Samsung's Book 9 is one of the better laptop designs you can buy, and it's (literally) getting a big upgrade for 2014. The ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition, introduced at CES, is a 15.6-inch model that sports the same curved wedge design that made the original Series 9 a pleasure to use.
Like last year's Book 9 Plus, the Book 9 2014 Edition has a full HD display and includes the SideSync software package that makes the Ultrabook your Galaxy phone's best friend: Notifications are shared, for example, and screen mirroring is effortless.
Although the screen is on the big side (most laptops this size have a 15.4-inch display), Samsung still emphasizes portability with its new ATIV model: It's just 0.63 inch at the thickest point, and 3.92 pounds. By comparison, the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is 4.46 pounds.
Samsung says it's made some improvements to the display, including a better coating for the screen that cuts down on reflectivity but doesn't compromise its touchscreen response. The viewing angle is 178 degrees, and the brightness gets a bump to 300 nits from 250 in last year's model. With the upgrade to Intel's Haswell chips, battery life jumps up, too: Samsung rates the laptop at 14 hours.
Audiophiles will have lots to celebrate about the ATIV Samsung Book 9 2014 Edition since it contains a Wolfson digital-to-analog converter for lossless audio. That means you'll get studio-quality sound from the device as long as the source is lossless, too. As it happens, Samsung is also introducing lossless audio from its Music Hub (both download and streaming) — the first online music service to do so.
Besides the Book 9, Samsung is debuting a new all-in-one PC at CES. The ATIV One 7 has a slim design with curved edges that's a conscious callback to the company's Galaxy Tab tablets, and it has many of the new upgrades of the Book 9 2014 Edition including full HD resolution, a 178-degree viewing angle and an anti-reflective screen.
On the audio side, the ATIV One 7 also supports lossless audio, but with a twist: It can also act as a Bluetooth speaker while in sleep mode, and it has the hardware — a pair of 7-watt speakers, with tweeters — to do it. The machine also supports aptX to help minimize the audio artifacts that can happen over Bluetooth connections.
In sleep mode, the ATIV One 7 can also still act as a remote server for your content for when you need to access it remotely.
Both the ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition and the One 7 will be available in the first half of the year. No pricing has been announced.
Images: Samsung