Samsung X360 at 10:21 AM

Samsung X360

Describing its X360 as 'lighter than air', Samsung is looking to persuade potential buyers that there are alternatives to the MacBook Air. At 1.29kg, the X360 is only a smidgen lighter than the Air, but it's also substantially cheaper than the equivalent SSD MacBook, at around £1,300, and includes a host of features that Apple charges extra for.

Design
With its smart red and black chassis, the diminutive X360 makes a good first impression, and it's clearly designed with portability in mind. Ports are kept to a minimum, with the chassis home to just VGA, HDMI, gigabit LAN and three USB sockets. These are joined by a 34mm ExpressCard slot on the left and a multi-format card reader on the right.

Samsung's desire to take on the lightweight Air also means there's no DVD drive, although you do get an external USB model included in the price.

Open the lid and you're greeted by a very Air-esque keyboard, with each key poking out from its own slot in the chassis. The keyboard isn't particularly comfortable, however. We found the flat, plasticky keys too slippery to type on at speed, while the cramped shift and arrow keys on the right-hand side proved similarly tricky to master. If you're prone to forgetting passwords, the fingerprint reader, at the bottom right of the keyboard, lets you log on with nothing more than the swipe of a pinky.

Features
Like the £1,760 MacBook Air, the X360 comes with a 128GB solid-state drive. Although the actual performance benefits of SSDs are debatable, they place less of a demand on the battery compared to traditional hard disks. They're also very expensive, however, so Samsung has done well to include a 128GB model at this price.

Another power-saving feature is the display, which uses an LED backlight. Measuring 13.3 inches and with a resolution of 1,280x800 pixels, it's impressively bright -- your eyes will soon start complaining when it's at full whack. Horizontal viewing angles are also good, but vertical angles aren't so impressive -- tilt the screen up or down by even a small amount and clarity will be lost.

Being a Centrino 2 laptop, you also get 802.11n Wi-Fi, while other extras include Bluetooth and a built-in webcam.

Performance
Samsung was clearly aiming for decent battery life with the X360, and the Intel Core 2 Duo U9300 certainly doesn't place much strain on the six-cell battery. But, while it's not particularly power-hungry, neither is it going to impress performance-wise. With a clock speed of just 1.2GHz, this processor won't thank you for troubling it with intensive applications such as video editing. That said, multi-tasking more basic applications within the installed Windows Vista Business isn't a problem.

We didn't find the X360's keyboard comfortable to use

Combined with 3GB of RAM and Intel's GMA X4500 graphics chipset, the X360 scored 3,322 in PCMark05 -- had it not been for the SSD, its score would most likely have been much worse. It really suffered in 3DMark06, though, only managing a miserable 676. Needless to say, playing the latest games on this laptop isn't an option.

If battery life is more your thing, the X360 will most definitely appeal. Samsung quotes up to 10 hours of use from a single charge, and, in Battery Eater's undemanding Reader's test, we managed 9 hours and 31 minutes. If you plan on doing more than slowly scrolling through a word document, around 6 hours' use is more likely. Battery Eater's more aggressive Classic test exhausted the battery in 5 hours and 6 minutes, which is hugely impressive for such a light laptop.

Conclusion
The Samsung X360's lightweight design and extra-long battery life are its main attractions, and, while Samsung couldn't squeeze a DVD drive into the chassis, it has found room in the budget for an external model. Similarly impressive, at this price, is the inclusion of a 128GB SSD.

Build quality is acceptable but, if you're expecting something similar to the aluminium-clad MacBook Air, you'll be disappointed. On the whole, though, this is a decent effort from Samsung.

If you can stomach a slight drop in screen size, however, Sony's Vaio TT series is well worth a look. Only slightly heavier, the TT has the bonus of a built-in DVD drive, which may be enough to swing it for some.

Samsung N120 Review at 10:04 AM

Samsung N120 Review

There's one born every minute. No, not suckers -- netbooks. the Samsung N120 is the latest mini laptop to find its way to the mothership, aka the CNET UK offices. Alongside the slightly smaller N110, this model is one of two successors to the highly rated NC10. It promises better usability, better battery life, enhanced sound capabilities and a user experience that belies its netbook heritage. It's available to buy now for around £370.

Design
The N120 is large by netbook standards. It isn't as big as the 12-inch NC20, but its 272 by 189 by 30mm chassis is wider and deeper than the NC10's 261 by 185 by 30mm casing. They share the same 1.3kg weight, but the N120 looks lardy next to the uber-sleek Eee PC 1008HA Seashell.

The extra 9mm girth has allowed Samsung to fit an even better keyboard than the one on the NC10. Whereas most 10-inch netbook keyboards are approximately 92 per cent the size of a full laptop keyboard, Samsung's tweaked the chassis sufficiently to wedge in a 97 per cent keyboard.

The N120's keyboard is larger than the average netbook's

Unfortunately, while the keyboard's bigger, there isn't enough travel in the keys. They simply don't go down far enough when you press them, meaning it can sometimes be unclear whether your keystrokes have actually registered when touch-typing. Still, the keyboard does have silver nano technology -- an antibacterial coating that helps prevent germs from breeding.

The deeper chassis should theoretically have allowed Samsung to fit a larger mouse trackpad, but that's not the case. It uses the same trackpad as the NC10 -- which is fine for the most part -- but a slightly larger model would have been welcome.

Connectivity is as we expected on the N120. It packs three USB ports, mic and headphone ports, Ethernet, an SD card reader that lives at the front edge and a 1.3-megapixel webcam above the screen.

What isn't so standard is the speaker arrangement. The N120 is the first netbook to feature an on-board 2.1-channel SRS TrueSurround XT sound system. Stereo speakers occupy each side of the screen, while a third speaker -- a 'subwoofer' -- lives on the underside of the chassis. More on this later.

Features
An Atom N270 CPU runs the N120's show. We'd have preferred the slightly quicker N280 chip that powers the Eee PC 1008HE Seashell, but the performance delta between the two isn't so great that we're throwing a tantrum. One gigabyte of 800MHz RAM comes as standard. This can be user-upgraded to 2GB of RAM quite easily, though you'll have to buy a 2GB module yourself and ditch the existing 1GB module in the process.

Storage is typical netbook fare. The N120 ships with a 160GB hard drive, which is capacious enough to stash around 230 standard-definition movies -- more than enough for a transatlantic flight or, better still, a week-long holiday away with your girlfriend's parents. If you're greedy for more storage, it's theoretically possible to swap the 160GB drive for a 250GB one, though a screwdriver and a modicum of skill is required.

802.11b/g Wi-Fi makes an appearance, but that's hardly news in a netbook. Unfortunately, the faster 802.11n protocol isn't supported, so if you ever install a high-speed wireless network in your home, the N120 will create something of a bottleneck. Bluetooth 2.0 is also present, but again, we'd have preferred Bluetooth 2.1, which -- among other things -- theoretically improves the battery life of Bluetooth mice and keyboards. Another small gripe is the lack of connectivity beyond range of Wi-Fi -- there's no 3G.