Samsung has announced the second generation of its lust-worthy Series 9 notebooks, in both 13.3” and 15” inch variations. However, it is the latter that is particularly interesting, namely because it manages to cram a 15” display into a 14” chassis.

The new notebooks were showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show, currently being held in Las Vegas.

"When designing the new Series 9, we focused on improving key elements that our customers loved in the original award winning Series 9, including the sophisticated, lightweight design," explained Todd Bouman, vice president of product marketing at Samsung Enterprise Business Division.

"Our engineers worked very hard to develop the amazingly thin form factor and one of the most compact chassis in the world, which allowed us to house a 15-inch display in a 14-inch chassis. We also made changes to the new model based on customer feedback, such as the inclusion of a 1600 x 900 high resolution screen,” he continued.

 

The lowdown

The company added that the second generation of Series 9 notebooks are 37% thinner and 181 grams lighter than the original Series 9, which, at 1.31 kg, was certainly no heavy weight, and impressed us enough in all aspects to claim first place on our Top 5 Notebooks of 2011.

However, on the new notebooks, Samsung has elected to discard Duralumin in favour of an aluminum build. Nonetheless, the company assured that the chassis was nearly seamless, while key components such as the LCD panel, keyboard, motherboard, cables, fans and battery have been customised to fit into the Series 9's extra flat single shell body.

We are already reading from initial reports that the keyboard on the 13.3”may have a shallower press than that found on its predecessor, although it is not clear at this time whether that will end up in the final release model or on the 15” version.

Digging deeper

The Series 9 15” notebook will sport a SuperBright Plus matte display with a brightness level of 400 nit, and a 1600 x 900 resolution, while the backlit keyboard which we loved on the original series 9 notebook will be making a welcome return.

On the performance front, we can expect to see a second generation Intel Core i5-2467M processor, alongside a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD).

Additionally, the new Series 9 are touted as offering boot speeds of 9.8 seconds and wake up speeds of 1.4 seconds. Most impressively though, is the asserted battery life – ten hours of real-time battery life for the 15” and up to seven hours on the 13.3”.

The company added that the inclusion of Samsung Battery Life Plus technology will further enable the battery to retain 80% of its original capacity for up to 1500 charges. This, Samsung elaborated, will  “give users a battery that can last up to five times longer than other notebooks and work whenever and wherever they need it, even after three years of use.”

 

To the point

The second generation Samsung 9 series is expected to launch late February stateside, with a $1399 price tag for the 13.3” and $1499 for the 15”.

 

Local availability has not yet been confirmed, although considering Samsung’s track record for local releases, we expect to see it on our shores (and hopefully on our desk for review) not too far after.