Samsung RF711 17 inch laptop review

The Samsung RF711 looks mightily impressive in both the specs and design department. Powerful and shiny, it’s aimed at heavy multimedia users and even gamers, but is priced just below £900. Should you take a punt on this one?

What we like best

The eye-catching, glossy starburst design on the RF711’s lid is a lovely if slightly flashy touch. But considering this is a 17 inch screen laptop and likely to be a lot of people’s main computing unit, we tend to be in favour – of course, people who prefer their hardware to be more unassuming (and fingerprint-resistant) might differ.

But the real attraction lies on the inside, or on the base, of the laptop. Matte black gunmetal is juxtaposed with silver colours to make for an engaging high-end look. There is a neat-looking little function bar above the keyboard that contains the power button and volume controls, and it comes with smart chrome hinges. The contrast between the glossy exterior and the more sober approach on the base is a very intriguing design device, and Samsung pull it off with aplomb.

The Samsung RF711’s USP is the quad-core i7-2630QM processor, which can overclock to up to 2.9 GHz. Combine that with 6 Gb of RAM, and you’ve got a machine that can take anything you throw at it in terms of multimedia editing and multitasking.

There’s 1 Tb of storage space for your media library, thanks to the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 540 graphics card, some scope for minor gaming. Connectivity is covered with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, and a DVD rewriter and a HD webcam are included as well. In short, it’s all there.

What we like least

Or is it? For such a powerful laptop, it’s an even bigger shame that the speakers are so disappointing. The bass is purring rather than roaring, and there is a lack of punch in the middle range.

Similarly, the Samsung RF711 gets the user’s hopes up by packing a Blu-ray drive and media-editing-capable CPU, but then lets itself down with a below-par resolution of 1600 x 900. Image and video quality is still very decent, just not up to the standard you might have expected from such a high-end laptop.

In a minor complaint, the keyboard wasn’t as responsive as we would have liked and lacked texture to ensure accurate typing.