The original Series 9 from 2011 was designed with performance and portability in mind and notable for its "ultrathin" thickness;[2] it and its successors were among the thinnest laptops in the world.

[3] It featured the world's first enclosure that is made out of aerospace grade duralumin[4] with 16.3 mm (0.64 in) thickness and 1.31 kg (2.89 lb) in weight; it had a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor, 128GB[note 1] solid-state drive (SSD) and a 13.3" HD (1366 x 768) display with 300 nit of brightness.

The Series 9 notebook went on sale in South Korea in February 2011 for a price of 24,90,000 won, and launched in March globally.

[5] It had the same design identity, specification and exterior material as the 13.3" model except the display size and CPU of Intel Core i3-380UM.

This issue has been resolved with the arrival of Windows 8.1 and all Book 9 Plus models had the option to choose qHD+ resolution once 8.1 was installed even though the previous advertisement showed FHD in its specification.

[18] The screen size was increased from 15.0" to 15.6" from the previous 15 inch Book 9 and the resolution was upgraded from HD to FHD as well.

It was announced as the world's first laptop PC to have native lossless audio up to 24bit/192 kHz, such as FLAC and ALAC, playback feature.

It had a similar design and specification as Book 9 2014 Edition, except having plastic enclosure and lack of lossless sound playback feature.

[20][21] All the new Book 9 models that were announced in 2014 include new features such as high current USB port for tablet charging, AptX codec for high quality audio transmission over Bluetooth, Dolby Virtual 5.1 surround sound effect and remote controllable audio port.

The 2014 Edition Book 9 was the last in the series to be released in Europe, following Samsung's late 2014 announcement that it is exiting that market.

[22] The new ATIV Book 9 announced in January 2015 switched to a low-power Intel Core M 5Y10c processor, allowing it to be fanless, and slimmer and lighter than before.

[24] It ran on Windows 8.1 and included the typical Samsung bundled applications like SideSync, S Agent and S Player.

[36] Both these 2018 Notebook 9 models are made of magnesium-aluminum alloy ("Metal12"), which Samsung also claimed makes it more durable than its predecessors.

[43] In order to make the (original) product durable while maintaining the light weight, aerospace grade duralumin was chosen for enclosure.