Samsung Notebook 9 Pro Review: A Sleek, Convertible Laptop

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: At First Glance

Samsung is popular for keeping up with the competition in the laptop world. In 2019, Samsung released the Notebook 9 Pro that might just be the company’s best-looking and performing Ultrabook so far.

Thanks to its outstanding design, this laptop makes an excellent first impression and it has the specs to place it closely with the best laptops on the market. Furthermore, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro comes in both 13-inch and 15-inch variations.

Speaking of variations, in this article, I will be reviewing the 13-inch model of the laptop.

It is important to mention that the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro convertible laptop is a bit pricey. At the time of writing this article in November 2021, this laptop had a starting price of $899.99.

Is the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro really worth that price or is it too pricey? Let’s find out!

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Design, Dimensions, and Weight

Samsung almost does not get it wrong when it comes to the design of its laptop products. Moreover, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro isn’t any different.

This laptop is built upon the modern tech laptop design, but in a way that’s more uniform and closer to how Samsung constructs its smartphones. This results in a more curvy laptop, both in the lid and keyboard deck.

Delving into the design description of this laptop, Samsung offered a durable but attractive exterior design. Also, Samsung found a way to keep the exterior design of the Notebook 9 Pro simple but premium and attractive.

Specifically, the laptop has a silver aluminum chassis that looks and feels premium. Furthermore, this silver aluminum chassis is in contrast with the laptop’s keyboard deck.

Moving on, there’s a “Samsung” logo imprinted on the lid of the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro and it adds to the laptop premium look.

Still on the lid, when you fold this convertible laptop into a tablet, its lid perfectly aligns with the underside in a satisfying way. It’s also satisfying to see the slim black bezels surrounding the laptop’s display.

It is worth noting that the top bezel of the laptop houses a Webcam.

About the keyboard, the Notebook 9 Pro’s keyboard is black and the keys are very round. To add to that, the laptop’s keyboard deck is both spacious and comfy.

However, the keys on the keyboard feel a bit slippery and the key travel is a bit shallow.

Notwithstanding, the keyboard still feels comfortable to type with and has no fingertip-jarring at all. Just to be clear, key travel is the distance the keys travel between their resting position and fully pressed positions.

Moreover, this keyboard features a backlight. The backlight illuminates the letters and symbols on the keys to make them visible in darker environments.

Therefore, typing at night or in a low-light environment with the Notebook 9 Pro is not a problem at all. Still, on the keyboard, Samsung opted for more spacing between the well-backlit keys over a numeric pad.

Another interesting thing about the keyboard of the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is that the keys are quite bouncy.

Moving on, there is an enormous trackpad decently placed below the keyboard. This touchpad is very sensitive and accurate.

Additionally, the touchpad supports Windows 10 gestures like three-finger tabbing and two finger-scrolling.

Proceeding to the display, since the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is a 2-in-1 convertible laptop, it has a 13-inch touchscreen display. Therefore, the Notebook 9 Pro’s display can pivot 360 degrees on its dual hinges, allowing you to use the laptop in four modes.

For a better understanding of the four modes of this device, there’s a laptop mode which is the typical mode. Secondly, there is stand mode, which is when the screen is facing you, and the keyboard is facing the table.

Thirdly, there is tablet mode, in which you fold the keyboard full 360 degrees with the screen facing you. Finally, there’s a tent mode, which is basically an upside V.

Moving on, the Notebook 9 Pro’s 13.3-inch touchscreen display features an FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution that allows it to deliver colorful and sharp images. Moreover, Samsung calls this laptop’s display a RealView display.

This is because it is able to shine at 350 nits brightness in normal mode and up to 450 nits in outdoor mode.

Hence, it is easier to see the display well when working in well-lit areas or outdoor. However, the display has a glossy finish, which makes glare a bit annoying.

On a positive note, the touch display of the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro supports multitouch gestures from any point on the screen. Hence, you can use multiple fingers on the display simultaneously.

Moving over to the camera, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro features a 720p HD Webcam. This webcam allows you to take part in zoom meetings and other virtual conference calls.

Interestingly, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro comes with Samsung’s S Pen stylus. Speaking of which, the inclusion of the S Pen here is rather clever, with a slot for the stylus pen embedded into the right side of the laptop.

Additionally, this S pen feels like a real pen with a subtle pencil-on-paper sound as you write. It is also great for taking notes, drawing, and operating your phone.

