Samsung NP300V5A-A06US 15.6-Inch Deals

By Jimmy -(CA)
This review is from: Samsung NP300V5A-A06US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Very sturdy, and well build. I really fail to understand the poor reviews.

Pros:
The laptop is very sturdy. it is not going to fall apart or break easily. I think that I will be able to get many years out of it. I saw one complaint about the cooling system, which I strongly disagree with. I never have had any heat issues, and the computer is normally very cool to the touch, and you can very comfortably use it on your lap without having to worry about the heat, no kidding, this thing gets no hotter than a paperback book! The fan never comes on, and when it does, it is very quiet. When I am playing 3D games, which this computer can easily pull off, The fan gets a little bit louder, and you can feel some heat, but this is very normal. It is still completely usable, and doesn't get that hot. The performance is spectacular on this machine, Programs launch very quickly, and games run smoothly. The Pentium Dual Core B950 is essentially an i3, minus hyper-threading and processor virtuialization. What this means is that is is slightly, but not noticeably, slower than an i3, and you will not be able to run certain virtual machines on it. You could not make a hackintosh out of this. (run OSX on it)If you don't know what these terms mean, don't worry about it, you wont ever need it. 4 Gigabytes of ram makes it smooth and fluid. I recently got a message warning me that I had not rebooted it in over a month, and it would speed up if I did. After a month, I still have not noticed any performance issues. It has been either on or "sleeping" the whole month. If you are using it as a student, great! All the MS Office programs open in about one or two seconds, which is pretty good, comparatively speaking. Aero runs smoothly, and the transparency effects are great! The keyboard is wonderful, I really like the design, as it makes typing really easy. it is similar to a MacBook keyboard. The trackpad is also great, It is large and easy to use. It also ignores when your palm goes across it when typing, a great feature. Again, It is very Mac-Like. (Samsung is the maker of Mac Keyboards, Screens, and trackpads. this is no coincidence!) The built in webcam is great, it goes up to 1280x1024. This is spectacular! it is very sharp, and vivid. it works well in low light. It is HD, too! The screen is anti-glare, and very nice! I really like it! The ports are strategically placed, which is a great feature! Oh, and the battery really does last 7 hours when you are browsing the web on low power mode. about 5 hours on "Samsung Optimized," and 3 on High Performance, for games.

Cons:
There are no lights on the caps lock, number lock, and Scroll lock buttons, it pops up on the screen when they are on.
The caps lock is easy to hit accidentally.
The back lid scratches easily, keep it in a laptop bag!

 By Suzy (California, USA, Earth) -
This review is from: Samsung NP300V5A-A06US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Update: The repair process was a nightmare and a failure. The cheap plastic power port is hard-wired to the motherboard and when they break, which is VERY common, the whole board needs to be replaced. We got one fixed but then the same thing happened again immediately after it was returned to us. With the other one, they claimed the moisture sensor under the keyboard had been triggered at some point, voiding the warranty. So although this had NOTHING to do w/ the problem, they refused to fix it.

Also, while they were still working they would regularly give us the "blue screen of death", dumping and loosing all unsaved content. NOT COOL!

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I bought 2 of these and I was very impressed. They gave great performance and I loved their durable shell. Unfortunately the ac-in on both broke quickly. First the cords would just slip out easily. But finally one, and then a few months later the other, just stopped accepting a charge completely. Now I have 2 paperweights. Fortunately I only bought them about 8 months ago from Costco and I'm hoping that I can get them repaired or replaced.

Also, one of the charging cables failed after only about 5 months. I had to buy a replacement from Amazon for around $30.

I particularly was pleased that it wasn't over-bundled with a bunch of useless software. We mostly used it for Internet, DVD watching, connecting to TVs to watch movies. It was great for those tasks.

If it wasn't for the ac issue, I'd have given this product 4 or 5 stars because it was a great product for the price.

By Tusk - (UK)
This review is from: Samsung NP300V5A-A06US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Stay away from this unit and all Samsungs that have this same body style. The cooling system is awful, housing 100% very thin plastic,
Video and Cpu processors are combined on the Intel B950 and the cooling system can't keep up.
I have owned 2 of them both had same problem. Don't even think of playing any kind of 3D game useless you do I what I did and take the entire system motherboard out of case and put a 120mm FAN on top of the CPU heat sink and add Artic Sivler thermal paste.
If you do not know anything about computers stay away from this one.