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You might remember this wispy little black number from CES 2011, where we briefly mentioned the Samsung Series 9 amid a flurry of product rollouts. Exciting? Yes, but talk is cheap, and now Samsung delivers this 13.3-inch laptop that's lighter, thinner and packs a more up-to-date processor than a MacBook Air.

With all that miniaturization and speed, of course, there's a price premium. The cheapest Samsung Series 9, packing an Intel 1.4 GHz Core i5-2537M processor (vs. the MacBook Air's 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo), 4 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD is going to set you back $1,649, $50 more expensive than the highest-priced MacBook Air.

Well, this is a switch. Usually a comparable Mac is a lot more expensive than its Windows laptop counterparts. But look what happens when Samsung pays more attention to quality and shoehorns faster components inside a swoopy, impossibly-thin enclosure. Things start getting pricey.

Samsung also announced Wednesday it would be shipping another member of the Series 9 line next month (April 2011), an 11.1-inch ultrathin laptop running the Core i3-380UM processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD. Samsung hasn't announced pricing on that yet, but it will probably cost around $1,150, according to a price leak on Dynamism.

All these numbers are one thing, but what's it like to hold it in your hands? "I held it. It's awesome," says Mashable's Ben Parr, Beyond its aesthetics, as a practical matter, Samsung said at CES 2011 that this laptop boots in 12 seconds.

Get a close-up look at this skinny lappie in the gallery, and then tell us in the comments: Is this worth more than a MacBook Air?

Samsung Series 9 Laptop

Update: Samsung's Spec List for 13 Inch Series 9 Laptop