Samsung 600B5B review

Samsung’s latest laptop has much more of a business focus than its other models, but that doesn’t mean the rather sleek design would look out of place in the living room. A slightly rubberised black finish, angular edges and a sturdy hinge should mean it will survive more punishment than the average laptop, but the Core i5 processor and dedicated graphics should appeal to anyone interested in performance.

The Intel Core i5-2520M processor runs at a rapid 2.5GHz, some 200MHz faster than the chips we’re used to seeing in mid-range laptops. It can also Turbo Boost higher, up to a lightning-fast 3.2GHz for increased performance in certain tasks. Paired with 4GB of RAM, it sped through our multimedia benchmarks with an overall score of 56, slightly higher than the average we’ve come to expect from the base Core i5 chip. This should easily be enough for almost every task, or some heavy multitasking.

One thing that sets the 600B5B apart from other mid-range laptops is its dedicated Nvidia graphics card. Whereas most machines will use the more mainstream GeForce chipset, Samsung has opted for the business-centric NVS chip. The NVS 4200M installed here has 1GB of dedicated video memory and drivers certified to work properly with workstation-class applications such as Adobe After Effects and 3D Studio Max, but that doesn’t mean it’s well-suited to games. In our Dirt 3 test, it couldn’t manage a smooth frame rate at our default settings, producing a jerky 13.7fps. Even so, it’s capable of playing 1080p high definition video on an external display over HDMI, or 720p on the laptop itself.

Thankfully, Nvidia’s Optimus technology is compatible with NVS cards as well as GeForce ones, so the 600B5B’s battery life doesn’t suffer from having a dedicated card on board. It did exceedingly well in our light-use test, managing just under eight hours on battery power alone. You should be able to get a full working day out of a single charge if you stick to basic word processing.

The 600B5B was surprisingly comfortable to use for day-to-day tasks. Despite the angular chassis, we could type without the laptop’s edges cutting into our wrists thanks to the rubberised finish that also kept the entire keyboard tray cool. The keyboard itself uses standard laptop keys that are tightly grouped together, but at least full-size so we rarely made spelling errors. A choice of touchpad or touchstick is a bonus, although the buttons on both need quite a shove to register.

Unsurprisingly for a business machine, the 15.6in screen has a matt finish that’s great for diffusing light reflections, but poor at producing vibrant colours. The 1,366×768 resolution is reasonably sharp, but viewing angles are poor. There is at least a huge amount of screen tilt, so you should be able to work regardless of ambient lighting.

Like most business laptops, connectivity was excellent. Two USB3 ports, one regular USB and one USB shared with eSATA provide plenty of room for external expansion, as do the ExpressCard/34 slot and multi-format card reader. There’s also a fingerprint reader for the security-conscious and a DVD re-writer.

Its performance, connectivity and usability are all impressive, but we still can’t recommend the 600B5B to most people. It makes most sense for business users that need a dedicated graphics card optimised for business applications, but for most home users there are better, more well-rounded machines available for a similar price, such as the Acer Aspire 5755G.