Samsung's Series 9 13.3" Ultrabook For 2012: Thinner And Lighter

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Last generation's Samsung Series 9 was a great example of Intel's Ultrabook initiative. The revamped Series 9, new for 2012, is even better. Forget about Apple's MacBook Air. Samsung's latest effort stands on its own merits as a great notebook.

Transcoding Performance: Second-Gen Quick Sync

In our opinion, most folks maintain media libraries on large local or networked disk drives. This means there are far more likely to transcode video on a potent desktop and then move it over to their mobile device. That might not be an option if you use a machine like Samsung's Series 9 as your primary computing device, though. Quick Sync does make it possible to convert video quickly (and with little power cost), and then move it over to a smartphone, for example. We've also used it at trade shows to get coverage YouTube-ready.

With the exception of Lenovo's ThinkPad X230T, all of the systems we benchmarked benefit from an SSD. Of those armed with solid-state storage, only the 13.3" Series 9 leverages an SSD other than Crucial's m4. The X230T falls behind the other machines with Ivy Bridge-based processors because its storage subsystem cannot keep up with the hardware-accelerated conversion.

The HD Graphics 3000-equipped Acer comes equipped with a Sandy Bridge-based CPU, which leverages first-gen Quick Sync functionality. The difference between old and new is particularly pointed.