Moreover, you can also use the S Pen as a remote to control your camera, for playing music and videos, and for flipping through presentation slides. Unlike digital pens, this S Pen doesn’t require charging.

In addition to that, the S pen offers up to 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt controls too. Also, the stylus pen functions well in Adobe Creative Cloud apps and fits with the Windows Ink apps built into the laptop’s Windows 10 OS.

Proceeding to the speakers, the Notebook 9 Pro’s bottom-firing speakers are located in the bottom panel. Surprisingly, these speakers offer clear music and sound from videos.

Additionally, they’re wonderful for Skype calls, but produce lighter bass sounds during music-listening and movie-viewing sessions. Nevertheless, they are loud enough to fill a medium-sized room.

Now for the ports, it’s not surprising that the Notebook 9 Pro has a great mix of current and older ports. On the right side, there are two USB 3.0 ports as well as a microSD card slot.

On the left, there is an HDMI port, a headphone jack, a USB Type-C port, a power port for charging the laptop, and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. For wireless connectivity, the Notebook 9 Pro comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Moving on, the Notebook 9 Pro is very light, weighing just 1288.2 g. In comparison, it weighs less than the LenovoYoga C930 which weighs 1380 g.

Thanks to its lightweight, this laptop is easy to use in tablet mode and you can easily carry it about without feeling a thing. For the dimensions, the Notebook 9 Pro measures 308.3 x 206.5 x 13.9 mm (W x D x H).

Comparatively, the laptop is slimmer than the LenovoYoga C930 which measures 322 x 227 x 14.5-14.9 mm (W x D x H).

After carefully analyzing this review section, it is obvious that Samsung Notebook 9 Pro ticks nearly all the boxes for what an ultraportable 2-in-1 convertible laptop should look like. Therefore, I will rate the laptop a nine out of ten.

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Processor (CPU) Performance

The processor that powers the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is an Intel Core i7-8565U processor. This processor is a quad-core processor that has an 8 MB cache memory.

Talking about the processing speed, this processor has a base frequency of 1.80 GHz and 4.60 GHz maximum frequency. It is not surprising to see Intel Core i7-8565U on Notebook 9 Pro considering the laptop’s price.

With such a powerful and fast processor, we can presume that Notebook 9 Pro will perform great in terms of multi-tasking. However, that cannot just be said with experimentation.

Therefore, a real-world multitasking test was performed and the Notebook 9 Pro performed brilliantly. Specifically, this laptop was able to open 40 chrome tabs simultaneously with jerking or lagging.

To top that up, three YouTube videos were playing concurrently while these tabs were open.

To further verify the performance of the Notebook 9 Pro with this processor, I will offer the results of the laptop on a CineBench R15 benchmark test.

The CineBench R15 is a test tool that examines the CPU’s performance on a laptop. It tells you how fast or how slow the processor handles tasks with a low score meaning it’s slow and a high score means it’s fast.

On this CineBench R15 benchmark test, the Notebook 9 Pro scored 491 points. In comparison, the laptop falls short of the Huawei Matebook 13 which scored 692 points.

Nevertheless, this laptop is great at handling multitasking and processing data. Therefore, I will rate the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro a nine out of ten in this review section.

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Memory (RAM) Performance

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro comes with either an 8 GB or 16 GB LPDDR3 memory. Unfortunately, this memory is onboard, which means it is attached to the motherboard and can’t be upgraded.

The kind of tasks you desire to carry out will determine which memory size of the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro you should purchase. Basically, the laptop with 16 GB memory will perform better than the 8 GB.

However, that doesn’t mean if you purchase the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with 8 GB memory, it won’t perform. It will not just be powerful as the one with 16 GB memory.

With that being said, it will be good if we establish how much performance this laptop offers. To obtain this, I’ll provide information about the multi-tasking abilities of the laptop with each memory size.

For the laptop with 8 GB memory, you will be able to open at least 15 browser tabs conveniently without experiencing lag. Furthermore, you can do these while watching some YouTube videos.

The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with 16 GB memory, on the other hand, will be able to open over 30 chrome tabs while handling skype calls. Therefore, both light and heavy multitasking with the Notebook 9 Pro with 16 GB memory will be no problem.

To further show you how well the laptop can perform, I will provide a PCMark 10 benchmark test data analysis. PCMark 10 benchmark test provides data about the memory performance of a laptop.

