Samsung's ultra-light 3K laptop puts the Surface Book to shame

Samsung Ativ Book 9 Spin

Samsung has been quiet on the laptops front throughout the year, but now it's kicking the door down with two Ultra HD notebooks.

First up the Ativ Book 9 Spin is a convertible laptop beauty that features a 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 display. The QHD+ resolution makes the Samsung Spin just about as sharp as Microsoft's recently released Surface Book – albeit with a slightly wider 16:9 aspect ratio – but this convertible is considerably lighter.

Even without packing a discrete graphics chip, Microsoft's first laptop weighs a substantial 3.36 pounds, whereas the 2.87 pound Spin cuts nearly a quarter of the weight. On top of being lighter, the Spin is incredibly thin measuring only 0.59-inches. Despite its diminutive size, Samsung claims battery life can last up to 7.3 hours

It also incorporates a hinge that's nearly as seamless with an extra flap of aluminum creates a seamless transition between the screen no matter if you're using it as a traditional notebook or a tablet.

Internally the Ativ Book 9 Spin comes packing an Intel Core i7 6500U processor with an 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Price at $1,399 (about £910, AU$1,958), it's definitely one of the more premium laptops that will release in November.

Samsung Ativ Book 9 Pro

Go big or go home

If you're looking for a bigger system with more power to boot, Samsung has also announced a newly 15.6-inch Ativ Book 9 Pro. It comes with 3,840 x 2,160 resolution display and four two-watt speakers to make it an amazing multi-media laptop

To drive its 4K resolution, the Ativ Book 9 has a high-powered Intel Core i7 6700HQ CPU as well as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M graphics chip. To round out the package the Book 9 Pro also incorporates 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

Altogether, Samsung has managed to cram all these components into a tight 0.7-inch package that only weighs 4.45 pounds – pretty light for a 15-inch laptop. Also arriving later this month, the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Pro will retail for $1,599 (about £1,040, AU$2,238) and it should give the Dell XPS 15 some stiff competition this holiday.

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.