Hands-On With Samsung’s New Series 3 Notebooks
Jun 23, 2011 01:42 PM EDT by 
During last night’s Digital Experience show we happened upon two notebooks from Samsung’s yet to be announced Series 3 line. The affordable, mid-level laptops range in size from 11.6 to 15.6 inches. According to booth attendants, the notebooks will be making their debut at Staples and Best Buy sometime in the near future.
The 11.6-inch ultraportable notebook features 2 USB ports (one of which will double as a charging port), Ethernet, HDMI, a SD reader, and unidentified port. The 15.6-inch mainstream notebook has 3 USB ports, an optical drive, a SD card, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and a Kensington secure lock.
Taking design cues from the Series 9, the 11.6-inch model has a black matte brushed metal appearance and chrome keyboard deck while the 15.6-inch version was completely black matte material save for the chrome mouse keys. Both notebooks feature island-style keyboards with large touchpads and glossy anti-glare displays.
Aside from the 11.6 and 15.6-inch models, the Series 3 line will also feature 12.1 and 13.3-inch versions. While the notebooks we saw ran on Intel Core i5 CPUs, certain models can be outfitted Core i3, Core i7, or AMD processors. Prices, full specs, and availability have yet to be released, but in the meantime, check out our video hands-on with the nascent notebooks.
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