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what's up prize five fans i'm brian tong and this is a blockbuster battle between two of the thinnest 13-inch laptops it's a prize fight throwdown showdown between samsung's 9 Series and Apple's MacBook Air our judges for this fight are senior editor Dan I think I can Ackerman senior associate editor Scott the bottom line Stein and Brian can't go wrong Tom now we'll take all three judges blind scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize fight score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system this is going to be a classic so who's in it to win it round one is designed Samsung's nine Series looks like a piece of modern art with its gorgeous rap sheet metal design its plastic bezel is a fingerprint magnet but its thinnest point is point zero two inches thinner than the airs thickest point for those of you that Karen come on we know who you are now there's still nothing on this planet that can match the superior design of Apple's unibody MacBook Air its blade design is super thin lightweight and sturdy this is just another iconic stud in Apple stable both laptops are amazing and should be praised for raising the bar in ultra-thin design but Apple is still a cut above the rest it gets a perfect 5 and the 9 Series gets a 4.3 next round is features Samsung's 9 Series just brings it when it comes to features with a Core i5 processor double the RAM at 4 gigs and a backlit keyboard yes it maxes out with a 128 gig solid state drive and there's flip-out ports for an Ethernet dongle HDMI out 2 USBS audio out and a micro SD card slot now the MacBook Air improves from its predecessor with two USB ports and an SD card slot there's also a mini DisplayPort for video out and audio out on the other side but it's Ethernet dongle takes up a USB port when used a differentiator is its multi-touch trackpad with gestures but you'll have no backlit keyboard the biggest option is the building double the storage to 256 gigs but that's more of an option and not a feature the 9 series takes this round with the 4 and the macbook air gets a 3 so after averaging 2 rounds Samsung leads by 2 tenths of a point with plenty of fight left round 3 is performance these two laptops are surprisingly evenly matched you might think Samsung's 1.4 gigahertz core i5 would destroy the air but it's low voltage processor has similar performance with the airs 1.8 or 2 duo now here's some of our benchmark tests where Apple did score faster in two of the three tests but neither of these thinnies were able to separate themselves in graphic performance apples wake up from sleep is almost an instant on but this one is too close to call and we're calling this round even at 4 points apiece next round is battery life with ultra portables the amount of juice you have to go the distance is key Samsung was able to squeeze out 5 hours and 22 minutes of life from our battery drain tests while Apple's MacBook Air was just under 5 at 4 hours and 58 minutes the 9 Series was almost 30 minutes better and that's top of the class for this laptop category it takes this round with the 4.3 and Apple gets a 4 so after averaging 4 rounds Samsung still holds on to its two tenths of a point lead but anything can happen here the final round that decides it all is value these are Ultra portables not netbooks but a premium class of laptops using solid-state drives with a premium price to match Samsung's nine series will cost you get ready for this one one thousand six hundred and forty nine dollars which makes Apple's pricey look like a bargain it'll scare consumers initially but there's more to it now I purchase the coverage plan for all my laptops and the Samsung price includes three years of warranty now Apple's MacBook Air at $1,299 isn't the cheapest for a 13-inch but again that's not why you're paying attention to this you can double the hard drive to 256 gigs and you'll still be cheaper than the 9 series at $15.99 but the air only comes with a one-year warranty and it's $249 to get applicators three-year coverage that puts these two in the same ballpark but 16:49 still scares people Apple takes this final round with the four and Samsung gets a three so let's average out all five rounds and enterprise fight that was neck-and-neck without any room to budge Apple takes the final round pushing it just over the top four point zero to three point nine and is your prize fight winner this is a price ride where you really can't go wrong but in the end the MacBook Air prevails I'm Brian Tong thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys next time on another prize fight you