Well, well, well.. Today I’ve got a Go! Gaming Giant first. That’s right folks, as you probably gathered from the title of the review, this is Go! Gaming Giant’s first ever Laptop review!
Today I have the Samsung Series 7 GAMER Laptop for all of you fine folks out there.
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Box Overview
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There really isn’t a whole lot to cover when it comes to the box. The front of the box says Samsung Series 7 GAMER, all the while showing us a photo of the top of the laptop itself. On the back is a shot of the laptop open, and set to Gamer Mode. More on that later.
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The Goodies
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The Series 7 GAMER comes with just about every kind of manual known to man. You get two Warranty Information Sheets, a Safety Precautions Guide, Get Started Guide, User Guide, and a Quick Start Guide. Samsung also includes a handy System Recovery CD to go along with the gigantic Power Brick. Though you cannot tell by the photo, the included power brick for the GAMER is the largest I’ve ever seen for a laptop. It’s not quite as big as the power brick for the original Xbox 360, but it’s pretty darn close.
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The Laptop
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Alright, let’s have a quick rundown of the laptop before we get into the juicy bits.
The top of the laptop has a glossy finish, which attracts all sorts of finger prints. Even though the top will definitely attract some smudges, the finish on it is brilliant. Samsung used a black to gunmetal type fade on the top which is gorgeous to look at it. It’s subtle, but still catches the eye. In the right hand side of the picture, you can somewhat see the Samsung logo. When the laptop is powered on, this Samsung logo lights up white, which also adds to the attractiveness of this laptop.
Swinging to the left side of the laptop holds almost all of the connections on the GAMER. From right to left we have the power plug, an Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, Displayport, two USB 3.0 Ports, a 7-in-1 Card Reader (though I didn’t have the means to test is), as well as your standard microphone and headphone jack. All pretty much standard fare on an $1800 laptop.
Over on the right side is quite plain in comparison to the other side. Over here we have two USB 2.0 Ports, the Blu-Ray Drive, as well as the Profile wheel (more on that later). The back of the drive has no connections of any sort, but it does have large openings on each side so that the two internal cooling fans can work at maximum capacity.
Sorry about the brightness from the camera flash. The GAMER has a massive 17.3″ screen, which leaves enough body real estate to fit a standard size keyboard with a numpad, which makes typing much easier. The body here doesn’t carry over the glossy finish from the top, instead electing to go with a brushed aluminum look. Obviously the whole body of the laptop is plastic, and that may be a concern to some. But I can assure you after extensive use that this is an excellently built piece of hardware. The touchpad is very, very large in comparison to some of the other 17.3″ laptops I have used, which makes for a more enjoyable experience when you don’t have a mouse available to you.. But when you do, I wouldn’t recommend using the touchpad.
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Features
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Normally we wouldn’t have a dedicated feature section, but then again this isn’t a normal review now is it. I’m going to try to segment this section to make it as easy to digest as possible, starting with the Specs of the laptop, then moving on to the actual features.
Specifications:
Operating System – Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
CPU Type – Intel Core i7-3610QM 2.3GHz
Screen – 17.3″
Memory Size – 16GB DDR3
Hard Disk – 1.5TB
Optical Drive – Blu-Ray Player
Graphics Card – Nvidia Geforce GTX 675M
Video Memory – 2GB
Communication – Gigabit LAN and WLAN
Dimensions – 16.1″ x 11.2″ x 1.29″-1.96″
Weight – 8.39 lbs
Other Features – Intel Wireless Display
Now onto the less technical stuff.
Features:
Dolby Home Theater Audio – Basically this baby has two built-in speakers (2x2W) to go along with a built-in subwoofer. They also include all the of the Dolby Software standard with the laptop. The exact kind of software that is available with most on-board Realtek sound cards these days.
Four Different Profiles – The Samsung Series 7 GAMER has four profiles to choose from by clicking to it with the profile wheel. You have Gamer, Normal, Library, and Green (Eco). Each mode drastically changes not only the look, but performance of the laptop. In Gamer Mode, both of the cooling fans spin up so that the laptop can run at 100% power, the laptop goes through a transition screen, and the whole keyboard lights up with Blue LED’s (except for WASD which are red). In Normal Mode the laptop runs somewhere between 75-90% speed, with the keyboard lighting up a nice relaxing white. Library Mode mutes the sound, and green mode kills the keyboard backlight, while also dimming the screen (to conserve battery, and be overall more… Well green…)
17.3″ 1920x1080P Screen – The Samsung Series 7 GAMER uses Samsung’s ‘Super Bright Plus Technology’ for the LCD backlighting, which creates a sharp and vibrant picture that will rival anything available on not only a laptop, but on a desktop monitor as well. Honestly, you couldn’t ask for more from Samsung, one of the top LCD and LED manufacturer’s in the World.
