Samsung recently made a small shift in the branding of its product lines, pulling together Windows products under the ATIV label.

Whether that's a good or bad move we'll let you decide, but it leaves us with a notebook that reflects the design of previous Samsung Series 9, but now sports the rather jovial Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus name. Make no mistake, this is a serious Windows laptop.

The design and build quality are excellent. Having had the chance to spend some time playing with Samsung's new flagship notebook, its position as a MacBook Air challenger still stands. Competition might be fiercer now, after the launch of the new Sony Vaio Pro, but the Samsung has an ace up its sleeve.

The 13.3-inch display is incredibly sharp. With a resolution of 3200 x 1800 pixels, it's one of the highest resolution panels around with a pixel density of 276ppi. It beats the pixel density of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (227ppi) and the Chromebook Pixel (239ppi).

samsung ativ book 9 plus pictures and hands on image 8

From the time spent with the Samsung ATIV Book 9, we found the details to be sharp, colours to be punchy and view angles good. It's also touch enabled, but the downside of that is that the glossy display will get smeary.

The build quality is excellent and we love the design details that Samsung has put into the ATIV Book 9 Plus. The curved underside makes it easy to grab off a desk, while it making it look slimmer than it is. The raw metal sides balloon to encompass the ports and connections, making a pleasing design out of essential features.

Elsewhere, the ATIV Book 9 Plus offers a great keyboard. The key action feels nicely balanced, so it should make for good, fast typing, and the large trackpad means you should be able to keep your fingers off the screen most of the time.

samsung ativ book 9 plus pictures and hands on image 10

The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus measures 319.6 x 222.9 x 13.6mm and weighs 1.39kg, making this a nicely portable notebook. Samsung also claims it offers 12 hours of battery and, as there's the choice of  latest fourth-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, we well believe that figure. There's 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of SSD storage.

There's no firm word on pricing of Samsung ATIV Book 9, and no firm date either, but we'll be sure to give it a thorough testing once it becomes available.

READ: Sony Vaio Pro review