ATIV Book 9 Plus lasted for nine hours and 16 minutes, which is notably longer than Samsung’s claim of 7.5 hours. Of course as our battery tests show, the longevity of the ATIV Book 9 Plus varies greatly depending on what you demand from the system, but battery life is great overall.
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Find the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus @ Amazon
Some manufacturers cut corners to hit lower price points or gain higher profit margins, and as a result, extra features are often discarded. This is not the case with the ATIV Book 9 Plus. This system has a built-in 3- in-1 (SD/SDHC/SDXC) card slot, micro HDMI port, and Gigabit wired Ethernet thanks to an included dongle, among numerous other amenities. Users can also purchase a dongle to gain VGA connectivity. Samsung did not cut any corners here.
The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is not only lightweight and stylish, but it also has the power to perform well. Its price is also reasonable (around $1200, street) considering all of the machines high-end features. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this system to anyone who is looking for a super-slim ultrabook running Windows 8.
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