Last week Samsung announced two additions to its flagship lineup, the new Series 7 Chronos and Series 7 Ultra, and we're taking a look at both here on the floor at CES 2013. The Series 7 Chronos is a powerful "desktop replacement" that contains a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, a Radeon HD 8870 graphics card with 2GB of memory, 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of hard drive space. We spent some time with the 5.18-pound, 20mm thick machine, and were impressed by the laptop's snappy performance and overall build quality. The 15.6-inch display is sharp with a minimal amount of glare, and the optional 10-point touchscreen performs wonderfully on Windows 8. The keyboard lettering is subtle, in chrome rather than traditional white, and the trackpad was a little too responsive, but this may change before the product's final release. Samsung says the Chronos will get up to 11 hours of battery life, a claim we'll have to test in our review of the device. There's still no information on pricing or availability, but the snappy performance will likely come with a high price tag.

Samsung's newest ultrabook, the Series 7 Ultra, trades a little bit of power for a smaller, thinner form factor. The Intel Core i5 processor, discrete AMD HD8570 GPU with 1GB of memory, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD may not perform quite as well as the Chronos, but the machine weighs just over three pounds and is considerably thinner than its counterpart. The 13.3-inch 1080p is crisp, with impressive viewing angles and minimal glare. The optional touch screen performs well, only running into a few issues with touch and drag gestures. The keyboard is responsive, if a little on the shallow side, and the trackpad is smooth, responsive, and handled gestures well. With optional LTE and eight hours of battery life, the Series 7 Ultra has a lot of promise as an ultrabook —and Samsung will likely set the price accordingly.