Eleventy-two

Samsung NC10

Specifications

1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 10.2″ 1024×600 Screen 1GB DDR2 802.11b/g Wifi 100/10 Ethernet Bluetooth 160GB hard drive 5,200mAh 6 cell battery

First impressions

The NC10 is a very striking looking netbook.  I have the black model but it is also available in white and blue.  The lid follows the classic Samsung styling of gloss black with chrome style lettering, and the faux chrome of the letting is also present on the hinges and as a stripe which goes around the sides and front of the chassis.  Internally everything is made of matt plastic which won’t pick up finger prints, the lid however picks up grease and fingerprint no matter how hard you try and look after it. The status lights are placed along the front edge in such a way that its possible to see them and their descriptions with the lid either open or closed.  Also along the front edge is a 3/1 memory card reader.  The power button which took me a few seconds to locate, is placed on the side of the NC10 in line with the hinge and is nicely styled to match the faux chrome highlight.

Keyboard / Trackpad

The keyboard at 93% of normal size, is easily usable in fact it hasn’t taken me long to get back up to speed with it.  The only thing of complaint I can find is that the right hand shift button feels too small and to far to the right so I am constantly typing “\” instead of hitting shift.  The feel of the keys is also very good, the keys have enough travel to allow quick typing, and the keys like the rest of the laptop feel very well resilient. The track pad on the other hand is not as well thought out.  It’s a little small for my liking especially once you take the scroll areas into account, but perfectly usable, in part due to the size of the screen.  The Synaptics driver provides a host of options so it is possible to regain some of the space taken up by the scroll areas.  The mouse buttons are of the single rocker variety.

Screen

The screen is very clear, with good viewing angles.  It is readable at lowest brightness, though it does look slightly grainy.  I have yet to try using it outside but the contrast ratio is good.

Battery

The huge 5,200mAh battery gives an outstanding battery life, browsing the net and watching a few vidios I have already got 5 hours out of a single charge.  The large six cell battery does make the laptop heaver than some others in it’s class but the fact that if you can it out for a day without the need for a charger makes up for this.

Slip Case

In the box you get a slip case, though this is rather a token effort.  It is very thin, so will hardly protect the netbook.  It doesn’t even have a clasp, so you will probably want to replace it as soon as possible.

Connectivity

The NC10 has 802.11b/g wireless networking, 10/100 Ethernet and bluetooth.  The 802.11b/g wireless is perfectly adequate for mobile use as this is the standard for most wireless hotspots at the moment, some other netbooks in this league have draft-n adapters, but for the extra cost adding draft-n would have added to this laptop I am glad Samsung left it out.  There is also no mobile internet which would have been useful, as mobile internet dongles are hardly compact, though thanks to the bluetooth support it would be easy enough to use a compatible mobile as a data provider. There are 3 USB ports in two groups which means it’s possible to use two fat USB devices, such as a mobile internet dongle and a memory stick at the same time.  There is also the standard VGA out,  headphone and microphone jacks, and the SD card reader I mentioned before.

Final Thoughts

The NC10 is a very well rounded and usable netbook.  It apears Samsung have really listened to their customers and learnt from this mistakes of the other netboks providers to produce a knockout device which is well ahead of most of it’s competitors in the same price brackit.