Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C Review
by Jarred Walton on August 16, 2012 2:05 AM ESTSamsung Series 7 LCD: About As Good As TN Gets
Apple, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and Sony have made some waves over the past year by equipping certain laptop models with IPS displays. In the case of Apple, they’re shipping the highest resolution display ever seen in a consumer notebook. ASUS hasn’t gone quite as far as Apple, but they still have a couple of the highest DPI displays we’ve ever seen with 1080p panels in the 11.6” UX21A and the 13.3” UX31A. We’d love to see more manufacturers jump on the high quality IPS display bandwagon; Samsung isn’t there with the Series 7, but they do get a couple things right: first, they use a high contrast display, and second they use a matte LCD. Here’s how it stacks up to the competition.
Contrast is very good at 914:1, and when you factor in the other laptops using glossy displays it’s even better—matte LCDs usually give up about 10% of their contrast. The maximum white level is a bit lower than we’d like, registering 283 nits, but again the matte surface will help if you use the notebook in brightly lit environments. Perhaps equally important is that the colors are very good—only the IPS displays in the ASUS UX21A and the Sony VAIO SE deliver lower Delta E results, and if you work in the sRGB color space the Series 7 is just about perfect. I still prefer IPS displays like that in the VAIO SE personally, even if the color space isn’t quite as good, but opinions on that differ.
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Of course the biggest problem with TN panels (besides using 6-bits and dithering instead of true 8-bit color) is that vertical viewing angles aren’t very good. The Series 7 appears to use a Chi Mei/Innolux N173HGE-L11, and its viewing angles are much better than low-end TN panels, but if you happen to be sitting in coach on a flight trying to get work done (like I was at one point during this review), it’s still going to present some problems. Then again, I’m not sure how many people would actually try using a 17.3” notebook on a plane.
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Darkstone - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
You can ctrl-c ctrl-v a chart from excel into mspaint ;).JarredWalton - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
You get an extra 1px border around the graph doing that, which isn't terrible I suppose. (As a side note, older versions of Photoshop/Office *sucked* if you tried the Copy/Paste trick, which is why I got in the habit of doing the screenshot, paste, crop). I still need to upload and put it into the CMS, though, which is honestly the more painful part.MadMan007 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
No problemo, it's a great review and details like the 'real speeds' as affected by thermals are very important. Seems like we are moving toward form over function in the pursuit of thinness.DanNeely - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
The LCD page has a gallery for the Lenovo M92 desktop pc.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Weird. I guess there was a glitch in the gallery engine, because I know I created the LCD gallery! Dustin must have done his gallery at the same time and somehow it overwrote my LCD images. :-( Anyway, thanks for the heads up; the gallery has been recreated.nerd1 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
In the article you suggests retina MBP is way better in cooling, but it actually is not. Some german benchmark sites (including notebookcheck) reports exactly same throttling issue when they load CPU and GPU at the same time. (GPU running fine but CPU throttles down to 1.2Ghz, AND core temp exceeding 100 degree Celcius)Practically it is perfectly fine as most 3D games are bottlenecked by GPU performance, but you should update your article. I think thin laptops just cannot cool enough.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I guess I didn't make that entirely clear; I mention the $2100 rMBP as an example of a more expensive laptop (with a better display and materials) that still has potential thermal issues. I've updated the paragraph to better reflect my intention. Pretty much you can't get thin, fast, quiet, and affordable -- and in many cases, you can't even get three of those items without a bit of compromise.tipoo - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I can't find much reference to it throttling online , and Anandtechs own review points out how much better it is than the old models at that.http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-mac...
I'm curious how the non-retina current 15" model is.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
The fact that performance drops by 5% running just a game over time suggests there's at least some throttling taking place. Push the CPU to 100% while playing a game (e.g. by running Cinebench on three of the CPU cores) and we should see a greater drop. I'm going to ping Anand and see if he can run that stress test, just to confirm/deny the potential for throttling.tipoo - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
I appreciate that, a quick article on whether both new Macbooks throttle would be interesting. Seems like a wider problem than I expected.I wonder of a small drop like 5% could just be lack of thermal headroom to turbo to the highest frequencies?