Credit: Samsung
Samsung’s Notebook 7 and Notebook 7 Force are laptops designed for a growing audience of PC users who want a premium experience—and enough hardware to get them through work and play without a hiccup. Both laptops offer a sleek, polished aesthetic. In addition, the Notebook 7 Force offers powerful CPU and GPU options for graphics-intensive applications—and maybe some gaming on the side. Announced Sunday night and due to ship July 26, the Notebook 7 will start at $1,000, while the Notebook 7 Force will start at $1,500.
Let’s talk about the design first, as the era of tolerating boring-looking laptops is clearly going away. The Samsung Notebook 7 and Notebook 7 Force will have these premium elements:
- Solid metal chassis
- Diamond-cut edges
- Thin display bezels
- Thin profiles of 0.5 to 0.7 inches, depending on the model
- Samsung’s Lattice Keyboard, which offers wide keycaps for comfortable typing
- Ultra-wide Precision Touchpad for navigation
While the laptops models differ in many ways, their common features include:
- Up to 16GB of RAM
- Full HD (1920x1080) displays
- 802.11ac wave2 2x2 Wi-Fi
- 720p webcam
- Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos
- Fingerprint reader
- Connectivity: One USB 3.1 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A, HDMI, microSD
The most interesting common spec is that these laptops offer CPUs from Intel’s 8th-generation Whiskey Lake lineup. Wait, haven’t further generations been announced recently? Yes, but the 9th-gen Coffee Lake-R mobile CPUs are 8-core barn-burners meant for high-end gaming and content creation; and the 10th-gen Ice Lake parts just announced at Computex aren’t appearing in shipping product until the fall. There’s plenty to like about the Core i7-8565U processor at the heart of all the Notebook 7 laptops being announced. It’s a 4-core, 9-thread CPU with a base clock of 1.8GHz and a boost clock of 4.6GHz. That is a lot of oomph for most applications.
Here are the rest of the features for each model:
Samsung Notebook 7 13-inch features and specs
Display: 13.3-inch, 1920x1080 (FHD) LED
Graphics: Intel UHD 620
Storage: Choice of 256GB or 512GB SSD
Battery: 55Wh
Weight (pounds, without AC adapter): 2.84
Dimensions (inches): 12.2 x 8.7 x 0.5
Samsung Notebook 7 15-inch features and specs
Display: 15.6-inch, 1920x1080 (FHD) LED
Graphics: Choice of Intel UHD 620 or Nivdia GeForce MX250 discrete
Storage: Choice of 256GB or 512GB SSD; or a 512GB SSD with one SSD expansion slot
Battery: 55Wh
Weight (pounds, without AC adapter): 3.73 to 3.95
Dimensions (inches): 14.1 x 9.4 x 0.6
Samsung Notebook 7 Force features and specs
Display: 15.6-inch, 1920x1080 (FHD) LED
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 discrete
Storage: 512GB SSD with two expansion slots (one SSD and one HDD)
Battery: 43Wh
Weight (pounds, without AC adapter): 4.08
Dimensions (inches): 14.1 x 9.4 x 0.7
It's interesting that the Notebook 7 Force has a smaller battery than the others even though it costs the most. In general, however, Samsung seems to be offering solid specs for the price on all of these models. We'll see how they perform against the competition if we have a chance to test them.
