Samsung NP940X5J-K01US Pro Reviews

Samsung’s ATIV Book 9 is essentially a 15-inch MacBook Air. If you’ve ever wanted such a thing, well, here’s your chance to own it, albeit with Windows 8.1 instead of OS X. The ATIV Book 9′s razor-thin profile, minimal heft, and bright display make it more portable than some 13-inch Ultrabooks, yet it still provides the space and comfort of a large, mainstream laptop. These goals are achieved by sacrificing performance, however. The ATIV Book 9 is not slow, but the same hardware can be found in systems that cost almost a third of this laptop’s MSRP. Acer’s Aspire E1, a $599 notebook we reviewed in March, matches or exceeds this $1,500 laptop’s processor and GPU performance. Is this an acceptable sacrifice? We’re sure some readers will answer “of course!” Others, however, will wonder why they’d purchase the ATIV Book 9 when alternatives like the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 offer comparable hardware for hundreds less, and are only a few millimeters thicker. Buyers looking for maximum portability in a large laptop will flock to the Samsung ATIV Book 9, but those who value performance may consider it a raw deal.