Stefan Mileschin

We've gotta hand it to Samsung: announcing new products before CES is a clever way of grabbing our undivided attention. With days to go before the show officially kicks off, the outfit's already unveiled some new monitors, and put out teasers for at least three other items. Now the company's PC division is getting a headstart as well: Samsung just added two notebooks to its high-performance Series 7 family of products. These include the Series 7 Ultra, a 13-inch Ultrabook, as well as a refreshed Series 7 Chronos with AMD graphics.

Starting with the Ultra (pictured above), this is the first Ultrabook in the Series 7 family, which emphasizes hearty performance more than other PCs in Samsung's lineup. It'll be available in two versions, one with a touchscreen and one without, but even then, you'll find variants with different processors (Core i5 or i7) and different storage capacities (128GB or 256GB). Whichever configuration you choose, though, you'll get a 350-nit, 1080p display, up to 16GB of RAM (!), a backlit keyboard, JBL speakers and a 1GB AMD HD8570M GPU. Other specs include three USB ports (two 2.0, one 3.0), HDMI, Ethernet, mini-VGA, a memory card reader and a battery rated for up to eight hours (we're assuming that's the non-touch model).

As for the new Series 7 Chronos, Samsung actually just teased it in a video earlier today. Based on that, we already knew the 15-inch version would be refreshed with AMD's new AMD Radeon HD 8870M GPU, whose RAMaccelerator technology claims to increase browsing and general application speeds by up to 150 percent. At the same time, Samsung's also given the chassis a makeover so that it's now thinner than the last-gen model (0.82 inches thick versus 0.94). Other than that, it packs a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 3635QM CPU, a 300-nit, 1080p display, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, an optional touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, JBL speakers and 11 hours of battery life (in theory, anyway).

In any case, Samsung hasn't announced pricing or availability for either of these models, but you can bet your Nexus 10 we'll be getting hands-on at CES next week. Until then, we've slipped a photo of the Chronos after the break. You know, because we can play the teaser game too.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/02/s...870M-graphics/