That's right, I'm leaning more towards comparing this all-purpose laptop with a notebook in a lighter class than with other all-purpose models thanks to its design. You see, this is basically a with upgraded parts (a slightly larger screen and a discrete GPU). It's even smartly priced considering what's on the table; our review unit goes for US$1699.
That money buys you solid performance in the form of a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU, 3GB of RAM, and a discrete GPU. Although the GPU is no powerhouse--it's a 256MB nVidia GeForce 9200M GS--it certainly gives you better graphics performance than many thin-and-light machines. In games, it could handle only 49 frames per second in Doom 3 (at 1024 by 768 resolution) and 70 fps in Far Cry. Numbers like those make me wish Samsung had followed the route of the , which sport the GeForce 9400M GS chips. At least that way you could play a game that came out in the past two years. The X460's processing power and battery life shine a bit more brightly; in our PC World Test Center WorldBench 6 tests, it hit a very respectable 93, while its battery ran for a nice, long 4.5-hour stretch.
As I've already said, the X460 is an all-purpose machine--but it comes this close to qualifying as an ultraportable, measuring 13.3 by 9.7 by 1.25 inches and weighing just 4.2 pounds (add 0.83 pound for its charger). The case is expertly built and ready to travel. It even houses an optical drive. It's not quite as paper-thin as the ThinkPad X300, but it gets points for svelteness.
It also squeezes in a lot of ports. On the video front, it fits VGA and HDMI. For connectivity, you have an ethernet jack, a modem, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Around the sides: three USB ports, a five-in-one flash card reader, a PC Express card slot, and headphone/mic jacks. Throw in the 1.3-megapixel Webcam and a fingerprint reader, and you're getting a pretty robust package.
The 14.1-inch-diagonal backlit LED screen on the X460 is amazingly bright. Good and colorful, without blasting out saturation, the screen is extremely easy on the eyes. In fact, you can see the display in just about any lighting condition, outdoors or in. That's no small feat considering that I can clearly make out my five o'clock shadow on its glossy surface, and that reflection doesn't bother me at all. Even intentionally aiming the panel at direct sunlight doesn't beam the brightness back into my face. As for the 1280-by-800-pixel resolution, I could wish that it was capable of going higher, but the truth is, you won't go counting numbers here, since the image quality is so good.