Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T Review and Videos

A big thank-you to Hector Gomez for writing up this excellent and detailed owner-review of the dockable Samsung Series 7 Tablet / Smart PC Pro ATIV 700T. Hector has owned many other mobile devices in the past and recently reviewed the Smart PC ATIV 500T for us over at UMPCPortal. The 700T review paints a very positive picture of this Ultrabook Convertible and Surface Pro alternative.  Pay attention!

I won’t go into too much detail on the specs for the Samsung Smart PC Pro ATIV 700T but rather my experience using it. I have already tested out the Samsung Smart PC ATIV 500T running the new Intel Atom Clover Trail. The Smart PC Pro ATIV 700T comes with the new Intel Ivy Core i5 processor, which is the 3rd generation. Let’s take a look at what you might expect from the Samsung Smart PC Pro ATIV 700T.
The Samsung Smart PC Pro ATIV 700T is heavier than the current Atom Clover Trail tablets that are out, so if you expecting to have something that you can carry around all day as a tablet, you might want to look for something in the 10.1-inch display like the Acer W510 or the Asus Vivo Tab Smart.

I am seeing that the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T is filling the Ultraportable, Tablet, desktop replacement and Chromebook replacement all in one Hybrid package. Read along and find out if the Hybrid Tablets can fill the gap for you as well.

The Smart PC Pro 700T comes with the following:

• 11.6-inch display
• Windows 8 64-bit
• 1920x1080p 400nit display for crisp text, (but comes at a price in the desktop mode).
• 1 – 3.0 USB Port on the tablet
• 2 – 2.0 USB Ports on the keyboard dock.
• Intel i5 Core Processor
• 4GB DDR3 RAM
• 128GB SSD (Liteonit)
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• WiDi Support
• GPS on current testing unit ( certain models don’t come with GPS).
• NFC
• 10 Point Multi-touch.
• WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
• BT 4.0
• Samsung claims 8 hours battery life and 5 hours of video playback
• Tablet Weight  857gm

Specifications, links, images and more in the Ultrabooknews product database.

 

Unboxing the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T

First thing first, the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T has been my desktop replacement connected to my 22-inch monitor with Logitech BT keyboard and Sony BT mouse. I have been using it for work and home. I have also upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and installed the Windows Media Center.

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Display

Click to see full-size 1600×900

Having a 1980 x 1080 display resolution is just great! After using the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T and using any lower resolution is just not the same. Yes, the desktop fonts will be smaller and not the best for touch screen but you can adjust some settings to make it more touch friendly. I will go into that in a bit. For working on documents with this high resolution, everything looks smooth and easy on the eyes. This makes reading web pages, documents and your newsfeed that much better to view and read! Another plus to having an 11.6-inch display is that you are able to have either a Word document and a Excel Worksheet split on the screen and still comfortably be able to continue editing or creating any Word document. This goes for when you want to compare two items from a web page and instead of going back and forth, just split both web pages on the screen.

Another advantage of the higher resolution is movies and videos really show up detail. This has been a joy watching movies on the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T. The SuperBright Plus Technology and 400 nit for brightness which is very bright for indoor office work. I can comfortably keep the brightness at around ¼ brightness and up to ½ brightness and can view the screen just fine. Angle viewing is also good, did find that even though it is not an IPS screen, you still get great views from all angles.  If you happen to be outdoors you will have some trouble viewing the screen but you can crank up the brightness all the way up to help you see what you are reading.
If you want to increase your fonts for better viewing of text, here is what you can do.

Right click on your desktop and choose “Screen Resolution”

Here you can increase to 125% and check all to have “Bold” and increase font size.

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Keyboard dock

I find the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro with the keyboard dock is an excellent work device. I can quickly undock it from the keyboard dock go straight into meetings and be able to take notes. Another advantage of having the keyboard dock is that the power adapter is connected to the keyboard dock and I just plug in the micro HDMI in the side of the ATIV Smart PC Pro and works as my office desktop computer. One thing I would have liked to have seen is, Samsung should have added a keyboard dock with an additional battery. This would have added some weight to the already 3+ lbs. with the keyboard dock, but I wouldn’t have mind this at all. The tradeoff for me would have been worth it! Even if we could have seen an additional 2 hours of battery life, this would have been well welcomed.
If I plan to be out all day, I do turn to my 10.1-inch Asus Vivo Tab Smart that I am testing for all day work without worry of charging or carry the power adapter to charge the tablet.

