Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MBA vs. Samsung Series 7 Slate?

Owner of 3rd Gen MacBook air and Samsung Series 7

I own both the MBA and Series 7.

( I also own an ipad 1 and Macbook pro 2009 )

I use them for completely different purposes.

MBA is a nimble work horse. I do video editing work on my MBA.
Just as a side note my MBA 2011 is 10-15% faster than my Macbook Pro 2009 2.8ghz model. ( I did a render test in After Effects and ran a Sunspider JavaScript speed test )

MBA is so light and powerful, i can work almost anywhere. even standing up.

I use Samsung primarily to Sketch and brainstorm. It has excellent pressure sensitivity and the pen glides over the glass smoothly. Also the space between the pen tip and the digital ink is small, which is what you want on a tablet. The is Slate is around 35% slower than MBA according to Sunspider speed test. No render test yet.

The capacitive touch feature is very responsive. I can open and close windows with ease. Browsing the web is a joy with this slate.
Light years better than ipad 1 or ipad 2 ( which i hardly touch anymore ). Downside is it's slow to type if you're doing heavy research. ( for that i turn to MBA )

Reading blogs, watching videos, and sketching is awesome!

There is a few tricks you need to know and tweaks you need to do get your slate feeling right.
1. increase font size and set up Launch pad with your "go-to" programs
2. know your "hot gestures" and customize your gestures.

I don't need to sell you guys on MBA. it's awesome and i love it.

I use Samsung for a specific purpose. It's NOT my workhorse computer.
Even thought is a fast responsive system. I just don't use it for video editing.
Samsung allows me to freely draw and brainstorm comfortably, where MBA can't.

If i want to lounge, sketch, and surf the net then I grab my Slate.

If I want to do heavy research and video editing, then i grab my MBA.

Also Windows Store is having a 25% discount til early January 2012.

I purchased my slate 128gb model for under 1k.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
I've been using the Samsung Series 7 slate for two or three weeks with Windows Pro. At Microsoft Store the 128 gigabyte version with everything you mentioned plus Office 2010 home/student and a two-year, no-questions-asked warranty is less than the price you mentioned - though not by much.

So far I cannot find anyting to complain about other than the cost. Per pound, it's the most expensive thing I own since the cost of my iPhone is hidden in my AT&T bill.

Despite skepticism of other repliers who haven't used the machine, this slate performs like a champ. It's as fast as my reasonably powerful desktop computer. And it's in an ipad-size package. The screen is as resposive to touch moves as the iPad and it works great with the stylus. And (I just cannot get over this) it's a full blown Windows PC -- nothing is omitted except the optical drive. The little micro-speakers even sound surprisingly good. Manufacturing quality, which I admire in Apple products, is also great. The aluminum case is enterprise-grade and looks like it will stand up well.

I admit I have no experience with the MBA. I have a high opinion Apple quality and love my iPhone. But the overriding consideration that has kept me devoted to Windows and Office is that I can always go to a crowded elevator and announce any problem I have and someone there will know the solution. The fact that the Windows platform offers more, better, cheaper applications and ready integration into enterprise networks is just an added benefit for me.

I'm sure I'll find flaws. I always do. But so far, this looks like the slate, I've been waiting five years for. A dream come true.
 
You'd have to decide if the slate features are an absolute must have and a dealbreaker if your next laptop doesn't have a touchscreen.

If having a touchscreen would be nice, but you could live without it, I'd get the air. Apple products don't have everything, but they bet that the things that they do have, work much more smoothly to give a better user experience than the competition. And the things that the Air does have, are all the essentials if you ask me. I would always want more ports, a removeable battery, etc, but I've found that the user experience with the air is just so good that I would not give it up for anything else.

What is the user experience in my opinion? The form factor, the battery life, the responsiveness, the smoothness of the animations, the attention to detail in the UI, the stability of the OS, the ergonomics of the trackpad, the firmness of the keyboard, the fit and finish of the unibody, the bright screen with good viewing angles, the evenly backlit keyboard, the high quality speakers (for its size vs the competition), the magsafe power adapter design....all of these things you take for granted but will miss once you move to something else.

I suppose you'd have to be somewhat discriminating computer user, but I've seen enough non powerusers who didn't care about mac vs other laptops, use a mac and then say "something is wrong with the windows laptop's touchpad" or other complaints when they switch back.

Steve Jobs may have been a detail-obssessed meanie, but without his personality, I argue that there is no other way to build these types of products for the masses. I can't imagine an easy-going, genius CEO who would be able to accomplish the supreme user experience that apple has. See: Google. Don't be evil, fine. They're pretty easy going. Clearly every bit as bright as apple engineers, if not more so.
 
Hmm, battery life looks kind of choppy. Also, by the time you add the dock and keyboard you're up around $1500, right? At that price point I'd rather buy an early 2011 13" MBP and an iPad...
 
Are You Mac Lovers Letting Prejudice Guide You?

I understand why some people think there's something mystical at Apple that makes its products automatically better than the PC/Windows team. I too have used crash-prone Windows computers and kludged touch screens that jump around, sometimes the wrong way and laptops made with cheap components that cannot possibly continue to work in unison much beyond the warranty period.

But I think you're wrong about the Samsung Series 7 slate. I only have a few weeks experience with one. I could be wrong. Time will tell. But the folks on this forum who presume to know it's inferior because it wasn't made with the Apple philosophy have never even seen one.

My three weeks of experience began skeptically. I only bought the Samsung slate because Microsoft Store offered a helluva discount and promised to accept a return up until mid January no questions asked. I even made a sound recording of the salesman explaining the return policy.

But I'm telling you first-hand that it feels great so far.

Yes, I agree the price is exorbitant even after the really big discounts that Microsoft Store used to push me over the edge. But heck, when did exorbitant prices ever stop an Apple customer? Paying twice as much is part of the Apple culture, isn't it?

If you're thinking about a two-pound, full-function, smooth-operating computer with a serious CPU, then Apple is no longer the only supplier of products that costs three times more than a consumer laptop.
 
Do not lump me in there. I own both, although I am predominantly Mac now. So I am not sure what bias you can speak of, except experience.

Anyway, if you bought it and enjoy it than good for you.
 
As a developer, I'm not sure I'd want to use a slate for development. Windows also isn't as good a development platform as Mac OS X (referring to the built in tools.) Visual Studio is pretty nice, but if you spend most your time doing Java/Android dev, you're probably mostly using Eclipse instead.

We also have a Windows 8 Developer tablet at work that I've played with. Everyone in the office so far has agreed that for developer work, we'd still rather have a laptop. The Windows 8 UI is not so great for productive tasks with no start menu and such.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back