14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon and J&R have both recently started taking pre-orders for Samsung’s Series 5 Ultrabooks that was announced by the Korean company at the end of last year.
Two models are listed right now, one featuring a 14-inch screen and an optical drive for $949.99 (728 EUR) while the other sports a more compact 13.3-inch display and no ODD for $899.99 (690 EUR).
Despite this different screen diagonal, Liliputing reports that both Ultrabooks feature a matte 1366x768 resolution display and come with a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M ULV processor.
This is paired together with 4GB of system memory, while in the storage department we find a 500GB hard drive that is seconded by a 16GB SSD meant to be used for caching duties.
In the models listed by the two North American retailers, graphics is handled by the Intel Sandy Bridge integrated HD 3000 GPU.
Late last year, Samsung Korea also announced its intentions to launch a Radeon HD 7550M equipped Series 5 Ultrabook, but so far we don’t know if this version will get an international launch.
In the connectivity department, Series 5 notebook users will get the usual Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooh 3.0 and dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, as well as a multi-format card reader, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, and an HDMI output.
The 13.3-inch model adds to all of these an USB 3.0 port to make up for the lack of an optical drive.
Other features include a 1.3MP HD webcam, a pair of stereos speakers with a 4W power output, and support for Intel’s WiDi technology.
Right now, neither J&R, nor Amazon, know when they will start shipping the Samsung Ultrabooks to customers.
The retailers also haven’t mentioned anything about the $1100 13.3-inch Series 5 model which is expected to swap the 500GB HDD with a 128GB solid state drive.