The good: Unique, rugged design; excellent battery life.

The bad: High-end Netbook price, without the high-end extras.

The bottom line: Samsung brings a different look to a generic Netbook build with the N310, but is there any good reason this costs almost S$900?

Read full review of the Samsung N310 »

By Ty Pendlebury, CNET.com.au
Sep 30, 2009

We've gotten to the point where mainstream Netbooks are a fairly rigid format. Slap together an Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a copy of Windows XP, and you've got your hands on essentially the same product sold by PC makers such as Dell, HP, and Acer.

The Samsung N310 doesn't stray far from that territory, but it at least manages to pack those familiar parts into a fun, colorful plastic shell. We dug the unique design that reminded us of vintage retro-modern home electronics, but at S$899 (US$647.32), it's way overpriced for a system that lacks high-end extras such as an HD display or 3G antenna.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Do check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

Samsung says the N310's unique look was "designed by award-winning Japanese artist Naoto Fukasawa and features smoothly rounded edges that resemble a pebble that's been worn down by wind and waterfall". We think it looks like a nicely self-contained package, with a rounded clamshell case that feels hermetically sealed when folded shut. Some of our colleagues, however, thought it looked somewhat toylike.

Our system was sunset orange, but midnight blue, jet black, and mint blue are also available. The interior keyboard tray and screen bezel are jet black and contrast nicely with the deep orange exterior.



The keyboard has flat-topped, widely spaced keys that are very similar to what you'd find on a Sony Vaio Netbook. We've seen wider key surfaces on other Netbooks, but typing was a comfortable, easy experience, and important keys, such as the Shift, Control, and Tab, are reasonably sized.

The generous touchpad is unfortunately combined with a thin, cheap-feeling rocker-bar style mouse button. We much prefer separate left and right mouse buttons, which are practically a necessity if you do a lot of right-clicking.

Features

The 10.1-inch widescreen LED display offers a 1,024 x 600 native resolution, which is standard for a Netbook, although Netbooks this expensive often have better 1,366 x 768 screens. While it may be a bit of a glare-magnet, we're fond of the sharp-looking edge-to-edge glass over the display.



While the collection of ports and connections on the N310 isn't surprising, they are integrated in a somewhat unusual way. The USB and audio jacks are slightly recessed into the chassis, while the Ethernet jack is hidden behind a plastic tab. The VGA video output extends out, rather than being recessed, and is covered with a small rubber sheath--it seems like a Band-Aid approach to a design flaw, and something you'll probably lose right away.

Performance And Battery Life

As one might expect, the Intel Atom N270 processor and 1GB of RAM performed on par with other similarly configured Netbooks, and we found the N310 to fall well within Netbook performance parameters in anecdotal use. Our standard Netbook admonitions apply: They're very useful machines, as long as one keeps expectations modest, and sticks mostly to Web surfing, email, and working on office docs.

The Samsung N310 ran for 5 hours 51 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. That big battery adds a little weight and bulk to the system, but doesn't stick out too noticeably, so it seems like a fair tradeoff. Our battery drain test is especially grueling, so you can expect longer life from casual Web surfing and office use.









Samsung N310
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

HP Mini 5101
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 224MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 120GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

Lenovo Ideapad S10-2
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

Asus Eee PC 1005HA
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 224MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Service And Support

Samsung notebooks come with a one-year international warranty. On its support Web site, you can download user manuals, drivers and software patches. However, there is no knowledge database or comprehensive FAQ for self-diagnosis. There is no telephone technical support and only a hotline number is given for basic enquiries. In case of hardware failure, the unit should be brought to a service center for repair.

Tags: Netbook, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SP3, Microsoft Windows XP, Intel Corp.

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