Samsung NP-NF710-S02US
- Category: Notebook Computers
November 12, 2010
Editor's Rating
- Quad-core processor
- Great performance
- Blu-ray optical drive
- Large keyboard/trackpad
- 720p resolution screen
- Fingerprint magnet
The Samsung NP-NF710-S02US, besides having in incredibly long, meaningless name, is a decently priced and well-stocked 17-inch wide screen laptop. It has a quad-core CPU with lots of multimedia features, including lots of storage space for media and a Blu-ray drive for the latest and greatest movies in their best quality.
This 6.5-pound laptop from Samsung has a piano-black, glossy body that is one big fingerprint attractor, but it also is fairly stylish and sturdy too. It, however, might not be the most stylish laptop out there, but never judge a laptop by its body. Think of this laptop as a stationary laptop, meaning you won't want to lug it around with you many places, so perhaps then it falls into the desktop replacement category. And with all the multimedia features, that is probably true.
The 17.3-inch wide screen display looks quite good, however (and a big however), it is not 1080p HD resolution. It is 720p, which is not quite full HD, but it's at least something reasonable. That said, the screen has good picture quality and displays accurate colors and brightness/contrast levels in subjective testing. Under the LCD is the keyboard, which features rather large-sized keys, which for most people, is a good thing. Next to the keyboard to the right is also a full-sized numeric keypad. Samsung also made the touch pad slightly oversized compared to other models, which allows for more than adequate space for lots of mouse movement.
The port selection on this laptop from Samsung is also quite decent. There are four USB ports (2 are USB 3.0), an HDMI out port to connect it to an HDTV, VGA out, Gigabit Ethernet, and audio out/headphone ports. There is also, as we stated earlier, a tray-loading Blu-ray optical disc drive for watching HD movies (in 720p quality as limited by the display). 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi is also included and this laptop runs Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit).
Some of the specifications of the Samsung NP-NF710-S02US include an Intel Core i7-720QM quad-core CPU clocked at 1.6GHz and 4GB of DDR3 memory. You also get a 640GB hard drive, which is more than enough for most mediaphiles, but the drive is of a slower speed at only 5400RPMs instead of the faster 7200RPM. A discrete graphics card is also inside and, in this case, it is the nVidia GeForce GT 330M.
Battery life is rated at around 3-4 hours, which is typical of a desktop replacement notebook as it only needs to perform "light" portability and has more powerful internals than a typical laptop. We also should note that this laptop gets quite hot when used both on battery power and on A/C power, which is probably also due to the enhanced internals.
Performance using the Samsung NP-NF710-S02US was rather good in subjective testing. Performing multimedia tasks, like watching a Blu-ray movie, worked with ease and so did video encoding and other processor-intensive tasks. 3D gaming is also an option with this computer thanks to the discrete graphics processor from nVidia, which gives you decent, but not the best, 3D gaming performance. It's perfect for users who don't use their computer solely to play games, but rather does it occasionally or modestly.
