Samsung is making a point of being extremely competitive with laptops powered by Intel's newest, 3rd-gen Core processors. In yet another excellent special at JB Hi-Fi, a Core i7 -powered 15.6in Samsung laptop is selling for $1026.40. The Samsung NP550P5C-S02AU (listed as 550P5C-S02AU by JB Hi-Fi) is a 15.6in notebook with the latest 3rd generation Intel Core i7 - a high-end processor which has enough power to comfortably deal with the most intensive of applications. Complementing it nicely is an Nvidia GeForce GT 650M, an impressive mid-range mobile graphics card that will run modern games, even the likes of Battlefield 3, at mid to high levels of detail. The NP550P5C also comes with 6GB RAM and 1TB storage, providing a generous amount of memory and plenty of space for a reasonably large collection of media files. With most online shops selling this notebook for over $1,100 the price of $1026.40 at a major retailer makes it a good buy.
In short, if you're looking for a powerful laptop that will easily handle just about everything you can throw at it and let you play some intensive PC games at OK levels of detail, you won't find much better at this price.
See a summary of the specs below:
PROCESSOR - The laptop's engine
The 3rd Gen Intel Core i7-3610M (2.3GHz) is one of the top end quad-core processors for laptops and is found in a large number of recent high performance notebooks. Compared to a laptop with a less powerful Core i3 or Core i5 processor, it makes everything execute just that little bit faster.
GRAPHICS - Control what you see displayed on the screen
The Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card is a decent enough mid-range graphics card, meaning you will have no problem playing modern games at acceptable levels of detail.
RAM - The memory used for computation
6GB of RAM is quite a reasonable amount for this price. Power laptops generally have around 8GB, so maybe this is where there is a little compromise to bring the price down, but 6GBs is still plenty for running several office applications, as well as moderately intensive image and video editing tasks.
STORAGE - The long term store for data and programs
The very large 1 Terabyte (or 1,000GB) hard disk drive can store plenty of documents and media content. It's on the larger side for laptops.
SCREEN
The NP550P5C sports a 15.6in (1,366 x 768 resolution) anti-reflective gloss screen. The resolution is average for the screen size.
PORTABILITY
The NP550P5C is a full-sized laptop. Weighing 2.5kg and 30.4mm thick, it is less portable than average, but it's to be expected for a performance machine like this. Although it can be moved around, a decent notebook backpack should be considered. This laptop can easily replace your desktop PC.
See the special online here.