The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro-2019 is a spectacular laptop for being one of Samsung’s budget 2 in one model. It offers a budget pen that isn’t the best of the market but still performs phenomenally after a couple of WinTab drivers update. The pen is battery operated unlike Samsung S-pen that’s battery-free, still no need to pair it, the active pen just simply works the laptop.
The Notebook 9 Pro looks strikingly similar to the 2018 Macbook Pro, so much so that the USB-Type C ports are placed in a similar location and both are about the same thickness. What does it mean? Who is Samsung trying to target with this laptop? We can never know for sure but for me a 19-year-old college student, that just wants a thin portable laptop that I can draw with. It suits my needs and fits my design aesthetic as a young designer and artist.
Super thin and light weight
The first thing I love about this laptop is how thin and lightweight it is.
- Only weighing 2.84 pound
- Slightly Smaller than 13 inch12.14 x 8.13 to be exact
This makes such a huge difference when carrying this around on campus at school or using it at the park. It also helps when I flip it in tablet mode, makes it so much easier to use vertically. The big bottom bezel on the screen helps in that orientation, working as the rim of a notebook, somewhere to rest my hands when drawing or taking notes.
Vibrant and Color acurate screen
The screen is beautiful on this laptop, and it’s great outdoors, not super reflective. I wouldn’t use it in direct sunlight but works pretty well outside in general. See it in action in this video below of me drawing outdoors.
Strong hinge
The hinge is pretty sturdy too, works great in many orientations that I’ve tried. The hinge is rigid too, so it requires a bit of effort to fully turn it. Keyboard automatically disconnects when you’re in tablet mode without having to click the windows permission notification every time. I must say that I dislike the Windows on Screen keyboard to use it in that mode for long unless I’m drawing.
Powerful internals
- 8th gen Intel core i7
- Fast 256gb SSD
- Runs Adobe creative suit pretty great on 2D graphics
Even for a budget laptop, this thing runs pretty well for my uses. I don’t do any crazy 3D graphic works or do anything in 4k on this laptop but for general graphic design, drawing, medium to light editing (videos for my youtube channel) this works exceptionally well for me. The main downside is the 8gb of ram and I wished this came in a 15-inch model, not ideal in terms of comfort-wise, not as much to do with performance as you can get the more expensive 512gb model with 16gb of ram.
The active pen
It’s Samsung budget pen and it shows. Not as fluid to draw on as the S-pen, and you can’t use any S-pen alternative pen since it’s using a buget technology to reduce the cost. Another downside is that it’s battery operated, so far since I’ve bought it the pen hasn’t died. With that being said it’s not horrible to draw on, not the worse digital pen that I’ve used and I’ve used plenty. It doesn’t feel clunky when drawing, it is a bit laggy sometimes but I don’t hate using it. The parallax isn’t so horrible too. verdict is that I can make professional illustrations with this.
Check out this video to see it in action in real time with other drawing programs
Final verdict
I love this laptop, I think it’s a great buy for the money if you just need an all arounder. I haven’t used any other 2 in one laptop with a pressure-sensitive pen so I don’t have anything to compare it too. I got this because I was tired of carrying around my clunky Cintiq companion, and the Notebook 9 pro proves worthy. I must let you know that this is not my main drawing device, I still have an Ipad with Apple pencil, and my Note 10 plus to draw with if I want a stellar pen experience. So it’s not my main drawing device so the setbacks don’t hit for me as hard. I do however use this laptop at work heavily for graphic design, web development, and video editing. I got this laptop $700 used and with the release of the Galaxy Book Flex this year the price will go down significantly.
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