Gaming laptops are one of the banner products every PC maker needs to show off at CES, that is if they want to see their lineup lauded considerably. This year, Lenovo had a pretty beefy product show-off with the Legion gaming laptop series, and now Samsung has followed suit.
The last time Samsung attempted to release a gaming rig stretches back to 2012 with the Series 7 Gamer, and now it's courting the gaming market again with its Notebook Odyssey lineup revealed at this year's CES.
"We're excited to expand our PC portfolio with a premium gaming solution featuring refinements in design, cutting-edge technology and enhanced gaming usability," said YoungGyoo Choi, Senior VP of the PC Business Team at Samsung's Mobile Communications Business.
Samsung Notebook Odyssey
The Notebook Odyssey is Samsung's first dedicated gaming laptop in a long time, with 15.6- and 17.3-inch models available. The aesthetics of the laptop in question borrows greatly from pre-existing gaming rigs out in the market today, resulting in a boxy-looking machine, with red-trimmed edges, a red backlit keyboard for the smaller variant and a multicolored keyboard for the larger one.
A slew of ports deck the smaller variant's sides: including one USB 3.0 connection, two USB 2.0 sockets, an HDMI and an Ethernet port. The larger one, on the other hand, packs a USB-C port and four USB 3.0 sockets.
Both laptops are disappointingly housed with a plastic body, which for a $1,000-plus laptop feels a bit of a cheat from Samsung. With the design looking soldered from cookie-cutter gaming laptop templates, Samsung seems to have phoned it in, originality-wise. Some publications have already given it low points in the design department, with The Verge hailing both models as "gaudy monstrosities." But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in power.
Samsung Notebook Odyssey Specs
As with the more mass-market friendly Notebook 9, the Notebook Odyssey gaming laptops make do with Intel's seventh-generation Kaby Lake Core i7 processors. Additionally, the 15.6-inch model comes with 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, while the 17.3-inch comes with a staggering 64 GB of DDR4 RAM.
Multiple storage options are available as well: the smaller Notebook Odyssey packs a 256 GB SSD, partnered with a 1 TB HDD, and the larger variant packs a 512 GB SSD with a 1 TB HDD.
The beefy rigs also don't skimp on graphics, with the base model embedded with a Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU, though the larger model's GPU has yet to be determined. Interestingly, Dell has newly refreshed Inspiron laptops packing the same GPU for just $799.
On the bottom of the machine is a perforated panel — "HexaFlow Vent," as Samsung calls it. It helps proper ventilation and air circulation inside the machine, which is also unlockable with just three screws. Because the laptops are almost made out of plastic entirely, they're very light given their size. The larger model weighs 8.4 pounds, and the smaller model weighs 5.6 pounds.
Pricing And Availability
The 15.6-inch Notebook Odyssey hits shelves February for $1,199, with the larger model out in April. Samsung still hasn't given a price point for the 17.3-inch Notebook Odyssey, but expect it to cost considerably a lot more, considering its specs are nearly doubled from its smaller sibling.
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