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Battery Life & Included Software
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The battery life of the Samsung Series 7 GAMER isn’t amazing, which is to be expected. A laptop like this is built to be used while plugged in. I got just under 3 hours and 30 minutes of life out of the battery while gaming in Gamer Mode, which isn’t bad, but it’s about middle of the pack for battery life among gaming laptops. Just using the laptop for daily web browsing and email checking will drain the battery quite a bit more slowly, and should give you plenty of life between chances to plug it in and recharge it.
The included software on the GAMER is mostly bloatware that comes standard on all laptops these days. Most of it is crap that you will most likely uninstall. The one nifty set of programs worth keeping though, are Samsung’s own software they include pre-installed on the laptop. Their software allows you to alter quite a few settings of the GAMER on the fly, such as LED backlighting on the keyboard and things of that nature.
Remove the rest of the software if you so wish, but I recommend keeping the Samsung Software.
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Testing
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I tested the laptop in two different modes: Normal, and Gamer. The Green and Library mode are nice additions, but I didn’t ever find them necessary. I’m going to break the testing into two categories, Normal testing and Gamer testing. From there I will break them down into Sub-Categories. All the testing was done WITH the laptop plugged into the power brick. If you try to switch to gamer mode without it being plugged in, the laptop will actually warn you that it will not run at max speed.
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Normal Mode Testing
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Gaming:
Crysis 2 – For gaming I played about an hour of Crysis 2 at the complete max settings at 1920×1080. The testing was done with DX11 and the Hi-Res Texture pack being enabled. Obviously as you can see from the benchmark, in Normal Mode the GAMER can’t deliver playable frame rates in Crysis 2. To be honest, I expected this from the get-go. For any laptop to be able to handle Crysis 2 completely maxed out at 1080P, it would have to, at the very least, be running SLI or Crossfire Graphics Cards.
Audio in Crysis 2 is done extremely well. You can tell that Crytek devoted a lot of time and resources to developing a truly engrossing sound experience when they made Crysis 2. Sadly it suffers from poor reproduction with the GAMER. One big complaint I always have with Laptop speakers, is that they don’t get loud enough. That’s not the problem with the GAMER. They developed it to get PLENTY loud, trust me. The problem with the GAMER is that it just doesn’t sound that good.
First I listened to it stock, and it sounded super flat, so I went in and turned on the Dolby EQ, and adjusted it. This definitely added life to the sound of the game, but it still didn’t fix the fact that there is absolutely no low reproduction from the GAMER.
Picture Quality: 10/10
Playability Quality: 2/10
Sound Quality: 5/10
Overall Quality: 7/10
Music Production:
Some of you may be scratching your head on this one, but if you’ve ever recorded music before, you know that it can be extremely taxing on a system. Most recording artist prefer Apple Laptops for recording, due to their simplicity. I on the other hand enjoy having enough power under my finger tips to blow that Mac away.
When recording over an hour of drumming with the GAMER through Ableton Live 8.2.2, I never saw the CPU usage go over 10%, all the while the laptop stayed cool and efficient. I never once dealt with a lockup of any sort or any slowdowns. Most of this is due to the incredibly snappy Intel Core i7 Processor, and the ridiculous 16Gb’s of memory that is installed in the GAMER.
Overall Quality: 10/10
Movies:
1080P screen? Check. Blu-Ray Disk Drive? Check. Looks like I’m all set to enjoy some blu-ray movies. I chose two of my favorite movies to watch on the Samsung Series 7 GAMER. Avatar and Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith (not my favorite Star Wars, but definitely the best looking).
Avatar – Man watching this movie on the laptop was a bit of a revelation. I’ve seen Avatar half a dozen times, and in 1080P on the 60″ Plasma I have in the living room. But nothing quite compares to the sheer beauty you get when you watch or play anything on a Samsung designed screen. Every color just pops and looks stunning. Honestly, if the screen was larger, I would use this as a bedroom TV.
Now for the bad. The audio quality with the Samsung Series 7 GAMER is quite poor. it’s the same story as Crysis 2. Adding EQ definitely makes the High’s and Mid’s sound much, much better, but there is no thump or bass at all. This makes for a poor viewing experience when it comes to watching movies.
Picture Quality: 10/10
Sound Quality: 5/10
Overall Quality: 7.5/10
Star Wars – Anybody who has seen the Star Wars movies now that they’re out on Blu-Ray know these two all important facts. They look and sound amazing, but sadly George Lucas totally f*d them up.. Fanboy griping aside, what the boys over at Lucas Film were able to do with these films is quite astounding. The final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin still takes my breath away, and watching it on Blu-Ray makes it even better!
Different movie, same story. The Audio lacks a low-end.
Picture Quality: 10/10
Sound Quality: 5/10
Overall Quality: 7.5/10
Music:
For music I listened to not only my own recordings that I made with Ableton, but also a complete listen through of Fear Factory’s 2012 album The Industrialist, as well as the 28 Days Later Soundtrack.
