The convertible laptop has a detailed display and a snappy keyboard, and it stays cool under a heavy workload. Unfortunately, its bland design, disappointing battery life and poor webcam give us pause about recommending it ahead of similarly priced 2-in-1s. Design If Samsung is going to compete with its rivals, it needs to take risks. The Notebook 7 Spin isn’t one. The 2-in-1’s design is so basic that it could be used as a blueprint for a laptop emoji – a representation of an ordinary notebook, lacking any unique characteristics. The silver laptop has a smooth plastic chassis, black keyboard keys and an offset chrome Samsung logo on the lid. There are a few positives to note, like the 7 Spin’s pleasantly curved edges, which are a welcome departure from the aggressive angles we see on other devices. The chrome trim around the touchpad is also a nice addition. Unfortunately, the Notebook 7 Spin has thick bezels bordering its display, and the fingerprint sensor/power button on the side is very sensitive. There isn’t much else to say about the Notebook 7 Spin’s looks. In fact, its flexible hinges, which enable tablet and tent mode, are the only unique element separating it from the designs of budget devices. That’s a shame, because Samsung has released some truly gorgeous laptops over the years. MORE: Laptops with the Best Overall Performance Continuing the trend of mediocrity, the 3.2-pound Notebook 7 Spin isn’t heavy or light compared to other 13-inch 2-in-1s. The Lenovo Yoga 730 weighs just 2.7 pounds, while the Acer Spin 5 is a bit heavier, at 3.4 pounds. This Samsung isn’t notably thin, either. At 12.4 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches, the Notebook 7 Spin is larger than the Lenovo Yoga 730 (11.5 x 8 x 0.6 inches) but more compact than the Acer Spin 5 (12.8 x 8.9 x 0.6 inches). Ports I wish Samsung had added more ports on the Notebook 7 Spin and updated the few it does have. There is a dated USB 2.0 port on the right side of the laptop, while the left side contains a headphone/mic combo jack, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, a USB 3.0 Type-A port and an HDMI connector. For its size and price, the Notebook 7 Spin should really include a card reader or a Thunderbolt 3 port. Display Samsung has a knack for making devices with great displays, and the Notebook 7 Spin is no exception. The 13-inch, 1080p display showed an exceptional amount of detail when I watched a trailer for the upcoming biographical-drama film First Man. When Ryan Gosling gets launched out of a flight simulator, I could make out the creases in his white pants as his legs flailed desperately ahead of him. I could even see the dirt that accumulated on the back of his helmet after he turned his head to look at the eruption behind him. The display also has good color reproduction and accurate white balance. When I watched a trailer for the upcoming DC superhero movie Aquaman, the panel brought out the browns and yellows in Jason Momoa’s flowing hair. In a fight scene, the contrast in color between the bright orange explosions and deep blue water was mesmerizing. When I visited my favorite news sites, their backgrounds were a clean white. The Notebook 7 Spin’s display did well in our lab tests, but competitors’ displays are even better. The laptop can reproduce a solid 108.6 percent of the sRGB color gamut. That’s slightly less than what the Lenovo Yoga 730 (118 nits) and Acer Spin 5 (126 nits) produced, and less than the premium laptop category average (110 nits). MORE: Laptops with the Best Display Brightness The same goes for display brightness. The Notebook 7 Spin reached 280 nits of maximum brightness. That’s a good result, but below the Yoga 730’s showing (282 nits) and the premium laptop average (307 nits). The Acer Spin 5’s display is dimmer, at 274 nits. Keyboard and Touchpad With full-size keys and adequate spacing, the keyboard on the Notebook 7 Spin is comfortable to use. Unfortunately, key travel is a bit shallow, at just 1.2 millimeters (we prefer 1.5mm to 2mm), and the force required to register a keystroke is on the low side (64 grams). Still, the keyboard is very good overall. The keys feel snappy, and there is a pleasant audible bump that provides a good amount of tactile feedback. On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I hit 108 words per minute with an accuracy of 95.6 percent. That’s right around my average of 109 wpm with a 5 percent error rate. The 3.9 x 2.6-inch touchpad is smooth and responsive. I had no problems executing pinch-to-zoom or scrolling gestures. However, short, quick swipes caused the cursor to jump a few pixels. A replacement unit sent by Samsung exhibited the same problems. The wonky touchpad isn’t a deal breaker, but it made browsing the web aggravating at times. Audio The Notebook 7 Spin’s speakers are passable. They get loud enough to fill a medium-size room, but the sound they output is hollow and lifeless. When I listened to Anthony Green’s “You’ll be Fine,” the musician’s