Samsung’s Sleek R80 Series Notebooks: Color them Red

First it was beige, then it was black and now the color of today’s notable notebooks depends on which way the fashion winds are blowing. Samsung is hardly a stranger to this trend and proves it with a raft of sleek-looking notebooks poised to debut exclusively at Best Buy on Sunday.

At a press preview in New York Thursday, Samsung showed off its new R80 series notebooks, which feature the company’s Crystal Wave body design. A clear coat protects a colorful metallic shell with wavy designs etched in. The result, according to a Samsung representative, is a durable case which will still looks good after hard use.

Samsung’s R780 ($930), R580 ($830) and R480 ($730) notebooks come with 17.3-, 15.6- and 14-inch HD LED displays respectively and 500-gigabyte hard disks. The R780 and R580 come with muscular Intel Core i5 processors and high-end nVidia GeForce GT 330M or 310M graphics engines while the R480 uses a less-robust, but certainly adequate Intel Core i3 processor and a medium-strength Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chipset.

Somewhat surprisingly, the R480 and R580 come with Blu-ray players while the R780 is outfitted with a DVD burner. All of the R80 series units are long on connectivity options, offering three (R480) or four (R780, R580) USB 2.0 ports in addition to HDMI, video, audio, gigabit Ethernet, memory card and ExpressCard slots. The new units also feature built-in webcams, microphones and Wi-Fi adapters and the R780 includes a Bluetooth adapter as well.

During an assortment of demonstrations at the Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Center in New York, Samsung representatives demonstrated how the Blu-ray-enabled R80 notebooks could send HD video feeds to nearby televisions while having enough processor and graphics muscle left over for notebook users to surf the Web, edit documents or perform other tasks without cyber hiccups.

The R480 and R580 notebooks will be available at Best Buy retail stores March 7 while the R780 will be available online only via BestBuy.com.

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