Samsung Ativ Q

As most any parent will surely agree, no two children are alike, not even within the same family. The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite looks a great deal like the premium Ultrabook Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, our Editors' Choice for high-end ultrabooks. The much more affordable Book 9 Lite borrows several design elements from its more expensive sibling, with a similar slim silhouette and touch screen. But despite the elegant ultrabook stylings, the Book 9 Lite falls short in several key areas, with dawdling performance and lackluster battery life.

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Design

The Book 9 Lite is designed with the same slim profile and elegant curves seen on the premium Book 9 Plus, in a clear play to offer a budget-friendly laptop with the same visual appeal. There are a few small details that have changed, such as a slightly different shape to the hinge, and the absence of the bare metal stripe around the edge of the chassis, but the biggest difference to the exterior isn't necessarily one that you see, but one that you feel, as the chassis is molded plastic instead of aluminum. The plastic Book 9 Lite measures 0.7 by 12.8 by 8.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.5 pounds.

The other big difference is all visual, as the Book 9 Lite features a 13.3-inch display with 1,366-by-768 resolution, a far cry from the ultra-hi-res display of the Book 9 Plus. Despite the decidedly common display resolution, it is still a touch screen with 10-digit tracking, and the color quality isn't bad, though the viewing angles aren't great.

The Book 9 Lite features two downward firing stereo speakers, which are designed to reflect the sound off of the surface it rests on to produce a fuller, richer sound. In practice, the sound isn't bad, provided you keep the laptop on a table or desk. Pick up the laptop, and the sound quality drops off considerably; switch to your actual lap, or rest the laptop on a couch cushion or bed, and the sound will be very muffled.

While the construction and display of the Book 9 Lite may differ significantly from its premium counterpart, the keyboard and touchpad are very similar. The full-size chiclet keyboard has the same comfortable spacing and typing feel as that of the Book 9 Plus, along with the same elongated shift button and half-size arrow and function keys. Unlike the more expensive model, however, the Book 9 Lite has no backlight. The Book 9 Lite also features a broad, clickable touchpad, with multitouch gesture support. During my testing, the touchpad tracked everything smoothly and consistently, without notable issues.

Features

The Book 9 Lite is outfitted with two full-size USB ports—one USB 2.0 on the right, and one USB 3.0 on the left—along with tiny ports for Ethernet, VGA, and HDMI, which all require adapter dongles; the only adapter included is a microLAN adapter for connecting Ethernet. There's also a regular stereo headset jack, a lock slot, and an SD card slot, which is concealed by a spring loaded cover. However, unlike most port covers used on laptops, this one doesn't pull out, but instead swings in, revealing the card slot when in use and automatically protecting it as soon as the card is removed. Most of your connectivity with the Book 9 Lite will be wireless, with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

The Book 9 Lite is also equipped with a 128GB solid-state drive, which ensures fast boot times and a peppy performance, but doesn't provide a lot of storage space when compared to other budget-friendly laptops, like the Asus VivoBook V500CA-DB71T, which sports a 500GB 5,400rpm hard drive, or the Acer Aspire V7-582P-6673, which boasts both capacity and speed thanks to a 500GB hard drive plus 20GB cache solid-state drive (SSD).

Preinstalled on the hard drive are several programs and applications to accompany Windows 8, but two unique offerings from Samsung stand out. The first is Samsung SideSync, which lets you automatically sync files between the Book 9 Plus and several current Samsung Android smartphones, like the Editors' Choice Samsung Galaxy S4 (Verizon Wireless). When docked, files sync automatically and are easily transferred back and forth from phone to PC. Samsung also includes HomeSync Lite, which lets you use the PC as the central hub of a personal cloud, syncing files between multiple devices. While it skips the fees associated with paid cloud storage, it also is limited by the fact that it's tied to the laptop's local storage, which is still fairly small.

Other apps preinstalled on the ATIV Book 9 Plus include Skype, Netflix, iHeart Radio, Plants vs. Zombies, BitCasa, and a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security. Samsung covers the Book 9 Lite with a one-year warranty.

Performance

The Book 9 Lite is a curious case in that the processor manufacturer and model aren't clearly mentioned in Samsung's marketing materials, and there is no tell-tale sticker on the palmrest shouting out this commonly cited specification. Dig into the details of the laptop, however, and you'll eventually find that it's simply identified as the "X4 Quad Core," with a clock speed of 1.4GHz. The X4 is actually an AMD product, designed for Samsung. But while Samsung may have requested features and offered input in the creation of the chip, the nearly anonymous AMD X4 presents purchasers with many of the same compromises offered by other budget laptops leveraging AMD's less expensive hardware.

First and foremost, the processing and productive capability is well below that of Intel-equipped competitors. In Cinebench the Book 9 Lite scored 1.06 points, a dramatically lower score than the Editors' Choice Lenovo IdeaPad U430 Touch (2.50 points) and even below the Core i3-equipped Dell Inspiron 14R-5437 (1.84 points). As a result of this underpowered processor, the Book 9 Lite also comes up short in productivity tests, scoring only 1,612 points in PCMark 7 and crawling through Handbrake in 3 minutes 9 seconds. By comparison, the Acer Aspire V7-582P-6673 scored 4,228 points in PCMark 7, and the Lenovo IdeaPad U430 Touch finished Handbrake in 1:25, less than half the time. The laptop was unable to run our Photoshop tests for further comparison, but even during relatively undemanding tasks, such as browsing the web in two windows, the Book 9 Lite was noticeably slow.

And even in graphics testing, where AMD usually shines, the Book 9 Lite came up short, putting up single digit scores in gaming tests—seven frames per second in Heaven and 8 fps in Alien Vs. Predator, both at standard resolution and low detail settings—and scoring only 758 points in 3DMark 11 at Entry settings. By comparison, the closest competing score was the Asus VivoBook V500CA-DB71T with 1,268 points.

Last, but not least, the Book 9 Lite lasted 5 hours 23 minutes in our battery rundown test. Though not the lowest score of the bunch—the Asus VivoBook V500CA-DB71T was an hour shorter at 4:23—but it fell well behind most. For example, the Lenovo IdeaPad U430 Touch lasted 7:42, while the Dell Inspiron 14R-5437 stretched far longer at 9:46.

Conclusion

All told, the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite may have a passing resemblance to the highly rated Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, but it's only skin deep. Even among other entry-level ultrabooks and desktop replacements, the Book 9 Lite has frustratingly slow performance and only middling battery life. For a better touch-screen laptop at a similar price, the Editors' Choice Lenovo IdeaPad U430 Touch is still the better option.