Samsung’s R590 costs £638 exc VAT, but boy does it justify that. It uses Intel's 2.4GHz Core i5-450M processor with 4GB of RAM, which really powered it through our application benchmarks. An overall 1.73 is the kind of score we’d expect if paying closer to a grand..."

The Samsung R590-JS02AU looks good, feels sturdy and performs well. It's a 15.6in desktop replacement–style notebook with a fast Intel Core i5 CPU and plenty of memory and storage capacity. However, it's practically the same as the Samsung R580 notebook that we reviewed back in February — the main difference is that it's blue instead of red. The physical design and the performance of the notebooks are almost identical.

Though the likes of Dell offer the option of colourful lids and designs, in general PC manufacturers shy away from bold colours. Anything grey, black, or brown-ish goes down well, as has white in times past. Samsung, however, is unusual in making its laptops more than a little colourful. For the R580 and R780 we reviewed earlier this year the colour of choice was red, but the new R590 opts for a fetching deep blue instead.

There are currently two Samsung R590 alternatives available in Germany. The R590 Holest (NP-R590-JS01DE), available starting at 750 euro, starts it off. As the name already hints, a Core i3-330M from Intel is used as the processor, whose two cores clock with 2.13 GHz. However, the superiorly equipped, and reviewed by us, R590 i5-450M Hava (NP-R590-JS0YDE) can also be attained for 900 euro. Samsung has opted for the brand new Core i5-450M in this case. It has a slightly higher clock rate with 2.40 GHz and, above that, has an automatic overclocking function (Turbo Boost). Whilst the less expensive model is equipped with a standard DVD burner, Samsung has given the more expensive alternative a BluRay player. ...

Farbenfroh. Nach dem roten R580 präsentiert Samsung mit dem R590 nun die blaue Variante seines 15.6-zölligen Multimedianotebooks, das dank Core i5-450M und GeForce GT 330M nicht nur leistungsfähig ist, sondern durch das integrierte Blu-Ray-Laufwerk gleichzeitig mit einer guten Ausstattung punkten kann.