Last month I reviewed Samsung’s RF711, 17 inch gaming laptop and I liked it a lot.  For $1,099 (£899) you got gaming grade graphics, twin 500Gb hard disks, a Blu-Ray reader and a Core i7 processor with 6Gb of RAM.  It wasn’t all good news though, it was a big, heavy, bulky machine and while it would have been great to carry it to LAN parties, taking it to work every day would have been very difficult.

Now it’s the turn of it’s little brother to pass through Windows 7 News test labs to see how this one stacks up against the RF711.

First the main specification, the RF511 comes with a 2.3GHz Core i5 Sandybridge processor, 6Gb of RAM, a 650Gb hard disk, an Nvidia GeForce GT540M graphics chipset and a 15 inch screen running at 1366 by 768.  It also packs in SRS premium sound and is available optionally with Core i3 and Core i7 processors.

All this can be bought for £629 (about $800) with the Core i7 option adding about $100 to the overall cost.  It’s well specified too with two USB 2 ports, two USB 3 ports, HDMI, VGA, gigabit ethernet, a DVD burner, 802.11 b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth 3.  The inclusion of two USB 3 ports is particularly noteworthy and will help make the laptop last well into the future.

It’s got a multi-touch trackpad and the same glorious screen I saw on the RF711 and the sexy Series 9 ultraportable that’s so bright it’s easy to use in direct sunlight.  The screen is very reflective though so you wouldn’t want to use it under office lights or next to a reflective window for very long.

It has the same battery as it’s 17 inch cousin and battery life is excellent at over five hours on light use, and using the integrated Intel graphics.  Load a game up though and the Nvidia chipset automatically kicks in.  Like the RF711 it’s comfortable with Call of Duty Black Ops at medium-high settings, but running it on the battery will give you only three quarters of an hour before you’ll need to plug into the mains.

The sound from the stereo speakers is great, in fact I thought it was better than I got from the RF711 (thought that might just have been a fluke).  The keyboard I’m slightly less impressed with though.  The main keyboard is excellent with the scrabble-tile keys having good travel and being widely spaced.  The numeric pad isn’t so great though with narrower keys and oddly placed cursor keys.  You can live with it, but it takes some getting used to.

It’s not too heavy either and you’d have no problems throwing it into a bag for a daily commute.  There are also some nice touches such as being able to charge a USB device from it while the laptop is sleeping.

The software implementation is less impressive as the laptop comes loaded with additional bloat that really slows down startup.  You can have the machine turned on for a full two minutes before it finally begins to feel responsive.  While this is easily fixable by uninstalling software or removing some items from the huge list of startup programs, you’ll need to make this a priority job.  With this done though it’s a very solid and quick machine.

On the aesthetics it’s an entirely plastic build, but the plastics are of a generally high quality.  The lid shimmers in piano gloss back and inside the screen is surrounded by a carbon-fibre effect grey.  In reality I think this pattern is probably not going to suit everyone but it’s not offensive.  The main body of the laptop is in dark grey with a silver panel surrounding the keyboard.  This offsets the lack of a keyboard backlight by helping make the keys easy to see.  It’s very nice to look at too, giving the laptop a certain luxurious feel that many other lack.

Overall I’m impressed by the RF511 but not as much as I was with it’s big brother.  If you are after a 15 inch gaming laptop and don’t want the bulk or weight of the RF711 then it’s a good purchase you won’t be disappointed with.  However the price is only just low enough below the RF711 to warrant losing such excellent hardware including the twin hard disks and larger screen.  If you can afford it, and won’t be lugging a laptop around all the time then the RF711 offers fantastic value for money, but the RF511 is still an excellent laptop in its own right and well worth considering.

Overall, 8/10