Samsung Series 7 11.6″ Slate

“The Samsung Series 7 Slate fills the nebulous gap between small under-powered Windows tablets and the fully-featured convertible tablet PCs that were popular in years past. When packaged with Samsung's superb dock and keyboard bundle, the Series 7 Slate provides an effective Windows system with the freedom and convenience of the newest breed of tablets. And unlike convertible PCs, like the Editors' Choice Lenovo ThinkPad X220, the Series 7 Slate does it all while being lighter and slimmer. If you need the productivity of a Windows laptop and the ease and convenience of a grab-and-go tablet, the Samsung Series 7 Slate PC may be exactly what you're looking for.”

“The $1,349 Samsung Series 7 Slate PC is certainly worth a look for business users. Its Core i5 processor has more than enough power to take care of your productivity needs, and Samsung's touch-friendly interface and responsive capacitive screen making using Windows 7 less of a pain than other Windows tablets we've tested. We also like that Samsung includes a keyboard, dock, and digital pen at this price. However, this costly slate has a large and heavy design, the fan is noisy, and lag still creeps in here and there (such as when rotating the display and opening touch apps). Most users will want to wait for the debut of Windows 8, which was designed for tablets. In the meantime, the Series 7 Slate PC is a good, but not great, choice for mobile professionals.”

“This is one of the nicest Windows touch machines we've seen, and it's ideal for anyone who needs a tablet PC for entertainment or work and is prepared to pay for it. It's light, fast, easy to use, and with a sensitive touch screen - and it's a full desktop class PC wrapped up in a tablet shell. It's no wonder Microsoft choose this as the basis of its Windows 8 demonstration hardware, as it's ideal for both today's and the next generation of Windows - with support for all of Windows 8's key hardware specifications.”

“The Samsung Series 7 Slate 700T is the fastest Windows 7 tablet we've tested, and paired with its optional accessories, it provides a very laptop-like experience, but one marred by the typical awkward onscreen Windows typing experience. With all the hype surrounding the new Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, and favorites such as the iPad 2 and Asus Transformer, it's easy to forget that there are still new Windows tablets hitting stores. In fact, Windows tablets have been around for years, both as low-key industrial tools and as disappointingly underpowered consumer products. Samsung has expanded its Series 7 line of products into tablet territory, calling its versions the Series 7 Slate 700T. Like the Asus EP121, it includes an Intel Core i5 processor, making it a much more useful device than the underpowered Intel Atom tablets that failed to impress us over the past few years. The downside is that both this and the Asus version are much more expensive than the current best-selling tablet, Apple's $500 iPad. That said, when combined with its optional Bluetooth keyboard and docking stand, the Series 7 Slate is a tidy, powerful package, but those extras will run you $180 on top of the system's premium $1,349 price. At least that includes a 128GB SSD drive. For $1,099, you can get the same machine with a smaller 64GB drive. The real competition here in one sense isn't the iPad, but the new generation of ultrabooks, which are thin, light, and just as powerful. Some, such as the Toshiba Portege Z835, also pack in a 128GB SSD, but for a lot less: $799. But those systems lack the Slate's touch screen, as well as Samsung's optional custom tile-based UI, which looks like a cross between Android and the upcoming Windows 8. Unfortunately, like nearly all Windows tablets, onscreen typing is a pain, exacerbated by a finicky Swype-branded onscreen keyboard app. No one has yet made a Windows tablet that works as seamlessly and simply as advertised, and aside from the nice custom UI, nothing here greatly changes our perception of the field.”