piercing falsettos sounded distant, as if I were hearing him through a wall. The drums didn’t have any weight, either. MORE: The Best Headsets for Immersive Gaming When I listened to Death Cab for Cutie’s new single, “Autumn Love,” Ben Gibbard’s vocals were clear, but they, again, sounded far away. The speakers did a better job handling the soft, smooth voice of Ben Howard when I listened to “Oats in the Water,” but the lack of energy in the guitar during the crescendo made me lose interest by the time the climax hit. Performance Equipped with a Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Notebook 7 Spin shouldn’t have issues performing everyday tasks, like loading multiple web pages or playing high-resolution videos. I put it through the ringer, and it didn’t stutter once when loading 15 Chrome tabs, an Excel document and five web pages on Microsoft Edge. Nor did the Notebook 7 Spin lag when I played two YouTube videos and a Twitch stream at 1080p resolution. Having said that, the Notebook 7 Spin can’t keep up with its competitors. On the Geekbench 4.1 overall performance test, the Notebook 7 Spin scored 11,374. That is lower than the scores from the Lenovo Yoga 730 (13,750) and the Acer Spin 5 (12,265), two similarly priced laptops with i5-8250U CPUs. Only the Lenovo topped the premium laptop category average (13,657). Samsung makes some of the quickest hard drives on the market, but the Notebook 7’s 256GB SSD took a leisurely 42 seconds to duplicate 4.97GB of files, for a rate of 121.2 megabytes per second. The Acer Spin 5 was faster, at 181.7 MBps, while the Lenovo Yoga 730’s superquick SSD hit a rate of 299 MBps. During the Excel spreadsheet test, the Notebook 7 Spin matched 65,000 names with their corresponding addresses in 1 minute and 33 seconds. That’s a few seconds longer than the Spin 5’s time (1:26) and the premium laptop average (1:30). The Lenovo Yoga 730 blazed through the task in 1:10. The Notebook 7 Spin did better with the demanding HandBrake test, which involves converting a video from 4K to 1080p. The Samsung device took 22 minutes and 3 seconds to complete the task, which is quicker than the Acer Spin 5’s time (22:12) and the category average (20:51). The Lenovo Yoga 730 also took this round, with a speedy time of 11:59. MORE: Best Hard Drive Speed The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU in the Notebook 7 Spin is powerful enough only for lightweight games at lower settings. It struggled with our 1080p Dirt 3 benchmark, playing the racing game at 36.1 frames per second. That’s slightly above our playability threshold of 30 fps, but nowhere near as smooth as the Lenovo Yoga 730 (66 fps) or Acer Spin 5 (52 fps), or the premium laptop average (71 fps). Battery Life Unfortunately, the Samsung Notebook 7 Spin doesn’t last long on a charge. It endured for only 6 hours and 36 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. The Lenovo Yoga 730 (7:00) and Acer Spin 5 (7:15) didn’t impress either, but they did outlast the Samsung. The average battery life for premium laptops is 8 hours and 22 minutes. Webcam The Notebook 7 Spin’s VGA (480p) webcam ranges from unexceptional to dismal depending on how bright your room is. Its picture was terrible under the soft lighting in our office. My face looked like an impressionist painting: blotchy, unclear and devoid of detail. Most of those problems disappeared when I captured an image of myself under direct sunlight, but the selfie cam smeared individual strands of my hair into a dark blob. Heat The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin stayed remarkably cool during our testing. The hottest location on the laptop, the underside, reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit after we played a full-screen HD YouTube video for 15 minutes. That is well below our 95-degree comfort threshold. The touchpad reached only 79 degrees, and the center of the keyboard hit 86 degrees. Software and Warranty The Notebook 7 Spin has a healthy dose of Samsung bloatware preinstalled on Windows 10 Home. If you’ve owned a Galaxy smartphone, you’ll be familiar with some of the apps, like Samsung Messages and Samsung Gallery. Also among the mound of Samsung-branded apps are Samsung PC Cleaner, Samsung Recovery, Samsung Settings and Samsung Update. But wait, there’s more. A separate Samsung folder includes security software, a user manual, a voice-recording app and a Wi-Fi cam app that lets you view your smartphone camera on your PC. If you don’t want some of this junk, try using Samsung PC Cleaner, which is essentially bloatware that helps get rid of bloatware. MORE: Longest Battery Life Laptops The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin ships with a one-year limited warranty. See how Samsung fared in our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking. Configurations The 13-inch Samsung Notebook 7 Spin comes in a single configuration, with an Intel Core i5-8250U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Bottom