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The lid's 'red infused crystal finish' and distinctive S-pattern gives it a sophisticated look. The durable casing helps minimise scratches, while the black-red gradation and finish masks fingerprints and smudges.
Samsung has included quite a number of ports on the R580. It has four USB ports (one with a chargeable USB function and one eSATA + USB), an ExpressCard slot, HDMI out, D-Sub, Gigabit LAN, microphone and headphone port, and a DVD burner. It also comes with Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and a built-in microphone.
The island-style keyboard is well-spaced and made it easy for us to type. The touchpad is integrated onto the casing but can still be felt (and seen) as the scroll area is rough and the corners are LED-lit. The touchpad also supports gesture functions, allowing us to scroll, zoom in/out, or rotate photos. The 15.6-inch LED screen (with 1366 x 768 resolution) is bright and produced good colours during our video test.
The unit is powered by Intel's new Core i5 processor (520M at 2.4Ghz), uses Nvidia's GeForce GT 330M (1GHz) video card, and has 4GB of RAM. This fairly powerful hardware allowed us to run multiple programs without experiencing massive slowdowns. Running 3DMark revealed that it can play some of the latest games, with the R580 gaining a score of 16524 on the 03 version and 7448 on the 06 version.
