Samsung Launching A New MacBook Air Competitor

December 31, 2014

Apple's MacBook Air might have some tough competition come January.

Samsung will be launching a new super-slim laptop at the Consumer Electronics Showcase early next month that will supposedly be able to last 12 hours on a single charge.

Samsung made the announcement on its Korean-language blog Monday (via ZDNet). 

Its Series 9 2015 Edition notebook will be about half an inch thin, a bit slimmer than Apple's 0.68-inch MacBook Air.

Samsung's new notebook will be a bit lighter than Apple's laptop, too, as it weighs about 2.1 pounds versus the smaller 11-inch 2.38-pound MacBook Air.

The edge of Samsung's notebook where the ports are located sort of bulge out, however, which makes it look a bit bulky. The MacBook Air's teardrop design is much more elegant. 

Samsung says its new laptop, as with the MacBook Air, will last 12 hours on a single charge, which is pretty impressive. The Series 9 will borrow some of the battery-saving technology from Samsung's Galaxy S5 to squeeze out that much power. 

The screen on Samsung's coming laptop sounds as if it will be incredibly sharp, too. It will feature a 12.2-inch 2560 x 1600 display, which should be much sharper than the 1440 x 900 resolution screen on Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro. 

But don't expect it to be nearly as powerful as Apple's laptop. Samsung's new notebook will run on one of Intel's new Broadwell Core M processors, which is really meant to be used in thin two-in-one laptops and tablets rather than full-fledged laptops. The MacBook Air runs on Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 processors that are used to power laptops and desktop computers. 

We expect to learn more about availability and pricing at CES next week.

(Business Insider)