Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus review

The ultrabook look

Most manufacturers take "compete with the MacBook Air" much too seriously, as if there’s only one way to make a thin and light laptop. Samsung proves otherwise. The Ativ Book 9 Plus is different from the Air in nearly every respect — it’s dark and smooth, with softly rounded corners and a slim, sloping profile that makes it look even less than 0.53 inches thick. I like the blue shell and the glistening silver accents, though the display’s black bezel undoes the Book 9 Plus’ unibody appearance. It’s not the minimalist masterpiece the Air is, but it’s a striking laptop.

At 0.54 inches thick, the Ativ Book 9 Plus is almost exactly as tall as its two USB ports. The aluminum body weighs only 3.06 pounds, but it feels sturdy and well-made. For some reason, I find myself frequently carrying my laptop by its hinge, or its palmrest, or with my thumb in the space between base and lid. No matter how I pick it up, toss it around, or carry it in my bag, all the Book 9 Plus ever accrues is small, easily removable scuffs on the lid. The Series 9 used to be fragile and precious, but this Ativ is ready for action.

Samsung's chassis remains the same, but the display gets better and better

Samsung and fabulous excess get along beautifully, and nowhere is that more clear than on the Book 9 Plus’ 13.3-inch, 3200 x 1800 display. The screen is high-res and incredibly beautiful, with vibrant colors, fantastic touch response, and nearly perfect viewing angles. But it’s telling that the screen is set by default to 1920 x 1080: when you crank its resolution all the way up, nearly everything about Windows becomes small enough to make you squint 3 inches from the screen in order to use the computer. It even warns you: "Screen resolution is very high. Double click here to change it."

Having all the extra pixels makes even the "low" 1080p resolution look better than ever, though, with crisper text and more detailed images. Just like with the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, it’s probably a bad idea to use this screen to its fullest extent, but it’s a great display no matter how you slice it. The only downside is the impossibly over-sensitive automatic brightness setting, which responds to every sunbeam or shadow with sweeping, drastic changes. I turned it off as quickly as I could find the setting.

Samsung has a checkered past building keyboards and trackpads, but it’s clearly learning as it goes — it has two years of experience on this chassis, and it shows. The Book 9 Plus’s keys are still a bit shallow and harsh, with a hard bottom at the end of every keystroke, but the experience has improved immensely over last year’s model. I picked up the Book 9 Plus and was typing at full speed in no time. The aqua backlight is even and almost beautiful. It's much cooler and easier on the eyes than the stark, white Apple light. I still don’t like the differently colored function keys, though at least there are plenty of them, and I really don’t like that they’re the secondary functions on their keys. Samsung’s Fn Lock button is a nice idea, flipping the controls so F3 actually changes the brightness — but that turns the Up key permanently into PgUp, which is a recipe for disaster. But still, I can’t live without a good keyboard, and the Book 9 Plus has a very good one.

It also has one of the better Windows trackpads I’ve used, though that’s admittedly a low bar. From a hardware perspective, it’s perfect: smooth and glassy, with a responsive clickpad and just enough of an edge that misplaced gestures are all but impossible. The software can still be a bit jumpy, though, especially with gestures — the Book 9 Plus seems to be constantly waiting to switch between apps, often doing so when I just wanted to move the cursor a little to the right. There are no massive frustrations, only little ones like that; Apple’s experience is still far more efficient, but the Book 9 Plus is solid.

That’s really the whole story of the Book 9 Plus, at least from a hardware perspective. It’s not quite on the same level as the MacBook Air, or the Acer Aspire S7 — it has a few keyboard and touchpad issues, its palmrest becomes discolored with fingerprints and its lid does scuff easily, and the device just doesn’t have the same unblemished unibody look as Apple’s laptop. But it’s close. It’s thin, and light, and handsome, and it’s more than good enough.

A PC, first and foremost

Samsung bundles a standard set of apps onto the Ativ Book 9 Plus, from Netflix and iHeartRadio to Samsung’s own Music Hub, S Player+, and S PhotoStudio — they're mostly useless but harmless. There are also plenty of Norton and Intel popups reminding you that unless you unlock the full version of their apps your computer will be immediately and irrevocably riddled with viruses. This is an all-too-common practice for Windows manufacturers, but Samsung’s no worse than any other.

It’s curious, though, that Samsung picked two relatively niche features and imbued them with such importance that they’re not only pre-installed on the machine, their names are etched into the Book 9 Plus’ palmrest. One is SideSync, which lets you pair your computer with your Samsung Android phone and mirror your screens, data, and apps — it’s really cool, and means I can type text messages from my laptop, but it’s hardly a feature everyone will use. Neither is HomeSync, which turns your Book 9 Plus into something like a media server and allows other devices to access files remotely. Again: neat, and useful in places, but not exactly a feature I want to be reminded of every single time I open the laptop.

Ultimately, none of the software is truly a problem (at least once you get past the first dozen pop-ups), but it does the Book 9 Plus no favors. The laptop itself feels cared for, like Samsung spared no expense and sweated every detail; the software, the stickers, the excessive branding all work against such thoughtful design.

The base, $1,399.99 Ativ Book 9 Plus comes with Windows 8.1, plus Intel’s latest Haswell processor (a Core i5, clocked at 1.6GHz), 4GB of RAM, a 128GB hard drive, and Intel’s integrated graphics. Most specs can be upgraded (though it gets expensive in a hurry) but even in this iteration, it’s pretty powerful. It boots in only a few seconds, and resumes instantly from sleep.

It flips between a dozen apps with no lag or stutter, handles my ridiculous penchant for opening 60-some browser tabs at a time, and plays high-definition video without so much as a jitter. It never gets more than a little bit warm, thanks to slightly overactive fans — they kick in for seemingly no reason, though only at a gentle hum. Gaming, as with most ultrabooks, is a non-starter — things look okay at low resolutions and low settings, but even then it’s not a great experience. Crank Batman: Arkham Origins up to the Book 9 Plus’ native 3200 x 1800 resolution, and it’s like thumbing through a flip book. Slowly.

Still, this is one of the most media-friendly laptops I’ve ever used. The screen is gorgeous, and the speakers are shockingly good. Sound is loud, and full, and has some actual range to it — most laptops make bands sound like they forgot about half their instruments, but the Book 9 Plus lets them shine. It made me wish for a larger storage option, actually, since the laptop’s so good for watching movies.

It also makes me wish for a lot more battery life: the Book 9 Plus lasted 5 hours, 36 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, and about five hours even in normal use. That’s what I'd expect from an ultrabook two years ago, not what I’ve come to expect from a supposedly best-in-class Haswell ultrabook. And when the 13-inch MacBook Air lasts more than 13 hours on a charge, settling for less than half the longevity is a pretty big problem for Samsung.