Samsung series 9 13' vs 15' ultrabook

Hello, I hope I'm not in wrong section to ask about this. If not, let me know I will delete my post

I'm thinking about buying Samsung series 9 ultrabook, finally getting rid of my 5 years old grandfather laptop

I looked up amazon, and I found an older version of series 9 with relatively affordable ~900 dollars range model.

One is Samsung Series 9 NP900X3D-A04US : 13.3 inch, 1600x900, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, intel i5 3317U 1.7ghz

Other one is Samsung Series 9 NP900X4C-A06US : 15 inch, 1600x900, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, intel i5 3317U 1.7ghz

I'm debating whether I should go with bigger screen, more RAM or better color and screen, with more portability

I never used ultrabook before and quite frankly, I'm not a picky person when it comes to screen resolution and color contrast, since I have been using 5 yrs old HP laptop -_-

My one buddy told me that I should go with 13.3 inch cuz it has better screen than 15 inch one, while I personally worry if 13.3 inch too small with 4GB RAM since I have

been using 15 inch laptop. I do want portability but also I will be using laptop as my main laptop school and home. (e.g. watching movies). What do u guys think? I wish I can

go 256 GB SSD, with i7 cpu, 8gb RAM and so on but you know it becomes over my budget

Lastly, I saw that amazon is still selling windows 7 version with like 80~90 dollars more than windows 8 version. What do you think about OS, windows 7 or 8?

Thanks for your opinion in advance

 

You may find it useful to read my review of the NP900X4C which contains some comparisons with the smaller NP900X3B. In my case my eyes couldn't handle sustained work using the smaller screen, but they are somewhat older than your eyes.

Whether you need more than 4GB RAM depends on what programs you are running. However, if you get the Sandisk U100 SSD (most common for the 128GB SSD versions) then your computer will temporarily slow down if / when you do fill the RAM and Windows tries to dump some of it to virtual memory. You are less likely to encounter this with 8GB RAM.

One of the other advantages of the bigger model is the bigger battery which can give about 40% more run time. The 15" display quality is only inferior compared with the 13.3". I'm sure you will find it much better, particularly the brightness, compared with your 5 year old machine.

John

 

John, thank you very much for your insightful comment. It will really help me decide on which one should I buy

Thank you very much