The Ativ Book 9 Lite is Samsung’s first laptop since it rebranded the confusing Series 3, 5, 7 and 9 ranges. This affordable ultraportable aims to balance premium features with a low price.
Samsung says it shares the same ‘design identity’ as the flagship Ativ Book 9 Plus (reviewed opposite). It certainly looks similar, which is no bad thing since the Plus is a sleek and attractive laptop.
Although the name ‘Lite’ might suggest that this is lightweight, it’s pretty thick and unavoidably heavy. Not by a huge amount, though. It’s 18mm thick and weighs 1.5 kg, which puts it at the chunkier end of slim ultrabooks. It also has a plasticky build, though, it still feels well-made, and is available in Marble White or Mineral Ash Black.
Its keyboard feels very plastic to the touch, but offers a comfortable and tactile experience. The trackpad is more impressive, with a large area to work with and the kind of responsiveness not regularly associated with cheaper laptops.
Although the Ativ 9 Book Lite might superficially resemble the Plus, it’s been downgraded internally to reach that sub-£600 price.
Samsung is vague about exactly what processor is inside the laptop, stating only that it’s a quad-core chip running up to 1.4GHz. We did a little digging, though, and discovered that it’s an AMD A6-1450 auxiliary processing unit (APU) with a Radeon HD 8250 graphics core. What Samsung is less ashamed about is the 4GB of memory and 128GB SSD.
The Lite produced adequate results of 2142 points in PCMark 7, but only 15fps in Stalker: Call of Pripyat at our lowest standard 720p/Medium-detail test. The graphics framerate especially shows that gameplay will be limited even more than with Intel integrated graphics.
Battery power
Battery life, according to Samsung, is up to 8.5 hours from the built-in 32Wh battery. In our tests, however, the Ativ Book 9 Lite streamed a looped movie on BBC iPlayer over Wi-Fi for 6.5 hours.
Our review sample came with a 13.3in touchscreen, but a non-touchscreen version is also available if you don’t think you’ll need Windows 8 or its gestures – it will save you £100.
The screen looks reasonably good, but its 1366x768 resolution is a long way from the Plus, which offers 3200x1800 pixels and IPS technology.
Viewing angles from this budget TN panel are narrow, too.
The Lite’s hinge allows you to push the screen back so that it’s flat to the desk, in case you find a use for this other than playing a two-player air hockey game.
There’s no room for an ethernet port, but Samsung includes an adaptor dongle in the box. The proprietary connector looks like Micro-USB, but don’t try to force one of these cables in. Other options include a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 socket, Micro HDMI, mini-VGA and an SD card reader hidden away under a flap.
As with most laptops these days,a 720p webcam allows you tomake video calls.
Pre-loaded software normally falls into the ‘bloatware’ category, but Samsung adds some useful apps – SideSync and HomeSync Lite. The latter lets you create a personal cloud to share media between devices, while SideSync allows you to control your phone with a keyboard and mouse, mirroring the display on the laptop’s screen. This only works with Samsung Galaxy Android devices, though.
Verdict
Samsung’s Ativ Book 9 Lite is around half the price of the Plus. This means a plastic chassis and a cheap screen and processor have been used, though, it has an impressively thin and light form factor. Component downgrades also mean that this laptop is no powerhouse, but it does the job well and few laptops at this price point are so thin and light.
