Samsung Series 5 and Series 7 all-in-one Windows 8 PCs, hands-on

We got your hands on the new all-in-one (AIO) PCs that Samsung has just announced today. To keep their naming consistent, Samsung has named them Series 5 and Series 7 like they do for their laptop – the names logically describe the product level in the line-up. The Series 7 comes in two sizes: 27″ ($1699) and 23.6″ (1099), while the series 5 only has a 21.5″ version ($749).

Beyond the sizes, all three computers are different in more than one way. The more obvious one is the design. The 27″ Series 2 comes with a great design that reminds of Samsung’s LED TV, which Samsung’s IT division got inspired from. that’s a great idea given that those designs are rather successful on the market. On that note, the display quality was rather high.

Both Series 7 computers have a 10-point touch display (1080p), 1TB of storage and run on Windows 8. The 27″ version is beefier with a Core i7 and  8GB of RAM out of the box. The 23.6″ one gets a Core i5 and 6GB of RAM (8GB Max). If you plan on playing games, the 27″ version has a discrete AMD 7850M graphics processor (GPU), while the other ones have an integrated Intel HD4000 GPU.

The Series 5 is built to reach a lower price of $749, so the design is a bit thicker and on the inside, it comes with a Core i3, 4GB of RAM (8GB max) and the integrated Intel GPU. It still has a 1080p touch display, so all the multimedia functions should be taken care of. Gaming will be limited to casual games, and I suspect that even Flash games like CastleVille could be challenging.

Overall, we found the line of all-in one to be very nice. The high-end Series 7 is obviously the one that folks would “want”, although affordability may be an issue, but those touch screens are expensive. The Series 7 does not have a “big base” that contains all the internal components, so its likes are rather straight and clean. The front looks great and from a distance, it just looks like a small TV.

The Series 5 has a different stand design to conserve space on a table. The idea is that if used as a kitchen PC or in a student/teenager room, the possibility to put stuff underneath the computer may be handy.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers
Tags: all-in-one, Samsung, Windows 8