The good: Excellent design; great battery life; seamless 3G connection.

The bad: Slower CPU leads to frustratingly sluggish performance.

The bottom line: Nokia's entry in the crowded Netbook field shows that the company's hardware know-how translates to computer design, but a poor choice of CPU should give you pause.

Read full review of the Nokia Booklet 3G »

By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
Nov 17, 2009

Mobile phone maker Nokia is jumping into the Netbook pool with its recently announced Booklet 3G laptop, offering a premium-feeling system at a rock-bottom price, as long as you agree to a mobile data contract.

The Booklet 3G is easily one of the nicest-looking Netbooks we've seen. Also a good sign: As this Netbook was tested ni the US, the AT&T mobile broadband service connects automatically, and the process was wonderfully transparent, especially compared with the software setup and manual logins required by other mobile broadband laptops. On the downside, the slower Intel Atom Z530 CPU shaves just enough performance off of the already pokey Netbook experience to be frustrating.

With a two-year AT&T contract in the US, the Booklet 3G costs US$299, and its excellent design and build quality put it miles ahead of other Netbooks. But keep in mind that you're then tied to a monthly fee for data. The Booklet is also available sans contract for US$599, but that's both largely pointless and way overpriced.

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. The availability of the Nokia Booklet 3G for Asia has yet to be announced.

Design

The Booklet 3G is easily one of the most upscale-looking Netbooks we've seen. It feels solid and well-built in your hands, without being too heavy. The screen hinge in particular feels pleasingly tight, while the slightly too thick keyboard tray has zero flex even when pressing down firmly on the keyboard. Color options (for the back of the lid) include black, white, and blue, and our black test unit's lid seemed especially smudge-prone.



Unlike the gently tapered sides of many other Netbooks, designed to create the illusion of slimness, the Booklet has sharp, angled edges. True to the name, there is a booklike squareness to it. The inside is devoid of quick launch or shortcut keys, and even the power button is relegated to the right side edge, next to a tiny hatch covering SD and SIM card slots.

Unfortunately, the keyboard itself is cramped, with tiny keys that are hard to hit accurately. Considering the strides other Netbooks have made with creating very usable keyboards, it was a letdown. The touch pad is large and easy to use, even though we had to crank up the pointer speed in the Windows 7 options.

Features

The 10.1-inch display has the higher 1,366 x 768-pixel resolution found on many high-end Netbooks, and a single sheet of glass covers the screen and much of the screen bezel, but there's still a separate outer lip, so it's not quite what we call edge-to-edge.



Besides the mobile broadband (which makes use of a built-in SIM card slot), the option to manually join local Wi-Fi networks is also available. Our review unit lacked the final versions of the Nokia and Ovi networking and connectivity software, but we did fine with Windows 7's built-in versions.

Performance And Battery Life

Despite an excellent design and well-integrated mobile broadband, the Booklet 3G hits a rough patch as an actual Netbook. Using the slower Z530 version of Intel's Atom CPU (instead of the more common N270 or N280 versions) means that performance was generally sluggish, especially with only 1GB of RAM and a slower 4,200rpm hard drive.

Opening windows and navigating around the Windows 7 environment led to some stuttering and slowdown. Even something as simple as running multiple Web browser windows and a Microsoft Office doc at the same time slowed the system significantly in our anecdotal hands-on testing. In our benchmark tests, scores were behind Netbooks with the faster N270 and N280 Atom processors in most of our tests. It's a shame because a zippier Booklet 3G would be hard to beat as one of our favorite Netbooks.









The Nokia Booklet 3G ran for 7 hours 14 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included 16-cell battery (but the actual rating is closer to a typical six-cell battery). That's among the best scores we've seen, even from systems with gigantic extended batteries, so it's especially impressive the Booklet managed to do it without a battery that looks like a big kickstand or carrying handle.



System configurations:

Nokia Booklet 3G
Windows 7 Starter; 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 215MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 500; 120GB Toshiba 4,200rpm

Asus Eee PC 1101HA
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 500; 160GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Sony Vaio VPC-W115XG/P
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Toshiba 5,400rpm

Sony Vaio VPC-X115LG/N
Windows 7 Home Premium; 2.0GHz Intel ATOM Processor Z550; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 762MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 500; 128GB Samsung SSD

HP Mini 311
Windows XP Home SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1,024MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 512MB (Shared) Nvidia Ion LE; 160GB Seagate 5,400rpm

Dell Inspiron Mini 10
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

Service And Support

Nokia includes an industry-standard one-year parts and labor warranty with the system. We couldn't find any specific support information on Nokia's Web site, but the support site will probably be up once the unit hits your market.

Tags: Netbook, Sony Vaio, Microsoft Windows 7, Sony Corp., Nokia Corp.

Rate It Now

Rating guidelines

Nokia Booklet 3G (Intel Atom Z530 1.6GHz processor; 1GB RAM)

Rate this product:
1 - Abysmal 2 - Terrible 3 - Poor 4 - Mediocre 5 - Average 6 - Good 7 - Very good 8 - Excellent 9 - Spectacular 10 - Perfect

Need help? Read our guidelines for what each number rating represents.

Submit your opinion

User Reviews

• Most Popular

• Upcoming

Latest Downloads

 

What's Hot