Line The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin is a decent laptop, with a flexible 2-in-1 design, good keyboard and bright 1080p display. But at $899, it doesn’t compare well against similar laptops, which feel more premium, have longer battery life and offer a better selection of ports. If you’re looking for a sub-$1,000 2-in-1, we suggest the Acer Spin 5. Like the Notebook 7 Spin, it has a bright display and comfortable keyboard, but it separates itself with slightly longer battery life, a metal chassis and a lower price. For those who don’t need a touch screen, the Asus ZenBook UX330UA is our 13-inch Ultrabook of choice. It has all-day battery life, a stylish aluminum-alloy chassis and a bright, colorful display. Best of all, it costs just $749 for the same specs as the Samsung. Overall, the Samsung Notebook 7 Spin is a solid laptop, but there are better options out there. Credit: Laptop Mag
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title: “Samsung Notebook 7 Spin Full Review And Benchmarks” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Gloria Neville”
Design The Notebook 7 Spin is the most beautiful 2-in-1 Ive laid my eyes on to date. The silver aluminum chassis is built solidly and the rounded edges are inviting and attractive. Opening the reflective plastic lid reveals the 15.6-inch, 1080p touch screen and a full island-style keyboard with number pad. Unlike the smaller Samsung Notebook 9 Spin, which has two hinges, the Notebook 7 flips around a single hinge with the computers name on it. The whole package looks quite a bit like a MacBook but Apple doesnt make a 2-in-1. At 5 pounds and 14 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches, the Notebook 7 is heavier than the rest of the field, but a little smaller than most of its competitors. Lenovos business 2-in-1, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, is both thinner and lighter (2.8 pounds, 13.1 x 9 x 0.7 inches). But among consumer models, the HP Spectre x360 15t (4.2 pounds, 14.8 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches) and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (4.6 pounds, 14.9 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches) have larger footprints. The 360-hinge allows for the Notebook 7 to be placed into four different modes: a laptop, a tablet (by folding the screen all the way around), a tent (placed as an upside down “V”) and a stand (by placing the keyboard facedown and the monitor standing straight up). MORE: Best Samsung Laptops Ports The sides of the Notebook 7 Spin feature all of the ports you need for work and play. The left is home to the power jack, an Ethernet jack, HDMI output, USB 3.0 and Type-C ports and audio output. The right is where youll find two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot and space for a security lock. Display The display on the Notebook 7 Spins 15.6-inch, 1080p display is extremely sharp but not as vivid as its competitors. When I watched the trailer for Assassins Creed, it was easy to see specks of fire during an attack and grime on the assassins faces. Some charging soldiers red, flowing capes appeared far too dark, and the screen had a bit of a blue tint overall. The screen covers 72.2 percent of the color gamut, less than the mainstream notebook average of 88 percent. The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 was worse at 62 percent, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (102 percent) and the Spectre x360 (119 percent) were far more vivid. In our color-accuracy testing, the Notebook 7’s screen had a Delta-E score of 1.8 (zero is best), far below the average of 4.2. The Spectre x360 (4.1) was just below the average, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (1.0) and the Inspiron 15 (0.9) were both more precise. The Notebook 7 Spins display has an average brightness of 260 nits, which also happens to be the mainstream average. The Spectre x360 (246 nits) and the Inspiron 15 (244 nits) were dimmer, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (279 nits) was a bit more luminous. Keyboard and Touchpad The keyboard on the Notebook 7 is too shallow for my liking with just 1.36 millimeters of travel, and the 56 grams of force required to press the keys down made me bottom out frequently. When I took the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 105 words per minute, which is about average for me, with my standard 2 percent error rate. I didnt get to those speeds easily; it hurt when I was done typing. The 4.2 x 3-inch touchpad is nice and responsive. The smooth glass felt comfortable under my fingers and I had no problem navigating, scrolling, zooming or performing any of Windows 10s gestures. Audio The speakers on the Notebook 7 dont get as loud as I’d like. When I listened to the Eagles “Hotel California,” the speakers just filled our medium-size conference room. The drums and cymbals came through the speakers clearly, as did the songs iconic guitar and bass. The vocals, however, were