Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)

 Brand Samsung | Model: NP700G7C-S01UK

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Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)

Feature

• Processor clock speed: 2300 MHz
• Processor family: Intel Core i7
• Processor model: i7-3610QM
• Turbo frequency (max): 3300 MHz
• Processor number of cores: 4

Product Overview

Samsung 700G7CS01UK Gamer Core i73610QM Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit 173 SuperBright 400nit Full HD LED Display 1920 x 1080 Display NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M 2GB GDDR5 Graphics 16 GB RAM 15 TB HDD 8 GB SSD Bluray 80211 abgn Bluetooth NP700G7CS01

5.0 out of 5 stars BEAST OF A PC, 9 Jan 2013

By 

ALAM - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

Being a photographer i needed a powerful PC to use for photo editing-using Photoshop.
This machine is perfect.
Comes of instantly- deals with all my huge photofiles- most are in Raw format and between 25-35mb in size.
I have opened up anything up to 10 or more of these images and the machine has dalt with it without any problems.

Highly recommend this PC to both games and serious computer users.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent lap top, 28 Dec 2012

By 

Gordon Porteous - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

Excellent laptop worth the 5 stars. Easy to use and certainly pwerful when it comes to gaming.
The only downside was the dog...chewed the power cable. Getting a replacement cable has proved rather expensive.
Lap top 5 stars. Dog 1 star.

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome desktop replacement, 21 Dec 2012

By 

Jay B - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

What can I say, this laptop cant be touched in most aspects. Real value for money and combined with an SSD its the fastest computer I have ever used. The screen is so sharp and clear its unreal when compared to a standard laptop screen. I am however on my second laptop. The first one developed 2 pretty much a day after it was delivered. But Amazons great service replaced the laptop with next day delivery no question and worry free. I have this one now 6 months and not had a single incident of freezing, slowness or anything like that. Works perfect every time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor product, 19 Dec 2012

By 

sjb500 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

Bought back in Sep 2012 and have regretted it ever since. First of all seemed pretty good (with win 7) and then I made the mistake of upgrading to win 8 thinking it's a new laptop and therefore surely should work fine. Ever since I've had no end of problems with starting/stopping, Windows updates, wireless and wired (non) connections etc etc. To top that all the Windows key (quite important) came off just the other day. Wouldn't buy another Samsung product.

5.0 out of 5 stars EARLY DAYS YET BUT SO FAR LOOKS AND WORKS GREAT, 10 Dec 2012

By 

Rock Steady - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

Great monitor and quite fast. Cannot wait to put it under pressure, see how well it performs.
Just about to try the sound

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Gamer or Virtual Server Notebook, 10 Dec 2012

By 

Tim - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

Excellent delivery from Amazon as usual, arrived at 10:30 long before the 1pm expected. The computer is very quick to boot and the screen is very crisp.
One comment the description shows this to have 16GB 1333Mhz of RAM it actually has 16GB 1600 MHz SoDimm PC3-12800. It can be upgraded to 24GB of RAM by replacing the 2 SoDimms you can access.
I ordered the 2 x 8GB PC3-10600 memory upgrade but then found the memory inside is PC3-12800. Under windows the perfromance the original 16GB rating is 7.8 but with the PC3-10600 added drops to 7.6 - so if you would like 24GB make sure you order the 16GB (2 x 8GB) 1600 MHz SoDimm PC3-12800 kit.
The manual can be downloaded from Samsung site - it took some finding as this model is not listed in the main search. Keep selecting doanload & manual to reach the correct screen.
This is a very basic user manual to help you add memory etc. But for a technical person rather limited. Not sure if the two hard drives can be mirrored by hardware RAID 1 from the manual so off to call Samsung.

5.0 out of 5 stars Samsung series 7 laptop, 3 Nov 2012

By 

TomL - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

as an example of the latest generation i7 laptops, this is outstanding. The only downside is the size of the "brick" power supply, necessary for this gamer specification laptop. I love both the build quality and the build technology of this kit, "it rocks".

