Gaming notebooks are a lucrative market for manufacturers. These laptops are often costly which, from the manufacturer’s perspective, is a great thing. Consumers – the gamers – unfortunately have to bear the brunt of expenses if they are to continue their digital hobby. That being said, it makes sense to pay a little more if the product you are getting is great. In this review, I’ll let you know my opinion whether Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US makes a great laptop for players or not!

So it’s good for gaming?

Yes, pretty much, I would say Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US is great for players. Its graphics engine is GeForce GTX 1050, a dedicated mid-range card with 2GB GDDR5 memory. The GTX 1050 can do a lot for the casual gamer, especially when you can’t go beyond 1080p resolution on this computer. Talking about recent popular titles, Doom and GTA 5 played on maximum settings and 1080p would be in the 50FPS range. Obviously, if your interest lies in older games, FPS will go through the roof.

Needless to say, the graphics engine can not be upgraded on this rig. Also, Virtual Reality is not supported.

Components under the hood

One of the best parts in Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US is its processor. The Intel Core i7-7700HQ suffices for gaming, professionals and power users, easily. There are four cores in it with clock speed 2.8GHz going as high as 3.8GHz with turbo boost. The i7-7700HQ is a late 2016 model and it ranks high in various benchmarks – for example, CPU Mark score is very good ~9000.

The memory amount, 16GB DDR4, is excellent for demanding use – like gaming. I might say it’s even a bit overkill. At least you will never run out of RAM on this Samsung. The configuration is two 8GB chips and they are soldered on board. In another words, you can not upgrade the memory here. But that won’t be a problem at slightest, believe me!

Two drives exist in the laptop. First is a 1TB 5400RPM SATA hard drive. Ideally, you want to put most of your static files on that drive because 1TB is a lot of space (like 200,000 JPEG images). But in addition, the laptop also has a 128GB M.2 SATA3 SSD drive – and I believe the operating system is installed there. The SSD will have around 100 gigabytes left after Windows 10, you can put some of your favorite games on that drive.

Video

Ports and interfaces

Some people want to hook their PC display – or even HDTV – to their laptops to emulate a desktop environment. That is also possible with Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US as the notebook comes with a full-sized HDMI output. In addition, there are three USB ports – two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 available. A bit unfortunate thing, no USB Type-C is found on this laptop.

The two methods, wired and wireless, can be used to connect to Internet. There’s Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 WiFi card installed, it supporting 1×1 802.11ac standard and Bluetooth 4.1. The Ethernet circuit supports 1000Mbps transfer rates with RJ-45 port.

The computer has a memory card reader for SD, SDHC and SDXC cards. There is no optical drive so if you prefer discs, be prepared to use an external DVD burner (which this laptop of course fully supports).

Miscellaneous

Early reviews say the 15.6″ display on Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US is beautiful. It’s not hard to believe, after all resolution is solid 1920×1080 and brightness 250 nits. The display has anti-glare technology and no touch support.

The battery life on gaming laptops is always rather poor. Surely, Samsung talks about 7 hours duration with the 43Wh 3780mAh battery here. But I don’t think you are going to get that much. My estimation is ~2 hours for gaming and 3-4 hours for surfing the web. Also remember it’s a non-removable battery unit.

The keyboard is backlit with LEDs.

Reasons to buy this

The raw gaming performance of Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US is decent if not the best. In any case, it suffices for 99% of the gamers because on the majority of games you can keep the settings maxed out. What else would a player want, eh?

In addition to gaming, the Samsung also suffices for all types of software use. Be it YouTube, Netflix, MS Office, Photoshop or even video editing, there is enough oomph to run all those programs without problems.

Reasons not to buy this

If you are not a gamer, it makes no sense to get this pricey laptop. You would be paying for something you don’t need. Plus, the battery life isn’t good if you’re looking for a traveling friendly computer.

Verdict

Samsung Gaming NP800G5M-X01US is a laptop that can live up to expectations of many modern players. The GeForce GTX 1050 card lets smooth frame rates happen on most titles, even when there’s a lot of eye candy turned on. The i7 processor, 16GB RAM and dual drive storage make sure the general performance of the notebook is sufficient for demanding applications. The high quality display seals the deal. For the price, you will get a very decent and snappy gaming notebook.