Samsung Notebook 9 Ultrabooks Rock 8th Gen Intel Core i7 And S Pen Support
System builders have been releasing new and refreshed laptop models built around Intel's recently launched 8th Generation Core processor family for mobile (Kaby Lake Refresh or Kaby Lake-R, not to be confused with Coffee Lake on the desktop). Samsung is among them, having just launched three Notebook 9 models for 2018, and a Notebook 9 Pen SKU that comes with its S Pen stylus.
"At Samsung, we have long felt that technology must fit within the lives of the consumer, not the other way around. Over the past several years, the lines between our personal and professional lives have started to blur creating the need for technology that allows us to connect, collaborate and share from anywhere," said YoungGyoo Choi, Senior Vice President of the PC Business Team, Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. "The new Samsung Notebook 9 Pen and enhanced Samsung Notebook 9 (2018) offer our customers premium, powerful and portable devices that provide the tools to securely work from anywhere, breaking the boundaries of previously accepted standards for what a notebook should be."
That's a fancy way of saying that Samsung's latest laptops are thin, light, and powered by the latest 8th Generation Core i7 quad-core processor (upgraded from Kaby Lake), paired with dual-channel memory.
Both the Notebook 9 and Notebook 9 Pen feature a full metal chassis made from premium magnesium aluminum alloy called Metal12, which Samsung says is lighter than regular aluminum, and also durable. The Notebook 9 will be available in updated 13.3-inch and 15-inch configurations with up to 16GB of DDR4 memory, and up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage. The 15-inch model also brings optional discrete NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics into the mix. Also noteworthy is the display—while featuring a rather standard 1920x1080 resolution, Samsung says the brightness output peaks at 500 nits, which is twice as bright as some competing laptops.
Perhaps more interesting is the new Notebook 9 Pen, which will come in a 13-inch form factor. This is a 2-in-1 device with a 360-degree hinge so that users can prop it up in tent mode, as a stand, or fold it all the way back like a tablet. It will also feature a Core i7 processor and up to 16GB of RAM, with storage topping out at 512GB (NVMe SSD).
The two regular laptops will have a 75Wh battery, while the Notebook 9 Pen will have a 39Wh battery. There's no word yet on how much the new systems will cost or when they will be available.
