Starting from $999, Samsung’s two new mid-size laptops sport a scratch-resistant finish, Core i3 and Core i5 engines and very un-Samsung colours.
Don’t think that the ‘R’ prefix of Samsung’s R540 and R590 notebooks means ‘rugged’. No laptop which costs so little (relatively) and looks so smart (subjectively) could belong to that brick-hard breed of sturdy machines typified by Panasonic’s Toughbook or Dell’s semi-rugged Latitude ATG variants.
Instead, the R540 and R590 are more about being Resistant to scratches, scuffs and spills. Not the most perilous fates to befall tech, we grant you, but it’s probably about as dangerous as things get in the conference room or cafe.
The ‘Duracase’ finish of these mid-sized 15.6 inch notebooks bonds a scratch-resistant layer atop the chassis, while the keyboard is water resistant.
The
$999 R540 models start with a 2.27GHz Core i3-350M and a 320GB hard drive; bump your budget up to
$1,199 and you get you the 2.4GHz Core i5-450M plus a fatter 500GB platter.
Both versions come with 4GB of RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon HD545v graphics backed by 512MB of gDDR3 memory, Windows 7 Home Premium and a soft metallic bronze-brown finish.
At
$1,299 the R590 partners the same Core i5-450M powerplant to nVidia’s GeForce GT 330M with 1GB of gDDR3 RAM, a 640GB drive and a more standout blue-black gradient design.
Samsung-specific tweaks to all three models include an ‘underclocking’ mode designed to reduce fan noise by dropping CPU voltage, USB sleep-and-charge ports and automated backup to a user-created recovery partition on the hard drive.