The Samsung R580 Notebook has a built-in Blu-ray drive, a 15.6" (1366x768 -- 16:9) LED backlit display, HDMI and the stylish Crystal Wave design makes it look a lot better than the average laptop. The touchpad is LED illuminated, it only lights up when touched. The 17 inch version (R780) has a 17-key numeric keypad, that can also be used for gaming, there's also a 14 inch version (R480) available.

CPU: Intel Core i5 430 processor, a dual core CPU that

Graphics: A discrete GeForce GT 310M with 512 MB memory.

You don't have to make backups because of the The Recovery Solution that stores your work and restores in case of problems.

This notebook has lots of connectivity options like Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, three USB 2.0 ports and a 3-in-1 memory card reader.

The price tag of this notebook can be considered a big plus. At a competative price of round and about $800.-. The 'price' customers pay for the low MSRP is a low(er) screen resolution and a 'lesser' HDD of 5400RPM, some of these notebooks are shipped with win7 32bit that will only be capable of 3 gigs internal memory.

The dimensions are: 379,8 x 255,5 x 30,3 millimeter and the weight is 2.6 KG.

This notebook was compared to the Dell Studio XPS 16 (Core 2 Duo P8600) and the Lenovo Thinkpad T410 (Core i5- 540M) in the gaming and 3Dmark 2006 CPU benchmarks, both competitors score higher in 3Dmark06 because of a better processor, in 'real gaming' with Half-Life 2 Episode 2 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars the R580 takes the lead.

The PC mark vantage bench was a comparison between the Dell Studio XPS 16, ASUS G51GX, G51J-A1 and the UL80Vt. The reviewers concluded that the R580 was a real number cruncher, multimedia and gaming were no problem. Simple operations like booting-up or loading MS Paint, took a lot of time however. It was best in multi-thread operations.

With battery eater PRO the R580 is in the lower segment, the netbooks that consume a lot less power take the lead in this benchmark. The R580 was compared with lots of other notebooks an laptops in this bench.

Conclusion: The processor had mixed results throughout the tests, PCmark Vantage and gaming were no problem,but in other tests this laptop wasn't very speedy, probably because of the 32bit OS and the pre-installed software, since it has 4GB a Win7-64 should have been included.

Benchmarks: 3Dmark06, PCmark Vantage, Sisoft Sandra, Power consuption, Battery (Life) Eater, Multimedia benchmarks, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.