The keyboard dock has chiclet style keys that are about the same layout as the MacBook Air 11.6- inch keyboard. This has provided me the ability to type up anything I want without any trouble whatsoever. Working in an email, documents, excel worksheets and any other typing I need all day without having to worry about the keys been too cramped. The keyboard dock gives you good feedback from the keys as you type on the keyboard, considering the keyboard is mostly made of plastic; you can expect a very good typing experience with the keyboard dock.  I would rate the keyboard typing 7 out of 10.

You will also get two additional 2.0 USB ports on the keyboard dock located on each side towards the front of the keyboard. I would have liked if the USB ports would have been placed towards the back. When I connect an external USB drive or a USB flash drive, it gets in my way when using the mouse. For me, it is not a convenient location.

 

The only metal you will find on the keyboard dock is where you dock the tablet, with some plastic inserts to protect the tablet from scratching as you dock and undock the tablet. I thought that the tablet would be top heavy, but seems to balance very nicely. If you push it back with force it will tilt back but any light push it comes back down on the keyboard. Besides the USB ports, there is a PSU port for charging the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T while it is docked on the keyboard. Other than that, everything is pretty much smooth.

The trackpad feels very plasticky and when you right or left click on the trackpad, it feels and sounds like plastic that is not made of high quality. On the plus side is that it does get the job done while on the road, but at times it doesn’t respond very well. You do get the multi gestures on the trackpad which is very nice, makes navigating around with Windows 8 easier.
Now for the bad. Samsung decided to make the keyboard dock a matte finish which wears bad. If you happen to rub on it to clean it in an area, you will get a smudge that will not go away and show up on the keyboard dock.

Keyboard dock video

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Portability and Use

Carrying around the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T with me is easy and very portable. Here you can see the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T next to my Galaxy Note II which gives you an idea how slim the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T is with the keyboard dock. Having the processing power of an i5 Core in such a small package has been great! The ability to just carry the tablet without the keyboard dock is another advantage just pop the tablet from the keyboard dock and you can be on your way.

As I have mentioned, I can quickly undock the tablet and go into the conference room where our meetings are held and connect it to our 32-inch monitor to do any presentations,  mark up any building plans, mark up PDF documents and use PowerPoint with the ability to take digital notes as well. Using OneNote with the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T is great! When using the stylus and OneNote to jot down your thoughts, the inking works so smooth with no lag or any waiting for the inking to catch up.
Quick tip, when you are in a hurry and want to jot down a quick note, just press the button on the stylus and hold it while taping the screen twice. This will launch the S-Note to write down a quick note, and then you can save it in S-Memo for editing later. This is a very nice application for note taking.

One thing I do find is, when the ATIV Smart PC Pro is docked in the keyboard, I would have liked the ability to have the screen tilt just a tad more, for those times you need to adjust for better angle viewing.

At home or on the go I use CyberLink PowerDirector 11 for editing my videos. Like I have mentioned before the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T is able to handle all my video editing without any problems. I am able to render a 800MB video in about 3 to 4 minutes and saving it as H.264 video without any compromise at all. You can find a higher spec machine to edit videos much faster but you will not have some of the advantages by having the option to use your laptop as a tablet as needed.

When you create videos the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T gets warm to a touch at the top where the vent is for the fan. Also the fan is very quiet and if you are in an office or at home with normal noise, you wouldn’t even know that the fan is on. There is a setting that actually keeps the fan very low that even at that point you can’t hear it is on. This setting is great when you plan to use it as a tablet, keeping it cool and giving you better battery life as well. This also keeps your speed to a maximum of 1.2GHz, so you only want to switch this on when you plan to surf, write documents or anything that won’t require a lot processing power. I accidentally had this on once and tried to finish a video that took almost 18 minutes vs 9 minutes once I put the setting back to normal.

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Design and Connectivity

The tablet overall quality build is very good in my opinion. The entire back is made of plastic; I can see why Samsung did this in order to help keep the weight down. It does flex in the center of the tablet if you press down hard, but I don’t usually hold it from the center. The plastic material that the back is made of is very sturdy throughout and feels very solid and no squeaking.

The curve around the tablet makes it holding it very comfortable in your hand. You won’t find any sharp edges around the sides. Even though you are using an 11.6-inch display it makes a great tablet around the office or home. On the back of the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T it has four vents that help keep the tablet very cool. Even when I have been using it for heavy video editing, it gets warm to hot but never has it gotten so hot that it would bother me to hold the tablet.

The rear camera is a 5.0 MP HD. Don’t expect too much from this camera. In low light you won’t be capturing any award winning photos. Outdoors or with plenty of light it does a decent job. So far using the rear camera has been average in my use. The detail that I need to capture especially when trying to capture building plans don’t always show the small detail. What I have been doing is taking a closer shot of the area that I need, but times I need an overview of the building plans which then I am out of luck.

