Samsung NoteBook 9 Pro
The NoteBook 9 Pro isn’t the company’s flagship device — that’s the Notebook 9 Pen with its S Pen.
Samsung NoteBook 9 Pro
By
Mishaal Shaheen
The NoteBook 9 Pro isn’t the company’s flagship device — that’s the Notebook 9 Pen with its S Pen. The Pro is more a middle-of-the-road laptop, something that can compete head-to-head with the Dell XPS 13 or MacBook Air. With the addition of a new active stylus and a redesigned chassis, can the Notebook 9 Pro be a proper alternative to Apple’s latest?
Size of NoteBook 9 Pro
Unlike in prior years, the NoteBook 9 Pro has just one size option, a 13.3-inch version. The 15-incher is now only an option in the Notebook 9 Pen line. What the Notebook 9 Pro does have, though, is style.
Samsung laptop comes with a stylus tech
Samsung is famous for its investment in stylus tech, but the S Pen that was housed and included with previous Notebook 9 2-in-1s is no more. The new stylus is a thicker, active pen in the vein of the Apple Pencil or Surface Pen. While it’s no longer housed in the chassis (and must be powered by a battery), this new pen feels more comfortable to hold. Samsung says it hasn’t lost any functionality and offers over 4,000 levels of sensitivity. Our short time with the stylus affirmed those claims.
1080 display
The screen itself has thinner bezels, but is still a standard 1080p display, capable of up to 350 nits. In fact, the entirety of the device has cut back on weight and thickness. It’s now 2.84 pounds and 0.55 inches thick. It’s not as insanely light as last year’s Notebook 9 Pen (2.2 pounds), but it’s a much-need reduction from last year’s Pro model. It still doesn’t feel quite lite enough to be used comfortably as at tablet, but occasional usage will work well.
USB-C port
Port selection has also modernized, removing the USB-A ports and replacing them with USB-C. In particular, the Notebook 9 Pro comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a standard USB-C port, and a microSD card slot. That’s a good fit for this notebook, which is intended to be a highly-mobile, 2-in-1
device.
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Processor
The Notebook 9 Pro starts with a Core i7-8565U processor, which is Intel’s latest and greatest. It’s a quad-core processor which, combined with 8GB of RAM, should be a great productivity machine capable of some serious performance. The notebook also comes with 256GB of NVMe PCIe SSD storage.
Battery life
Samsung also claims the updated device will last longer on a single charge, though its battery has only increase from a 54 watt-hour to a 55 watt-hour unit.