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Samsung RF511
by schmoogrz
I received the RF511 this morning and I have to say that Amazon's service has been brilliant in that they dispatched this via next day after my initial RF511 order went walkies in the West Midlands, courtesy of CityLink.
First impressions on this laptop are mixed. To start with the good: the i5/8GB/1TB spec is reasonably fast, ... it's handled everything I've thrown at it without a hiccup thus far. This includes 1080p HD, processing RAW files in LightRoom and, even though I didn't buy this for gaming, The Sims 3 - which the HD3000 integrated graphics did a decent job with on high settings.
On that note however, the fan does like to spin-up a bit in LightRoom and when I took The Sims 3 for a spin, things got hot, 80*C hot. Otherwise, the RF511 does stay quiet and cool. I've generally noticed it hovering around 30-40*C in SpeedFan on general internet/music/Microsoft Word use.
What I will say is that Samsung's "superior LCD screen" is anything but. It has a washed out appearance and oddly the image deteriorates left-to-right, top-to-bottom whilst sitting straight on, despite good viewing angles. The slightest shift will make one part of the picture hazy under the backlight whilst giving deeper colours to another part. Very odd.
Coupled with this, the RF511 sucumbs to the stereotype of lapptops having poor speakers whilst my previous Lenovo E520 packed speakers which sounded 'full-bodied'. Why can't a £600 Samsung laptop do the same?
With the aforementioned in mind, the RF511 is a bit so-so for those situations where you end up watching a movie with your mates around a laptop. In terms of the screen, I have found Intel's gamma adjustment slider goes a short way to fixing things; I suggest putting it down to 0.9 to make things a little less washed. The speakers however will always sound naff.
In terms of pre-installed software the RF511 comes with a lot of it, so much so that you can get a decent amount of scroll on the add/remove programs. Thankfully most of it is either Samsung/third-party drivers or Samsung software, but there are a few things like "WildTangent Games", "WordCapture X Pro", "Norton Online Backup" and a suite of CyberLink software which you might want to remove. Norton's security software is especially annoying (I'd suggest Microsoft's Security Essentials, it's free).
The build quality feels decent enough, however the lid does flex if you lift it from a corner however - and whilst the typing experience is good, the noise of the keys varies around the large ENTER key. But things feel pretty solid otherwise and I haven't heard any creeks from the chasis yet (that being said I haven't exactly stress tested it, nor do I want to :P).
Lastly, in terms of design I have read criticism which I think is down to the colour scheme - I'll admit the oddly grey/silver scheme keyboard is at odds with the black super-gloss lid (note: fingerprint and scratch magnet) - and - further, the chrome hinges look kinda tacky, but the RF511 is nothing bad to look at in my opinion.
On the whole, the RF511 is good, but it's not anything I'd recommend when priced too far over the £500 price mark, which it is. Less than this and coupled with Samsung's VAT back, it makes for a great deal, but otherwise I'd recommend a Samsung series 6, 7 or 9, or perhaps the Dell Inspiron or XPS 14z.
Review also posted on Amazon.
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Samsung R780
by BenC7
This laptop is the best I have ever had. It's sleek, stylish look go well with the feel of the keyboard and the laptop itself. The laptop does have a 'plastic' feel, which surprised me at first. However, after getting used to the feel of it (it was totally different to my last laptop) I have realized that it is in-fact better this way. ... The laptop doesn't scratch easily, is smooth and has an intelligent layout. The input ports (USB, HDMI, Ethernet etc) are spread out across the sides of the laptop so overheating is less likely to occur.
The laptop has a touchpad lock (which is good if you want to use a mouse, flicking the touchpad can be incredibly annoying!). The keyboard has a light touch to it, very easy to 'touch type' as they aren't heavy at all.
The performance will depend on the specification. My laptop was a mid-range model. It is now 13 months old and is still performing well. The larger screen model (~17") is of course bigger but for its size it is an incredibly light laptop (my 17" laptop is lighter than most of my friends 15.6").
The graphics are decent, not incredible but they will be adequate for most gamers.
On the whole, I would rate this laptop as 5 stars.
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Samsung RV510
by ruby_xo
I recently bought a new laptop, a Samsung model, RV510. I bought it online, from eBay. It was from an eBay shop which is part of Argos which sells refurbished laptops. So the price was quite good and I only paid £240 for this which I think is a bargain.
I read a lot of reviews before buying this laptop as I wanted to make ... sure I bought the right one for me. Most of the reviews were very positive. I know that Samsung is a popular brand as well, and I have only ever good heard things about Samsung and its never let me down in the past. I also made sure the laptop had a guarantee on it before I confirmed my bid. I made a very careful well thought out decision about whether to buy this or not.
The laptop looks good. It has a shiny black lid on which looks stylish. Around where the buttons are it is silver and the buttons themselves are black. The keyboard is very easy to use and the keys are all spaced out very well and in the right places so I can type really quickly and with ease. I really like the feel of the mouse as well, which I was worrying about, as normally I don't like the mouse on laptops, but this one is actually OK.
Apart from looking good this laptop also works really well. It is quick and when you turn it on it takes less than a minute to get it to turn on. With my computer it used to take about ten minutes for it to turn on and for everything to load on, so this is very fast in comparison which is great.
This didn't come with Microsoft Office built in but I have since installed it and it works fine on here. I have also installed some PC games such as Beach Life. And I have also burned some music CD s and I didn't have to install anything new to the laptop to be able to do this so I think it must already have a CD burner built in. It also has Windows Movie Maker, Paint, and Windows Media Player built in already.
There seems to be loads of space on this laptop as I have transferred all my documents and music and pictures from my computer and they have all fit on, and there is still loads of room for more. I don't know how to find out the exact memory of this laptop but trust me that it has lots of memory as I had tons of documents etc in my libraries.
Internet explorer and firefox are both installed to this, I installed firefox myself but Internet Explorer was on here already, They both work really well but personally I think firefox is better.
Overall this is an excellent laptop and for the price I paid it is better than I expected it to be. I would definitely recommend it. I don't know much about laptops but I do know that this is a very good one.
It has 3 USB ports two are on one side and one is on the other side. This also has ports for headphones and a microphone. This also comes with a built in webcam, to find this just go to Start, then Cyberlink YouCam. It is a good webcam which takes good quality photos and you can add special effects to these photos as well, which is good fun. You can stretch out your face and make it fatter or thinner and make it look really funny. This is a great feature to the laptop, in my opinion.
Other features which are already built in include a calculator, some sample pics and music, and games. So just all the usual stuff really that you would expect to get on a laptop or computer.
Well anyway this is just from a student's point of view, nothing technical but just an opinion so hope it has been helpful to you. If you are thinking of getting a good, budget laptop to be used for home, school sort of stuff then this will do the job for you. It suits me perfectly and I would definitely recommend it. The only downside I can think of is the fact this didn't come with a battery so I always have to have it plugged in by the charger which obviously limits where I can go on it. But I could buy a battery so this isn't too big of a disadvantage.
So overall I recommend this.
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