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars What a superb laptop!, 30 Oct 2012

By 

G. Rutland (London, UK) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)
  

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

NB: This machine was purchased on 26th October 2012 - please check back frequently for updates to this review in the first month, or feel free to leave a comment if you want to ask me more about my experience.

EDIT: Sadly, after just 28 days, the laptop has developed a fault, completely refusing to recognise the battery when it is attached. The finger has thus far been pointed at some iffy motherboard soldering or a DOA battery. The laptop is in a Samuel King outlet in London for the next few days, and while this service has thus far been good (it kind of helps that I am a 15-minute walk from said outlet) I am, needless to say, immensely disappointed.

FURTHER EDIT: The laptop was returned to me after five days with a clean bill of health, the engineers completely unable to replicate the fault. My only guess can be an overheated battery, as it was somewhat swollen when I took it in. I will be keeping an eye on this and report back, but have amended my scoring accordingly.

END OF EDIT. My original comments follow...

I have been a PC gamer, without giving too much away, for nearly fifteen years and from a young age, and, while using desktops, either custom built my machines or had them built to spec. As a former insider of the industry too, I have always kept up to date with the best of the moment and the fact that, often, the high street fails to satisfy when it comes to decent gaming machines. Frustratingly, this has become even more true in the five years since I took the plunge and bought my first, off-the-shelf gaming laptop, making all my favourite games portable and having someone else to blame when it didn't work.

That machine was a Toshiba Qosmio F50, and I loved it very much, even when it unceremoniously blew up in my face and had to be replaced by its G50 cousin. Quite by accident, then, I have developed a love for extra large gaming laptops and have run my poor old Qosmio into the ground. Its replacement would need the same wow factor and the sense of 'oh-my-God-they-even-included-that,' and again the customisation route presented itself.

Preferring, however, to have a large company to deal with, I took the search to the high street, albeit with overwhelmingly disheartening results. Except one. This laptop stood out as one of the few to pack RAM above 6GB, hybrid drive technology and a graphics card from 2012 for under £1500. Eager to have a laptop to play on over a week-long break from work, and with the promise of next day delivery, I took the plunge and ordered the 700G7C or Series 7 Gamer C laptop by Samsung.

The first thing that struck me when unboxing it was weight. This is still a 'heavy' laptop in the grand scheme of things, with its twin 750GB hybrid drives and 17" screen, but it is a hell of a lot lighter than the previous generation of gaming beasts. When I get the opportunity to pop it in a bag and move with it I will update this review accordingly, but straight away it was a winning point.

EDIT
I have since traveled very comfortably with the laptop both on foot and via public transport, with the battery and power brick in the bag as well. It is my hope, however, that Samsung will make an official bag for this laptop very soon.
END OF EDIT

Be warned that the power brick, understandably for a laptop of this size and power given that it churns out 200W, is very large, but comes with a generous length of cable.

Even before opening up the laptop, it is clear that Samsung has applied its trademark 'black and sleek' design to the 7 Series Gamer. A glossy black lid makes up the top with the Samsung logo set rather coolly off to the left edge. The same logo lights up in white when the laptop is powered on and is sure to turn heads. It is a fingerprint trap though, so keep a cloth handy. Opening up the laptop reveals a smooth, black plastic finish with a brushed steel effect and the generous 17.3", 1920x1080 monitor with very little border. A full keyboard including number pad is present, as well as a large, two-button touchpad. The rest of the chassis comprises 4 USB sockets (two each of 2.0 and 3.0) and a generous array of display sockets: VGA, HDMI and Display port. A multi format memory card reader is also present, as well as Kensington lock port and LAN connection and microphone and headphone sockets. There have been some criticisms over the lack of eSATA or Thunderbolt ports, but I feel this is a minor point. Present but obviously invisible are the in-built Bluetooth 3.0 module and Wireless N connectivity, offering speeds up to 300Mb/s. A touch sensitive volume control and Mode Switcher, both of which we will come to in a moment, complete the chassis.

