Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook

NOT a MacBook clone

Key feature

Inside is one of the most fabulous keyboards I have seen on a notebook computer. The keys have lovely action and scream quality. There is even a controllable backlight under the keyboard that illuminates not just the key edges but shines through the labels too, making it a wonderful notebook to use in dim lighting conditions. This is close to a full keyboard, too, complete with numeric keypad and cursor keys.

The beautiful backlit keyboard is paired up with a large and highly adept multi-touch trackpad

Switch the computer on – from cold, this takes 34 seconds – and I challenge anyone not to be impressed with the size of the screen. I realise it’s a 15.6in display but it feels much more like a 17in, thanks to a narrow bezel and a generous 1600 x 900-pixel resolution.

With the screen titled in the perfect position, the image is bright, clear and very contrasty. Unfortunately, the display suffers from an acute viewing angle, the image turning dark as you tip it backwards or pale as you tip it forwards, and it is very difficult to read from oblique angles at the sides.

You need to view display in action to appreciate how big it really is

The onboard Intel HD Graphics chipset is partnered with an AMD Radeon HD6750M card, switching automatically between them to suit the software being run at the time.

I am led to believe that the computer will even switch to the Intel HD Graphics when it detects that you’re on battery power rather than the mains, but this was not my experience. In fact, while running Futuremark’s Powermark battery life benchmark, the switching of chipsets at the end of the first video playback test caused the Samsung Series 7 Chronos to crash. Once I disabled video enhancement in the Samsung drivers, everything worked much better.