Samsung Q330-JS03AU notebook
Welcome to a Laptop Battery specialist of the Samsung Ac Adapter
Samsung's Q330-JS03AU is an attractive, sub-2kg 13.3in laptop that's slim, well-featured and competitively priced. It's the perfect size for users who want a notebook that's easy to carry around but has a roomy design. The configuration of the notebook is a little puzzling though: it ships with NVIDIA Optimus graphics that don't make much of a dent in the performance. We'd like to see this model offered strictly with integrated Intel graphics because the extra speed offered by the extra NVIDIA chip is not worth bothering about and omitting it would bring the price down.
NVIDIA's Optimus technology automatically switches between the integrated Intel HD graphics adapter like Samsung NP-R620 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-RV720 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-Q320 Ac Adapter, Samsung NC110 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-X130 Ac Adapter, Samsung Series 5 Ac Adapter, Samsung NT-R439 Ac Adapter, Samsung NT-R440E Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-P330 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-Q330 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-RV508 Ac Adapter, Samsung NP-N148P Ac Adapter and the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT310M; there is no physical switch. This means the NVIDIA card kicks in when you run a game, and the Intel card remains at the helm when you type up a document. There is scope for modifying which card your applications use (you use the NVIDIA driver for this), but this doesn't always work in an obvious way.
During our battery test, during which we turn off power-saving schemes, enable Wi-Fi and turn up screen brightness then loop a video, the notebook lasted 2hr 51min when we let Optimus select which graphics card to use. When we forced it to use the NVIDIA card the notebook returned an identical result, but when we forced it to use the integrated Intel graphics it only lasted 2hr 42min.
This is a topsy-turvy result: the NVIDIA card should have given us the lower time. The moral here is, don't mess with Optimus: let it select the graphics card on its own and you'll get optimal battery performance. This is unlike what we experienced when we tested the MSI FX600, where we had to select the graphics card manually in order to get the longest possible battery life.
Either way, the inclusion of two graphics cards isn't really justificed given the negligible difference in battery life. Furthermore, the difference in 3D performance between the two graphics adapters is not dramatic enough for an extra graphics adapter to be of any real usefulness. In 3DMark06, the Intel HD card recorded a score of 1729, while the NVIDIA card recorded a score of 3667. This is similar to what we saw from MSI's CX420, which is a hybrid notebook that uses ATI graphics. These results tell us that the Q330 is not a gaming machine by any stretch of the imagination and you shouldn't be roped into buying it by thinking you'll be able to play many games on it just because it has an NVIDIA graphics adapter.
We're not fans of the way the Optimus graphics switching technology has been implemented in the Samsung Q330, but we still think this is a great notebook to consider. In particular, we love the fact that it's a 13.3in laptop rather than a 15.6in model; it makes it much easier to carry to and from work or the classroom. The notebook's performance, even though it uses a Core i3 instead of a Core i5 CPU, is good enough to run taxing tasks in addition to everyday office applications. The only thing it's not good for is serious gaming.