We need to see better cameras on tablets just like we see on mobile phones these days. Why? As more users use the tablets for work, you need a better camera to use at meetings to quickly scan documents, take quick shots of building plans and when going over certain job sites that require special parts that are quickly uploaded to Dropbox accounts and emailed back to the office or to order parts on the go.
What I have noticed is that I get great WiFi performance with the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro. This is a big plus as I have run into other devices having very bad WiFi signal. The GPS (GNSS) does come in handy as you can use it to find locations much faster, especially when out traveling. With Bluetooth 4.0 you quickly connect to Bluetooth keyboards and BT Mouses. The ATIV Smart PC Pro does support WiDi. This makes connecting to a compatible WiDi monitor easy and gets rid of cables. I did purchase Netgear Push2TV which didn’t work on the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro because of the video driver. It required a newer video driver that I installed but it disabled the brightness settings. I reinstalled the original Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro video driver and everything went back to normal. I will have to follow and see if Netgear has updated any drivers for the Push2TV that will work with the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro.

I don’t use the stylus that is docked in the tablet; I use the S Pen Holder Kit that I had used on my previous Galaxy Note. The same S Pen works on my current Galaxy Note II and the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T with the Wacom digitizer. I do recommend that if you plan to use a tablet for marking up documents, taking notes, drawing on photos, etc… Get a tablet with a Wacom digitizer. You will pay a premium for this but will be worth the price. I have tested both Wacom digitizer tablets and capacitive type tablets and even though you can use special stylus to use on capacitive tablets, it is not the same especially if you plan to use your tablet for digital notes.

Using the stylus on the tablet whether using the stylus that comes with the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T or the S Pen Holder Kit stylus that I use, it feels very smooth when the tip contacts the glass on the ATIV Smart PC Pro. This makes note taking or any other use very easy and comfortable.

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro as a Chromebook

There is days when I just need to use basic applications, I haven’t picked up a Chromebook just yet. Well, I have loaded the Chrome Browser on the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T and sort of use it as my Chromebook when the need persist even though it is really not a true Chromebook, but I have loaded and set it up as one.

On the plus side is, the performance is much better than if I would have picked up a Chromebook, and have a full Windows 8 PC to run most any application that I would normally on a desktop computer.

I also decided to write this quick overview of the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T using Google Docs in Chrome browser. So far it is working great! Fast to open any app I have installed from the Chrome Web Store! On the negative side is, the Chrome browser is not optimized for touch screen. It works, but you will find times that you can’t really interact as well as if you had a mouse. You will find some small icons or boxes that make it very hard to use as touch screen.

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Battery and Performance

I know many of you have wanted to know how is the battery life on the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T. Well at first like any other battery it needs to run a few charges.

Samsung has a battery setting called “Samsung Optimized” which is what you want to use. This actually gives you the best battery life by adjusting to what you are running. I tried the “High Performance” setting when I was doing some picture editing and compared to the “Samsung Optimized” setting and I didn’t notice any difference in speed performance. By leaving it on “Samsung Optimized” I have been able to get 5.5 hours running IE10, Chrome browser, a couple Word documents, email, Metro apps for news, checking tweets and setting the brightness at around half. If I use the Metro IE browser and stay using the Metro apps and maybe jump into the desktop mode on and off, I have been able to stretch up to 6.5 – 7 hours of battery life. Sure this might not be what most of the Atom Clover Trail tablets are seeing, but this is more than what I expected from an i5 Core processor. Samsung has done a good job.

My usage at work during meetings and when out of office use, I can safely say that I don’t worry to bring along the power adapter. Since I do tend to work more in desktop mode for office work, using Office 2010, haven’t installed Office 2013 yet but will soon. I can go easy 5.5+ hours and most of the times an easy 6 hours. This translates into a full day of computing because I don’t use the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T the straight 6 hours. You have down time in between that you’re not using the computer.

Samsung is using a LITEONIT LMT-128M3M [Hard drive] (128.04 GB) in the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro.  I do plan to upgrade the mSATA SSD drive to at least a 256GB at a later time.

The Windows Experience Index was pretty much like other 3rd generation i5 Core laptops and tablets. You might find a little difference between manufacturers, but overall you should see the same scores.

Summary

The Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro is a great Hybrid tablet / laptop. You will be able to use it as a desktop replacement for work and home use. I am enjoying the ability to have the 11.6-inch display with 1980×1080 resolution. Text is very clear on the display. Using the split screen while you work on a Word document or browse the web is another plus with 11.6-inch screen. Performance is great with 4GB RAM and haven’t noticed any slowdowns. The Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T sells for $1,199. Price will vary.

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Again, thanks to Hector. I’m sure he’ll be watching for comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe to his YouTube channel.