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With the introduction of netbooks the idea was the machines could never get small enough. Most people have come to realize, however, that even though the little netbooks are very mobile, the small size often makes for a subpar working environment. With the X360, Samsung attempts to make a notebook which is both light and mobile, offering a compromise size of 13.3" that should make it a bit easier to work with.

The notebook is made in very exclusive materials which might bring the MacBook Air to mind. Many have argued the Samsung X360 is a direct competitor to the MacBook Air, and thus I have taken it upon myself to test the new MacBook Air simultaneously with the Samsung X360 so as to allow for a proper comparison. In terms of specifications, the X360 is superior in many aspects such as by having more inputs/outputs, a lower weight, and a longer battery life. However, numbers are one thing, reality quite another. Let us see if the X360 can live up to the expectations.

The product was kindly lent to us by www.Samsung.com

Package contents



The Samsung X360 comes with quite a lot of accessories. In addition to the mandatory charger and manuals, an external slimline DVD-burner is included. A very handy piece of equipment, much the opposite of the next piece: a USB-Superlink cable. It has been a long time since I have seen such a cable, and I cannot quite comprehend why Samsung has bundled it. Still, it is better than nothing. Lastly a nice little bag and polishing cloth - the latter is particularly welcome, but more on that later - are included.

Construction & Design

First impression



The first thing you notice when you unpack the notebook is the sharp transition from the ever-so-lovely faded black aluminium to the piano varnish plastic. It looks stunning, quite frankly, but the piano varnish is just an invitation to fingerprints. Sadly that is a necessary evil for this type of design, but the cleaning is made easier with the aforementioned polishing cloth.

Another feature I have to mention right away is the HDMI port. While very standard on normal notebooks, you do not see an HDMI output very frequently on more lightweight models (the MacBook Air does not have one for example).

A small close-up of the battery's charge indicator. It has been seen before, but is nevertheless a very handy little feature if you cannot be bothered to power up the machine just to check how much battery is left.

Lastly a photo to give an overview of the notebook, and it looks good. It comes across as paper thin, but then again it is a lightweight. Samsung claims the machine is lighter than the MacBook Air, but after weighing both it and MacBook Air it turns out the X360 is - at 1.370 kg - 15g heavier than the MacBook Air. The design is resembling of Sony, and all in all you have to admit Samsung really pulled it off. The only downside is the extreme use of the black piano varnish, which makes the notebook immensely susceptible to fingerprints.

The lid



As mentioned before, the lid is "split" in two. One part is in a brushed, black aluminium while the other is in a black piano varnish. Samsung placed their logo square in the middle of the piano side in silver.

The front



Samsung has kept the front stylish and almost completely pure; only 4 diodes stand out.

The rear



The rear is dominated by the large battery. Beside the battery, we have the power jack at the left and the Kensington lock slot at the right.

The bottom



There is very little to see at the bottom. One thing stands out, though - a docking port. This port indicates the notebook is targeted at the business segment. It is worth noting the MacBook Air lacks such a port.

At the right side we have the aforementioned HDMI port. From the right of this a VGA port and at the left 2 x USB along with the media card slot.

The left side



At the far left we have the RJ45 port. Heading right, we encounter a vent, then 1 x USB, the expansionary slot and lastly the 2 x 3.5 mm audio jacks.

Inputs/outputs



Hinges



The hinges are, like much the rest of the notebook, cast in magnesium. As such they are quite strong and seem very durable.

Diodes



As mentioned earlier a small group of status diodes are located at the front. These indicate Power, HD-LED and AC.

Right above the keyboard at the left side are a further three diodes. These indicate the status of capslock, numlock and scrolllock.

Buttons



The power button is located just above the keyboard at the right side. It is easily accessible and has a comfortable blue diode.

Keyboard



The keyboard is very exquisite. It reacts as it should and the keys are nice and soft. It s reminiscent of Sony in terms of design, and even feels like it to a certain extent. Absolutely a top of the line keyboard, almost in the same category as the legendary IBM Thinkpad keyboards.

Touchpad



The touchpad works as it should. It is a bit too slippery for my taste, making the cursor run wild. In addition it is rather small, especially when you consider the right side is used for scrolling. All in all, a (below) average touchpad.

Noise & Heat

The machine does not make much noise, and nor does it get too hot. The cooling system seems to have been optimized rather well, though that in itself is not a hard task since the notebook is built on components with very low power consumption.

Display



The display is of the LED-type and the picture is just incredible. The only other machine I have seen with a picture of this quality is the MacBook Air. I would say the X360 and MacBook Air are dead even here. The X360 seems brighter, but the coating is so shiny that glare is a bigger problem here than on the MacBook Air. All in all though, the display can only be described as very impressive.

Webcam



The machine has a built-in webcam as well, a standard 1.3 megapixel kind. In other words, it is completely normal. It works like it should but it is by no means unique.

Benchmark
For the Samsung X360, all benchmarks were run at factory settings with Windows Vista unless otherwise specified.

Comparison

Apple MacBook Air

Processor
1.60 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo – 1066 MHz FSB – 6 MB Cache – 45 nm

Chipset
nVidia MCP79
       
RAM
2 x 1024 MB DDR3 RAM – 1066 MHz 

GPU
Geforce 9400M – 512 MB DDR3 RAM (shared) – Windows
   
HDD
1.8” – 120 GB HD – SATA300 – 16 MB – 4200 RPM

Battery
4900 mAh – 6 cells

Windows Vista Experience Index



As expected the bottleneck is the GPU. Still it is hardly as bad as what we usually see on notebooks, and if WVEI is right the components are quite well balanced. The score of 3.4 is decent, especially for such a small machine.