shallow and didnt stand out on the track. MORE: Best Laptops for College Students Performance The Notebook 7 we reviewed came with a 2.5-GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2GB of VRAM, a 1TB, 5,400 rpm HDD and a 128GB SSD. That was more than enough for heavy multitasking; I had 15 tabs open in Google Chrome, one of which was streaming 1080p video from YouTube, with no lag at all. On the Geekbench synthetic benchmark, which measures overall performance, the Notebook 7 notched a score of 7,132, just under the mainstream laptop average of 7,521. Still, it outperformed its competition, including the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (7,064), the Inspiron 15 (6,499) and the Spectre x360 (6,376). The Notebook 7 copied 4.97GB of mixed-media files, including photos, music and videos, in 1 minute and 5 seconds, a speed of 77.5 megabytes per second, which is sluggish compared with the mainstream average of 181.1MBps, as well as the Inspiron 15 (122.6MBps), the Spectre x360 (149.7MBps) and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (a blazing 186.2MBps). On our spreadsheet macro test, the Notebook 7 matched 20,000 names and addresses in 1 minute a 5 seconds. While thats quicker than the 1:29 category average, the Spectre x360 (0:34), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (0:35) and the Inspiron 15 (0:41) were far faster. The Notebook 7 earned a score of 88,956 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark. Thats not high enough for the most intense games like Metro: Last Light, but you should be fine playing lighter titles like World of Warcraft, and the extra power should be useful for creatives using programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. That score beats the category average of 73,353, and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (70,475), the Spectre x360 (64,632) and the Inspiron 15 (64,067), all of which use Intel’s integrated 520 graphics. Webcam If you video chat on Skype with any regularity, youll want to buy an external webcam alongside the Notebook 7. A selfie I took with the 480p camera was grainy and dark. My face was pixelated, my hair looked like an amorphous blob sitting atop my head and our office appeared as if it were cast in shadow. Battery Life Keep a charger nearby, because youre going to need it. The Notebook 7 lasted just 5 hours and 53 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuously browsing the web over Wi-Fi. The average for a mainstream notebook is 6:31, a time exceeded by the Inspiron 15 (6:55), the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (7:52) and the Spectre x360 (8:27). MORE: Laptops with the Longest Battery Life Heat The bottom of the Notebook 7 got a little toasty after we streamed 15 minutes of HD video from Hulu. It reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which is beyond our comfort threshold of 95 degrees. The touchpad (83.4 degrees) and center of the keyboard (93 degrees) stayed nice and cool. Software and Warranty The Notebook 7 has a mix of useful programs and complete junk preinstalled. Among the unwanted bloatware are Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipboard, TripAdvisor, Netflix, Twitter and Norton Security. Samsung includes a recovery utility for backup management, Simple Sharing for exchanging files with Android devices, and Wi-Fi Transfer, which sends files to other computers wirelessly. Samsung sells the Notebook 7 Spin with a one-year warranty. See how Samsung performed on our Best and Worst Brands ranking and Tech Support Showdown. Configuration The Notebook 7 Spin that we reviewed included a 2.5-GHz Intel Core i7-6500U; 16GB of RAM; an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2GB of VRAM; a 1TB, 5,400 rpm HDD; and a 128GB SSD. This configuration will set you back $1,199. A configuration with 12GB of RA and no SSD that is otherwise identical will run you $999. If you want a smaller screen, there’s a $799 version with a 13-inch, 1080p display, a Core i5-6200U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB HDD. Bottom Line If you care about your laptop looking as good as it performs, the Samsung Notebook 7 Spin will catch your eye with its minimalist look. In addition, it has enough horsepower for some graphic design and the lightest of gaming. Unfortunately, its shallow keyboard, sloppy webcam and ephemeral battery life make it more difficult to recommend for true productivity users. If you dont need the graphics performance, the HP Spectre x360 15t (starting at $1,150) is also beautiful but offers several hours more battery life and amazing speakers. The 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Yoga (starting at $1,394) also offers excellent battery life and is far lighter than either the Spectre or the Notebook 7. But the Notebook 7 is a capable device – some might even call it beautiful – as long as you can move past the flaws below the surface.
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