Powering up the laptop (after the first-time install, of course) is a joy, and Windows 7 is booted into in under 20 seconds. This is in no small part thanks to the 700G7C's twin 750GB hybrid drives, with the 1.5TB total storage space funneled through an 8GB solid state cache. While it is not as quick as stand-alone SSDs, it is still very fast, and can be made even faster once the flashy Windows loading sequence is disabled. (As a side note, go for this model and not the upcoming Windows 8 model. Shelve Samsung's offer of an upgrade until you know Windows 8 is truly ready and truly for you.) The same 1.5TB of space is a generous compromise, though the drives are not RAIDed together - they appear in Windows as two discrete 750GB drives and not a single 1.5TB whole. Most other laptops though offer the single 750 with a smaller SSD in the second position. Though I prefer space over speed, I can always change my mind later, as the drives are accessible via a single screw in the underside of the laptop. Of course, this success must also be attributed to the real beating heart of this laptop - a quad core Intel i7 3610QM processor running at 2.3GHz married with 16GB of (I daresay, Samsung's own) DDR3 RAM, which, don't forget, is as much as Windows 7 can reasonably handle. The result is obvious: this thing is lightning fast. Again, laptops are on the market offering higher grade i7 processors, but the price leaps become eye-watering for little gain.

As you would expect, the 7G700C sadly comes with some bloatware, albeit a much smaller amount than from other manufacturers. Office is absent, leaving it down to you to choose, and Internet Explorer can soon be replaced by Chrome or Firefox. A 60-day trial of Norton is included should you desire such a thing and a number of the irritating Wild Tangent games, which can thankfully be uninstalled with ease. As with their mobile phones however, Samsung also include a number of useful apps, foremost among them the Easy Settings app. This grants quick, visual access to a number of important system settings, including the aforementioned Quick Startup and even the option to always place the system into Sleep or Hibernate rather than full shut down to trim those startup times down even further. Even when in these modes, the system can still be prompted to offer up juice via its USB ports with this app.

The customisation doesn't stop there however. On the right hand side of the keyboard is the aforementioned Mode Switcher. This rocks back and forth between Eco, Library, Balanced and Game Modes. Eco is, as you would expect, the leanest running of the system possible to conserve electricity, and in this mode I managed almost 3 hours on a single battery charge working online with Prezi and Citrix. Library winds down the fans and mutes the speakers immediately so that your system is completely silent. Balanced mode is your day-to-day mode, which also engages the 7G700C's rather gorgeous keyboard lighting in white and the division between the trackpad and mouse buttons in blue. A further flip of the switch to Game Mode, however, is where the fun really begins. Flipping the switch triggers a sound effect and screen animation (from a choice of three) and lights the entire keyboard in blue. It adds blue lighting and a Turbo emblem to the top of the keyboard and frames the speakers in red, with the red glowing in time to the sound! Further, it lights the WASD keys in red and then reminds you to hook up to the mains for good measure. This is a very cool feature indeed, although a word of caution: engaging Game Mode also silences the Blu-ray drive, slowing it drastically. For best results when installing games, revert to Balanced mode!

EDIT
Ensure that you use the Samsung Update to load the latest version of EasySettings (the beating heart of all of these features) - the new version was far more tolerant of running the screen at 120Hz (see below) in different modes, more reliable with the laptop's function keys and more transparent with both the silencing and many other options.
END OF EDIT

This seems like a good time to talk about the keyboard and mouse. As mentioned, the keyboard is a full keyboard with number pad, but unlike most laptops feels very sturdy and has decent beveling not far from a full size desktop keyboard. As with many makes of laptop, key system functions are dual-bound to the Function keys. The trackpad is very comfortable with a decent amount of wrist rest space. Trackpads are normally my pet hate with laptops, but so far the pad on this model has failed to irritate me. While I have ordered a supplementary keyboard and mouse, I am more than happy to make do with what is on offer for now.

