At a time when the PC sales are looking south and OEMs are mulling exit strategies, Samsung did, what could possibly be the most prudent move. It released the ATIV Book 8, a laptop that boasts of premium build and impressive technical specifications.
ATIV Book 8 has been positioned as the successor of Series 7 Chronos, so it's not surprising to find it priced similarly - the laptop retails for $1199.99 at Best Buy and you'll be lucky to find it cheaper elsewhere. Now the question is - can ATIV Book 8 be considered a high-end laptop?
The answer is yes, and here's why.
Like most latest high-end laptop (and a few mid-range and low-end ones), ATIV Book 8 features a touchscreen display. Though PC users are yet to get used to having touchscreen feature on their laptops, it appears Microsoft wants us to believe that touchscreen display-equipped laptops will drive the PC industry. We're not too sure about that but we tried out the gestures and pinch-to-zoom features of Windows 8 and the response was fluid. It felt as if we were using a super-sized Windows smartphone.
Speaking about displays, ATIV Book 8 has one of the best displays we've ever seen on a laptop. The 15.6-inch full HD display boasts 1920x1080 pixels resolution and though the shiny surface may put off users who are used to non-reflective matt finish, the laptop more than makes up with amazing viewing angles.
A big positive is the battery life. While Samsung claims that one can squeeze out around 10.5 hours from the 91Wh battery, in our battery test (which includes playing several videos, back-to-back, over WiFi), the laptop stopped chugging near the 6 hour mark. Not bad at all.
ATIV Book 8 also features a decent graphics card - AMD Radeon HD8770M - with dedicated 1GB GDDR5 memory. Performance-wise, the Radeon HD8770M is in the range of the Nvidia GeForce GT 650M. If you're wondering what that means, it means current and demanding games should run fluently in medium or high resolutions and detail settings, but if you want to play games at native 1080p resolution, the ATIV Book 8 will start wheezing a bit. The laptop also features Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU, a neat inclusion, as AMD's Catalyst Control Center software allows users to decide which GPU will run designated applications.
As for ports, ATIV Book 8 comes with full-size VGA port, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, SD card slot, a gigabit ethernet port, a combined microphone and headphone socket, a power jack, and a secure lock slot.
On lifting open the elegant, brushed aluminum lid, we say hello to a well-spaced, backlit keyboard with a separate number pad, a massive trackpad with integrated mouse buttons, and a generous palm rest. The trackpad responds well to inputs, without any noticeable lag. The chicklet keyboard also responds well, though at times the keys felt slightly mushy.
The JBL speakers on this laptop are decent. It means you can hear clear audio even when the settings are maxed. The speakers also boast of powerful bass and we were happy to see Samsung include 12 different audio settings via the SoundAlive software, though we must say we found only a few settings truly useful.
ATIV Book 8 measures 14.8x9.8x0.9 inches (width x depth x height) and tips the scale at 5.6lb. So, though it ranks among the slimmest laptops, it can hardly be called a travel-friendly laptop. It's portable, but it's not lightweight.
A big letdown, meanwhile, could be the fact that Samsung chose to power the laptop with a third generation Ivy Bridge chip instead of the latest fourth generation Intel Haswell processor. Nonetheless, it doesn't mean ATIV Book 8 is slow. In fact, the Core i7 3635QM chip, which clocks at 2.4GHz (3.4GHz with Turbo mode on) is a workhorse and ranks among the top 30 mobile processors currently released in the market. Needless to mention, the 8GB RAM also helps keep the laptop running at blazing fast speed.
On PCMark 7, which determines overall performance, the ATIV Book 8 scored a decent 4082, but we suspect it could have fared better, had it featured a solid disk drive (SSD) instead of 1TB 5400rpm hard drive, which did seem recognizably slow at times. Speaking about drives, you'd want to take a note that ATIV Book 8 doesn't have any optical disk drive.
Conclusion: Samsung ATIV Book 8 can be called Samsung's best bet yet in the 15.6-inch category of laptops. It's got a sexy chassis with a classy finish, and in almost every category, from the display to build quality, the laptop screams premium. Of course, you can get a better laptop in the market for a few hundred dollars more but we doubt whether you'll be able to find a laptop as good as ATIV Book 8, both design- and specification-wise in the sub-$1200 category.
Pros:
Stylish design
Solid construction
Good high contrast, full HD display and excellent viewing angles
Good for casual gamers (most modern games will be playable but not at highest settings)
Clear audio quality
Lots of storage space
Not heavy for a 15.6-inch laptop
Good battery life
Value for money
Cons:
Keyboard feels mushy at times
Laptop gets slightly hot when idle
Slow HDD
