Samsung RF510 – a well dressed multimedia laptop

If you are looking for a good looking high performance laptop for daily use the Samsung RF510 may be a great candidate. In this article you will find out more about it.

It is a notebook for daily use, a 15.6 inch model, well suited for office and less well suited for travelling. The Samsung RF510 is a laptop that will do great for most users, with powerful hardware, capable to run all your daily applications, multimedia content and games, with an ergonomic keyboard, a decent screen and a good looking solid case.

Will this be enough? This article should answer this question.

Samsunf RF510 - multimedia laptop with style

First let us take a look at the specifications:

• 15.6 inch LED illuminated screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels
• Intel Core i5-480M processor clocked at 2.67 GHz
• Nvidia Geforce 330M video card
• 4 GB of DDR3 RAM memory
• 500 GB HDD
• Wi-Fi N, Bluetooth, Lan
• 2 x USB 2.0 and 2 x USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, card-reader, webcam
• 6 cell battery
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
• Size: 379.6 x 255.5 x 31.4 – 37m
• Weight 2.59 kg

Review video

Below you can see a short video review of this laptop:

Build and design

From the first moment we will notice that the Samsung RF510 is not a compact laptop.  With a 15 inch screen and a bulky body it is not a very portable notebook, better suited for indoor office use.

The shiny finish of the case and screen are also a testimonial to this fact. The black shiny case will be a magnet for scratches and fingerprint, but as long as you keep your laptop on the office table they will not be such a big problem.

The exterior case is black and glossy

However the construction is solid and the materials used are of high quality. The pieces that tie the screen to the rest of the body do not only look good with their chrome finish, but they are also rigid and resistant.

Opening the lid you will observe a 2 color finish out of silver and black aluminum used for the palm rest and the area around the keyboard, while the edge of the screen is made out of a shiny textured plastic.

You can find out more details about the exterior if you watch the video above. On the sides the ports and the DVD unit are placed as you can notice in the same video clip above.

Keyboard and trackpad

Few bad things can be said about this laptop’s trackpad and keyboard. The keyboard is full size with independent silent well spaced keys and contains the NumPad on the right side. Above the keyboard you will find 4 multimedia keys and the Power button.

Multimedia keys are placed above the keyboard

The trackpad is ergonomic and placed a bit to the left, well separated from the palm rest, precise and comfortable to use, offering support for multi-touch gestures. The 2 click buttons are separated, intelligently drawn and easy to press.

Screen

An important element for any laptop is the screen. When it comes to the Samsung RF510 we have a 15 inch shiny screen which is almost impossible to use outside in powerful illumination situations.

Its resolution is rather small: of only 1366 x 768 pixels, a resolution often seen in cheap laptops. In addition to this the viewing angles are pretty narrow, and the screen will not rotate completely to the back.

The keyboard and trackpad are both ergonomic

Hardware and performances

As you may have noticed reading the technical specs of this laptop it comes with an Intel Core-i5 480M, 4 GB of RAM memory, an Nvidia GT 330GM video card with 1 GB of dedicated memory, a 5400 rpm HDD and the Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit operating system.

It has hardware capable of running any application, HD content and even some games. However it is worth noticing that the hardware is of an older generation, while other producers have already announced that their models will be equipped with the new SandyBridge platform from Intel.

From the clip below you will find out a few things about the performances of this laptop. In short: it can run just about any application except the latest games at maximum settings. The graphics card is simply not powerful enough for that.

We were expecting this laptop to have a hybrid graphics controlled by the Nvidia Optimus, which would choose between the dedicated and the integrated chipset. However this is not the case. The Intel HD graphics chipset is automatically deactivated and the system always uses the dedicated Nvidia GT 330M.

Below you can find a few results of tests we ran on this laptop:

• Windows 7 Rating: 5.9
• PcMark Vatange Suite: 5291 points
• 3DMark Vantage Entry: 10645 points
• 3DMark 06 default: 7428 points

Autonomy

As I was saying the Samsung RF510 comes equipped with a 6 cell 48 Wh battery and due to the fact that the Nvidia Optimus solution is not implemented, the autonomy is not really great.

In daily use you will obtain autonomy of about 2 and a half hours, which may rise to 3 hours in Office use or lower to 1 and a half hours when running games.

This is not a laptop capable of offering top autonomy, but taking into account that it is built for office users this aspect is not too annoying.

Other aspects

We have to mention the SRS speakers that come on the Samsung RF510, which offer both good quality and high volume. Of course you should not expect wonders since you are dealing with a laptop speaker system, but it is above average in its class.

In daily use the laptop does not overheat and is not noisy. Not even in the case of more intense use when watching full HD content or playing a game the laptop will not create annoying noises and ill not overheat, even though you will hear the fan a bit.

Price and availability

The Samsung RF510 is available at a price of about 1200 dollars now, depending on your country of residence and supplier.

Conclusions

Overall the Samsung RF510 is worth considering. It is conceived like an all rounder notebook with multimedia capabilities and high quality design and build; ergonomic trackpad and keyboard and a balanced hardware that can run applications multimedia content and games.

A multimedia laptop worth considering

Samsung considers it a top laptop and its high price confirms this. We are disappointed about the screen and the autonomy. The technical specs do not please us since the hardware is of an older generation, but as we have told you, the Samsung RF510 is powerful enough to satisfy all the requests you may have.

Pros:

• solid build
• high quality materials
• ergonomic keyboard and trackpad
• high performance hardware
• does not overheat and does not become noisy
• high quality speakers

Cons:

• the shiny finish that will attract scratches and fingerprints
• the shiny screen and its small 1366 x 768 resolution for a 15.6 inch screen
• the poor autonomy
• the high price
• the old generation hardware

Overall this laptop is powerful, nice looking and very well finished made to be used daily at the office. The model is worth considering, but if you are looking for the best price/quality ratio you should look more.

Source: Netbooklive.com