Boot & out of standby times





Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.

As shown by the graphs, the Samsung boots up quickest. Whether this is because the reference laptop has two operating system installed I cannot say, but the Samsung is the obvious winner on battery. When it comes to out of standby, things are different and the two machines are very close; the differences might as well be due to minor measurement errors. Both are very fast in any case.
 
Battery life



Battery-eater Pro 2,70 is used to measure the battery lives.

Stated battery life: 6-10 hours

Idle test settings: Approaching 0% CPU load, brightness minimum, all power saving functions activated.
Load test settings: Approaching 100% CPU load, brightness maximum, no power saving functions activated.

The X360 lasts the phenomenal 10 hours as promised! The absolute maximum battery life lands at 10.5 hours, which can only be described as REALLY good. However, do not hope for this kind of battery life if the machine is in use or has WiFi activated; in that case, expect a battery life of about 2.5 hours. A good deal lower but nevertheless still acceptable. The Samsung and the MacBook Air are very even, though the MacBook Air cannot even compete in idle.

The processor

SuperPI



SuperPI tests the CPU's speed but uses only one core. The result is a time in seconds, meaning the lower the better.

Since the reference has the most powerful CPU, it is only natural the Samsung suffers defeat.

wPrime v2.00



wPrime computes the number PI with 32 million decimals. wPrime is able to utilize multi-core processors, so it’s able to utilize more of the CPU during calculations than for example SuperPI. The result is a time in seconds, so the lower the number the better.

The same appears to be true in wPrime, albeit less extreme.

Sisoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic

SiSoft Sandras Whetstone and Drystone benchmark tests the processor’s ability to do pure number crunching, which occurs during gaming or different forms of picture editing. The measure is in Mflops (Millions Floating Point Operations Per Second) – the higher, the better.

Again the reference is the sharpest tool in the shed.

Sisoft Sandra CPU Multimedia

The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra is calculated on a 2D figure. The output (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, i.e. the bigger the better.

And the Samsung naturally loses again in the multimedia test.

RAM – Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth





Sisoft Sandras Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.

The result in the memory test is rather interesting. While both machines are equipped with DDR3 RAM, the reference performs about twice as well as the X360. The reason is presumably the CPU in the reference allows for a higher FSB.

HD – Sisoft Sandra HD Read



Sisoft Sandras hard drive test module is used to measure the performance of the hard drive. HDTach runs a number of tests on the surface of the hard drive and calculates the average reading speed.

The hard drive test provides a VERY interesting result; even though the X360 should be a good deal faster than the reference with a 5400 RPM vs a 4200 RPM hard drive, the reference takes a large victory! I ran the test several times but with the same result.

GPU – 3DMark





The 3DMark tests cannot be compared directly as they are very different, depending on which graphical system is being used. The 2001 version is based on DirectX 8.1 and shows how the machine performs in older games. 3DMark 2003, 2005, and 2006 are all based on DirectX 9 and shows how the machine performs in contemporary games and 3D programs.

I 3Dmark the focus is on 3D performance, and here the Geforce 9400M on the reference takes the cake. The X360 is practically blown away, and it is obvious nVidia MCP79 has raised the bar in terms of what you can expect from an integrated graphics solution.

Overall performance





The PCMark results can be compared directly with other laptops that have run the same version of PCMark. The Program gives a score from tests of processor, RAM, hard drive, GPU, etc.

The Samsung X360 has a slower GPU, CPU, RAM and hard drive. No suprise then the reference notebook victors in the overall performance test. Slightly odd the difference between the two notebooks is so much smaller in PCmark Vantage compared to PCmark 05. My experience with PCmark Vantage is, however, limited to such an extent I dare not even speculate about the nature of this difference.

Conclusion

The Samsung X360 is truly an exquisite piece of machinery; beautiful, light, and cast in exclusive materials. However, competition in this segment is tough. MSI has just come out with notebooks which are even thinner than the X360, starting at a much lower price no less. Performance is slightly lower of course, but the benchmarks show the X360 is not exactly a powerhouse either. Small annoyances like a tiny touchpad and the use of piano varnish such that the machine has to be cleaned every five minutes to retain its charm make the price hard to justify.

There are large advantages compared to the smaller netbook-like machines from MSI: a MUCH better display, generally a higher quality, a better keyboard and different inputs/outputs. Apple's MacBook Air has all these (with the exception of inputs/outputs) - and more. The X360 really only beats Apple's MacBook Air in two aspects: idle battery life and inputs/outputs. The MacBook Air might be more expensive, but if you have already gone above the £1,000 for such a notebook, what is £100 more?

The Samsung X360 is without a doubt a very slick notebook, but unless you absolutely need the features this machine offers (like the HDMI-output on a notebook in this segment), I will have to admit there are better alternatives for this particular price.

Pros:
Beautiful design
Low weight
High quality
Fantastic display
Great keyboard
Great inputs/outputs

Const:
Low performance
High price
Ridiculously susceptible to fingerprints
Small touchpad

Battery: 4 / 5Graphics: 1 / 5Construction: 3 / 5Mobility: 4 / 5Software: 3 / 5