Ableton Recordings – The GAMER reproduced my drum recordings extremely well. The snare came through with a solid crack, the hi-hat was clean and not overbearing, and the toms and cymbals all mixed in extremely well. Obviously there was no bass which helps kill the sound quality a bit. Luckily the GAMER was able to reproduce each kick drum hit so well that you could almost forgive the fact that there was absolutely no thump to them.
Overall Quality: 7/10
Fear Factory – The founders of Industrial Metal. This album is the standard right now for recordings. Not necessarily for the music, but rather for the mixing. The album perfectly balances vocals, guitar, bass, and drums extremely well. With the GAMER it’s the same thing as before.
Overall Quality: 6/10
28 Days Later – Mmm. If you guys have read any previous reviews of headsets, you know that I covet this soundtrack for testing. Luckily being as this isn’t a bass-heavy soundtrack, the GAMER reproduced the entire soundtrack extremely well. While some of the high’s washed out and the mid’s did get a bit muddied at times, the GAMER still gave me sound comparable to a $100-150 pair of headphones.
Overall Quality: 8/10
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Gamer Mode Testing
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I did exactly what you’d expect in Gamer Mode… I gamed!
Crysis 2
As you can see, at max settings in Gamer Mode the game still isn’t playable (it also reveals that Normal Mode is only a tiny bit slower than Gamer Mode). Dropping all of the game settings down to Very High gives us absolutely perfect frames though. Even though all of the settings were set to Very High, I still had the resolution at 1080p, AA on, and DX11 and Hi-Res Textures.. How do ya like them apples?
Overall Quality: 10/10
We just tested a DX11 Title, now let’s test out a DX9 title. Maxing every single thing out in Skyrim results in perfectly playable framerates of 39fps average. These numbers really don’t surprise me, this laptop is extremely powerful under the hood, and it is definitely flexing its’ muscles with these titles.
Overall Quality: 9/10
The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition
Surprisingly, I still have yet to get sit down and actually play this game (it’s like #15 on my backlog), but that didn’t stop me from stress testing the GAMER with it. I went into The Witcher 2 with every single graphical setting maxed out (yes, even Ubersampling). The end results were, again, right where you want them to be. I have heard that at certain parts of the game, that the ubersampling will really kick in and cause your FPS to plummet. I personally didn’t run into that, but it is definitely something to be aware of.
Overall Quality: 9/10
Sure why not. We’ve covered DX9 and DX11 (twice!), so why not cover DX10. Alan Wake was amazing on the Xbox 360, and I had no doubt that it was going to be just as good on the PC, and boy was I right. I didn’t expect Alan Wake to be of any real stress on the GAMER. I just wanted to see how well it could render the amazing lighting effects that Alan Wake has, and it did so admirably (all while cranking out an impressive 86FPS Average).
Overall Quality: 10/10
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Conclusion
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There was definitely quite a bit of content between the start of this review and now, that’s for sure. So how do we sum this all up nice and neat? Simply put, the Samsung Series 7 GAMER is a winner.
The gaming power is unmatched in this price range, the feature list is extensive, and the picture quality is the best in class by far. The biggest downfall of the GAMER is the sound quality. Like I said before, it gets plenty loud, and with the Dolby EQ the High’s and Mid’s range from good to excellent, it’s just simply the fact that there is no bass.
Obviously some of you may see this as a way for me to lower my recommendation for this laptop, but that is not the case. The pros far outweigh the cons in this case. Plug in a pair of headphones, and you have a laptop that will compete with laptops ranging from $2,000 to $3,000. And besides, who actually uses the on-board speakers. If you’re on a plane you wouldn’t use them, on a bus, or pretty much anywhere really.
I highly, highly recommend this laptop to anybody who wants an absolute powerhouse of a laptop. The price may seem steep, but the quality of the product you receive is worth 2x what you pay.
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A quick explanation of the award system. We have the main award category with three awards; Bronze (Good Overall Product), Silver (Great Overall Product), and Gold (Excellent/Near Perfect Overall Product) as the highest. Then we have two different Sub-Categories, Internal Hardware Awards for performance; Yellow (Low-End Performer), Orange (Mid-Range Performer), and Red (High-End Performer) as the highest. The third and final Sub-Category is for both Internal Hardware and External Peripherals; Black (Enthusiast/Gamer Qualities), Blue (Exceptional Build and Design), Green (Terrific Dollar To Performance Ratio), White (Innovative But Flawed)
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Pros:
- Excellent Gaming Performance
- Stunningly Beautiful Screen
- Loaded With Features
- Looks Great
- Solid Build Quality
Cons:
- Mediocre Sound
- Requires Power Brick For Full Power (Pretty Common)
- Transition Screen Gets Annoying (When Transitioning In And Out Of Gamer Mode)
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You can buy your very own Samsung Series 7 GAMER here!
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September 9, 2012
#1
really nice review thanks
September 13, 2012
#2
No problem, glad to hear you enjoyed it. It’s definitely a nice laptop, that’s for sure.