Samsung updates high-end Series 9 ultrabook, catching up as 1080p screens become the norm

Nine months ago, the 1600 x 900 display on Samsung’s Series 9 laptop was relatively impressive for its time, but it has since been bested by a number of 1080p (and occasionally even higher) ultrabook displays. Now Samsung’s playing catch-up, announcing today the latest version of its flagship laptop, which it teased at CES in January. The new Series 9 has a 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 LED display, coupled with a “SuperBright” technology that Samsung says is 50 percent brighter than other laptop screens. Bizarrely, it’s not a touchscreen, a surprising omission that leaves Samsung still trailing some of its 1080p competition, but the mid-cycle refresh brings Samsung at least closer to parity with its best competition, from Asus and others.

Increasing the display’s resolution doesn’t cost the Series 9 elsewhere, either — still a half-inch thick and only 2.56 pounds, it remains one of thinner and lighter ultrabooks on the market. It comes with Windows 8, and is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Samsung promises up to eight hours of battery, though we’d expect something more like the five hours, 19 minutes we saw on the last Series 9. It’s very much a business laptop, designed to compete with premium laptops like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon — and at $1,899.99 Samsung better hope it holds up.