Samsung's Notebook Pro 9 is a tidy little powerhouse designed for power users looking for portability and great design.
The new Notebook 9 Pro I saw at CES 2019 has a 13-inch FHD display, a powerful Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Those are pretty standard specs for the high-end that pretty much any laptop from any company could sport — and many do.
It also comes standard with Samsung's Active Pen stylus, which is handy for taking notes or annotating and signing documents. It's good that Samsung includes the Active Pen with the Notebook 9 Pro — Microsoft sells its Surface Pen stylus separately. A laptop stylus is the kind of thing that's handy, but not usually useful enough to buy separately.
The Notebook 9 Pro weighs in at a lightweight 2.84 pounds, which is a hair heavier than the 2018 MacBook Air. It's also 0.55 inches thick, which is actually thinner than the 2018 MacBook Air, which measures in at 0.61 inches at the thickest point.
Any laptop can have great specs, so Samsung improved the one area where it has the most control — design
Any laptop can have great specs. It's become clear over the last few years that design is becoming more and more important — it's one of the few areas where laptop makers have the most control when differentiating their devices from others. This year, Samsung seized control of the design of its own laptops.
With narrow bezels, sleek black borders, sharper and more modern edges, and a solid aluminum exterior, Samsung's latest Notebook 9 Pro has caught up with modern laptop design, where its previous models always felt laggard in terms of looks.
It also has three "diamond-cut" strips around the edges that gives it a little extra flair over its competitors. There's a slight retro vibe around the strips that I'm actually quite fond of.
Samsung's also making its cheaper laptops look great — which is good because often, cheaper laptops just look, uh, cheap.
Samsung's new Notebook Flash laptop starts at $350, and it actually looks pretty good! Especially when you compare it to other sub-$500 laptops that appear forgotten by their respective companies' design teams.
It has a burlap sac texture that looks and feels different to anything else out there — and I quite like it.
It's not the thinnest, lightest, or most powerful laptop in the world, but it's inexpensive and it'll do the basics just fine — and it looks like somebody put some thought into its appearance, too, which is a pleasant change of pace.
The Notebook Flash runs on an Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM, and a mere 64GB of storage, which is is on the lower-end of power and storage. But hey, it'll send your emails, stream your videos, and let you browse the web and social media. Starting at $350, the Notebook Flash could be a great machine for the lightweight user, or as a secondary device for less intensive tasks when you're done with work.
Samsung says the Notebook Flash will be available on January 15.