The structure of the PCMark 10 denotes that the higher the points, the better the memory performance of the device. It is worth noting that I will only be providing the PCMark 10 test result for the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with 16 GB memory.

Therefore, on the PCMark10 benchmark test, Samsung Notebook 9 Pro scored 3,298 points.

In comparison with its competitors on the PCMark10 test, the laptop scored higher than Lenovo ThinkPad 480 which delivered 3,108 points. However, Samsung Notebook 9 Pro came behind Huawei Matebook 13 which scored 3,432 points.

Hence, I will rate the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro an eight out of ten in this review section.

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Storage Options and Performance

For storage, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro comes with either a 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. The choice of storage you want to purchase with this laptop depends on what you will be saving on it.

Basically, if you are a storage-hungry user, then the 512 GB SSD is your best take. However, if that isn’t the case for you, then you can opt for the 256 GB SSD.

It is worth noting that the Samsung Notebook Pro I reviewed features 256 SSD storage. In a real-life transfer test, Samsung Notebook 9 Pro’s 256GB SSD copied 4.97GB of data in just 13 seconds.

This laptop does this with a 392 megabytes per second transfer rate. Unfortunately, this transfer rate is slower than the category average of 543 MBps

On a positive note, it beats the LenovoYoga C930‘s 256GB SSD which achieved 339 MBps transfer rate while copying the same 4.97GB data. However, the Huawei Matebook 13‘s 512GB SSD has a faster transfer rate of 636 MBps.

I would have liked to include a Crystaldiskmark performance test data for the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro and compare it with its competitors. Unfortunately, the Crystaldiskmark data is unavailable for the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro.

Just in case you’re wondering what a Crystaldiskmark performance test is, the Crystaldiskmark benchmark test determines the read and write speed of a device’s storage.

Nevertheless, I believe the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro performed well in this section. Therefore, I will rate the laptop an 8 out of ten.

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Graphics Card Performance

For graphics, the Notebook 9 Pro features an Intel UHD Graphics 620 graphics card. This graphic card is integrated, which means it shares memory with the CPU to perform graphics processing.

Seeing the Intel UHD Graphics 620 on the Notebook Pro is not surprising because the laptop isn’t a gaming laptop. In terms of specs, this Intel UHD Graphics 620 has a base frequency of 300 MHz and 1150 MHz boost frequency.

Furthermore, being a laptop using an integrated graphics card, the Notebook 9 Pro won’t be able to run modern games. However, older 2D sprite-based games, and even some 3D games like trine4, will run conveniently on the laptop.

Therefore, the graphics card on the Notebook 9 Pro is only suitable enough for casual gaming and viewing HD video.

Now, let us further analyze the graphics performance of the Notebook 9 Pro using the 3DMARK graphics performance test. 3DMARK GPU performance test is a benchmark test that determines the graphics performance of a computer.

In the 3DMARK benchmark test, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro scored 61,662 points. Comparatively, both the LenovoYoga C930 and HP Spectre X360 perform better with 85,758 and 90,977 points respectively.

It is worth noting that these laptops use the same graphics card like the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro.

After thorough consideration, I will rate the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro a six in this graphics card review section.

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro: Battery Life and Performance

Proceeding to the battery, a 4-cell 4800mAh Li-ion powers the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro. For the battery life, this laptop can last up to 14.7 hours, according to Samsung.

To confirm this claim, a real-world battery test was performed. This test involves setting the brightness of the laptop to medium and continuously web surfing over Wi-Fi till the battery runs down.

On this test, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro lasted for 8 hours and 29 minutes. Comparatively, this laptop performed slightly better than the Lenovo Yoga C930, which lasted 8 hours and 9 minutes.

However, the result from the real-life battery test is less than the battery life stated by Samsung. In any case, I think the eight hours battery life is still respectable.

Hence, I will rate the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro a nine out of ten in this review section.

Frequently Asked Question

Conclusion

The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13-inch offers both solid battery life and productivity at a decent price. Its super-slim aluminum chassis, premium look, Core i7 CPU, and stylish S pen make the laptop a better option among its competitors.

The best way to describe this laptop is “Luxury for less”. However, you will have to cope with the laptop’s poor graphics card and slippery keyboard.

Notwithstanding, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro is a great performing laptop that I will recommend to everyone.

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