EDIT
As noted previously, ensure that you download the latest software through the Samsung updater, as the out-of-box software, especially that controlling the keyboard's unique functions, was intermittent.
END OF EDIT

The speakers, sitting atop the keyboard, claim to offer pseudo surround sound. They are the one let down of this laptop, particularly when compared with the Harmon Kardon 2.1 speakers that graced my old Toshiba Qosmio. Samsung include a Dolby app with an equalizer and a variety of effects, but music doesn't sound particularly good and lacks bass. I recommend an external set of speakers or headphones for sure, which is not disappointing for me as many options are readily available. If on the other hand this isn't the case for you, invest in some pronto. The touch sensitive volume control also seems intermittent. This would appear to be down to software rather than hardware, as it works most reliably when the focus is on the taskbar. (EDIT: See above regarding software updates) If all else, fails, a backup set of controls can be found on the F6-F8 keys. This is hopefully something that a future update will remedy.

Let us move up, however, to bigger and better things. The real star of the show on this laptop is the 17.3" monitor. It is a full 1920x1080 monitor AND boasts a staggering 120Hz refresh rate (be sure to dig into the control panel and enable it, as, mysteriously, it is set to 60Hz by default). What this means is an extraordinary depth of colour and smoothness, and a laptop that is very comfortable on the eyes during even the longest of gaming sessions. All of this is backed up by a very capable GeForce GTX 675M with 2GB of its own RAM, which balances capability with sensible price. Yes, the 680M is on the market and is better with a higher clock speed and 4GB of RAM, but will set you back anything up to another 200 notes. As it happens in any case, the GPU claims to have access to 4GB of RAM, presumably pinching 2GB of the system's own 16. Whatever the case, this amount of RAM would only ever be needed for multi-monitor setups or games some way down the line from now. I will edit this review later on with some benchmarking, but as a ballpark figure The Sims 3, a notoriously greedy game for its age (bad coding, I tell you) set to maximum details glided along at 120-150 frames per second. XCOM: Enemy Unknown was butter-smooth at the highest settings. The screen of course also has access to a Blu-ray drive so that you can enjoy HD movies.

I hope you can tell that I like this laptop very much indeed. I have been thrilled with it so far, and will come back and update this review, especially in the first month, as I come to use it more. Take my advice once more and go for this reduced model, not the upcoming Windows 8 model. It isn't worth the extra and you can upgrade to Windows 8 for £15 if you so wish. My advice (and that echoing around the Internet for gamers) is that you don't make this switch in any case. Plump for this one, and look forward to enjoying some superb gaming experiences with it.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Had it two days and the keyboard letter "F" broke off!, 24 Oct 2012

By 

Rivodus - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

The laptop itself is good it plays most games with ease, however after 2 days of owning this laptop the letter "F" on the keyboard just came off, I tried to gently put the key back but the hooks on the bottom of the key are snapped, it's probably just bad luck, but this is just not good enough for the money I've paid,,,, now I'm going to have to wait about 50 years for a replacement no doubt,

29/10/2012 Update

wow what can I say? the second laptop arrived, turned it on,, screen failed there is some sort of loose connection from the screen to the base... returned

Amazon sent out another laptop for me,,, sent it to the wrong adress, what the hell is going on? I'm so angry at what has happened this is the last chance i'm giving this laptop then it's a refund for me I think.

5.0 out of 5 stars the best laptop i've ever had!!!, 16 Oct 2012

By 

guv94 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Series 7 700G7C 17.3 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB HDD, Blu-ray, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) (Personal Computers)

there is nothing left to say! it's super fast, super powerful, the full hd screen is awesome, has usb 3.0 (unfortunately only 2 of 4 usb ports are usb 3.0), dolby sound system is superb, has bluetooth 4.0, had nothing problematic since i bought it. the only discouraging thing for people who consider buying this is the weight, but if you are going to use it as a desktop replacement and not carry it around whole day with you, you will not have a problem.

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