Samsung R560 Review

Samsung R560 Review

Last week I receieved my new laptop – the Samsung R560. It is a notebook built for graphic designers and 3D gamers. I was very impressed with the quick delivery from saveonsamsung.com – it was free next-day delivery and it came on-time and there have no been problems with it so far.

Specifications
My Samsung r560 has the following specifications:
Screen size: 15.4”
Processor: Intel (R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU (2.00GHz)
Memory (RAM): 4GB
System type: 32-bit Operating System
Hard drive: 250GB
Graphics card: Dedicated (NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GS with 256MB DDR3 Memory)
Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
I only paid £665 for this laptop – this was with free next-day delivery. I have had absolutely no problems with it; it arrived on time and has been working brilliantly so far. I think that this is a good price for a laptop with these specifications.

Build
The notebook is very strong; there is no flex at all anywhere on the laptop, even when i press hard. It feels very sturdy too, and when i push the back of the screen there are no ripples.
The case is built with a glossy black plastic and, in my opinion, looks very good. The lid attracts fingerprints very easily, but the cloth supplied with the laptop gets rid of them well.
The R560 is quite heavy and an average thickness – overall I think it is very durable and will last a long time.

Keyboard/Touchpad
The keyboard on this notebook is as big as any desktop’s keyboard. The keys have a nice touch to them, and are very easy to use without looking at. The numbers are all full-size too, and the PgUp, PgDn, End, Alt, Fn keys are bigger than the ones I usually see on laptops. The only thing I would say that I dislike about this keyboard, is that the arrow keys are quite small. Sometimes when gaming I have to look down to locate them otherwise my fingers miss – I think the arrow keys could have been set out a bit better, especially when there is so much room left on the base of the notebook.
The touchpad is very good – there is a ridge around the edges and the buttons so that your fingers don’t run onto the laptop’s case without you noticing. The touchpad has a nice feel to it, and has a scroller on the side which works extremely well. The buttons are good, but have a rough feeling to them. This doesn’t affect me much – it just feels a bit strange.

Operating System
I have never actually used Vista before, but so far it is working brilliantly. No problems with it at all, and when I first turned on my laptop it didn’t have any of the usual junk programs already installed on it. Vista runs a lot smoother than XP, and although I was reluctant to get it at first, I would recommend Vista.

Heat & Fans
When just using the notebook for the internet etc, it stays extremely cool. When gaming, it can get quite hot. If I put my hand over the left side of the R560 I can feel the hot air coming out, however, I cannot hear it at all. Even when playing games the notebook remains silent. I am extremely impressed with this, as my previous laptop used to get very hot even when just on the internet and then made a buzzing noise whenever the fans turned on.

Design
The R560 has a glossy black finish to it, with a good-looking red stripe along the front. All of the surfaces are reflective. The keyboard, hinges and edge around the screen are also black, and the only other colour on this notebook is a thin silver line above the keyboard and the white letters on the keyboard.
The screen is a good size, and when playing programs I do not see any reflections of myself in it. I can sit next to a lamp and still get no reflections, but when playing outside it can be quite annoying.
The resolutions available are 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 800. I am using the resolution of 1280 x 720, and I can open a lot of windows without them shrinking a lot.

(Pictures when I find my camera.)

Webcam
The R560 comes with a built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam, located above the screen like most notebooks. When first started up, the laptop has an icon on the desktop saying ‘Play Camera’. When clicked you instantly see your own face staring back at you. It is pretty average, when moving there is a slight blur and it is quite fuzzy.


Picture taken of a room in my house (during day).

Battery Life
When unplugged, there are three power plan options of: optimized, power saver and high performance. Optimize is the default power plan, and it lasts around 3 hours 40. I have yet to test how long the other two last, but using the optimized power plan seems perfectly fine by me. When using high performance mode, the screen is a lot brighter, but other than that I have yet to find another significant difference – and the battery life is reduced to around 2 hours 20.

Performance
I am by no means an extreme gamer – I usually stick to online MMORPG games, so unfortunately I cannot screenshot any games that are most likely familiar to you. However, when playing these games, they have high FPS and are more than playable. The R560 plays games to a very high quality, and I am very glad that I chose this laptop to buy.

Benchmarks
I ran the 3DMark05, 3DMark06, PCMark05 and wPrime on the R560. (I wasn't really sure which part of the results you'd all be most interested in, so I just picked out some of the parts). The results:

3DMark05:




3DMark06:




PCMark05:




wPrime:


Pros
-Always runs extremely quietly
-Never gets too hot
-Good build quality: no flex
-Nice screen display, not ver reflective
-Small AC adapter
-Speedy downloads
-Good gaming quality
-Long battery life
-Full-size keyboard

Cons
-Small arrow keys
-Strange mouse button texture
-Lid is a fingerprint magnet
-Webcam not good quality

Lastly
Admittedly, this is the first laptop review I have ever written, so if there is anything else you would like me to include/any laptop benchmarks you want me to do, please just ask.

 

Thanks for this. Samsung usually managed to provide a cooling system that is efficient and quiet. You might be able to reduce the heat under load by undervolting the CPU. See the guide here.

Many readers will be interested in actual performance numbers, for example wPrime, PCMark05, 3DMark05 and 3DMark06. Someone else reported very good 3DMark scores for the R560. Does yours also give good results.

And if you can find some digital kitchen scales, what is the weight?

John

 

After asking after a decent budget gaming laptop, I was given the R650 as an options, after much searching & this quality review I have decided to order myself one..

It's a good £100 over my budget but what the heck ^ ^

 

John - will add those now. As for weighing it.. Sorry, I own no digital scales. Only the old-fashioned food scales. xD

Lovfinion, good choice. I've got no regrets at all about buying the R560. In my opinion, it's well worth it. Hope everything goes smoothly with you receiving yours.~

 

Thanks for the 3DMark results. They are better than notebookcheck list for the 9600M GT.

John

 

Wow, thanks John, that's great.
I added the PCMark05 results now. Will do wPrime soon.


EDIT:
Okay, I just added the wPrime scores now.~

 

how come? its only a GS.

 

Ok got the r560 today, brilliant all I could ask for & more, but I'm struggling to find a volume control on it.. is there one & I'm just overlooking it?

 

According to the User Guide (page 46), Fn+ cursor left and cursor right change the volume. Fn+F6 is mute.

John

 

pretty good review from a lady reviewer.
thats exacly what this forum needs, a female reviewer for female pc users.

 

Yeah, hold Fn and press either left (to go down) or right (to go up) arrows. Or there is the little speaker icon in the bottom right of the toolbar that you can click.

Haha, thanks, I guess.

 

Thanks John, for some reason Laptop Direct didn't put a user Guide in with the package..

 

The reason is that Samsung don't provide a paper copy (no doubt arguing that it saves a few trees, but my Dell E6400 came with even less paper).

There should be a User Guide installed on the HDD. However, it is not a simple PDF file but a ghastly ?Flash? thing with animated turning pages that doesn't print nicely. If you can't find it on the computer then you can download it here (warning - big file!).

John

 

Argh not Flash, get enough of that on the GOA warhammer site, do wish they'd use html like mythic ..

But thanks for the info, I'll check it out

 

thanks for the review

 

Thanks for the review, quick question tho, I'm thinking about buying one of these after christmas, but been reading that the screen isnt all that good. are the viewing angles really that bad?

Cheers