Test Center Take: The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin

Mobile devices in the enterprise can take lots of different forms. Sometimes they’ll be devices that are meant to hit the road. But sometimes they’re just devices that can make the trip from desk to conference room.

Samsung this week released its newest laptop for the workplace, the Notebook 7 Spin, and the CRN Test Center spoke with Samsung to learn what the device is all about. For solution providers with customers who need to get employees more productive around the office -- and not necessarily on the plane -- the Notebook 7 Spin fits the bill.

[Related: Review: Samsung's Notebook 9 Nails Portability And Power]

The device accomplishes that in part by being highly flexible, with a 360-degree hinge that lets the touch-screen display fold all the way back for use as a tablet -- a la the Lenovo Yoga series -- or even part of the way, for showing a video or presentation to co-workers.

Pre-loaded with Windows 10 Pro, the Notebook 7 Spin comes in two sizes, 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch, and it clearly isn’t targeted for use by a mobile salesperson or other on-the-go professional as it weighs 4 pounds or 5 pounds, respectively.

Instead, Samsung designed the laptop for use by office workers who only need to be mobile on occasion. That is, they need to be able to collaborate and communicate with co-workers around the office, and thus have a computer that’s not tied to their desk.

The 15.6-inch version is particularly targeted toward ’power users’ among the office knowledge worker set, such as designers or data analysts, said Jen Langan, director of mobility product marketing at Samsung.

’They are working with a lot of data and that requires a lot more performance than the standard knowledge worker is going to need,’ Langan said.

Which is why the 15.6-inch version is so heavy compared with many of the new laptops hitting the market right now: It’s got an Intel Core i7 6500U processor, a Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics card, a 1-TB hard drive, 128 GB of SSD and 8 GB of memory.

The price is reasonable for what users are receiving -- the 15.6-inch version of the Notebook 7 Spin starts at $1,300.

And the 13.3-inch version starts at $900, which comes with the Intel Core i5 Processor 6200U, a 500-GB hard drive and 8 GB of memory.