Samsung finally manages to gate-crash into the netbook party with the introduction of their impressive netbook lineup in the middle of a market already dominated by majors such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Dell etc. Surprisingly affordable, these ultraportable laptops have become popular travel companions for people who do not want to drag a heavy notebook to presentations!
Their latest and the most affordable offering, the 10-inch Samsung N128 offers a great balance of features at a starting price of INR 13, 500 (equates to less than 300 USD!). So, is the Samsung N128 the most affordable netbook in the market ? Will it prove to be a worthy contender to the other netbooks? Is this netbook the one you've been waiting for? Read on to find out!
Specifications:
Processor: Intel Atom N270 @ 1.60GHz
Memory: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM @ 533MHz
Internal storage: 160GB 5400rpm SATA HDD
Display: 10.1 inch LED backlit WSVGA panel (1024 x 600)
Graphics: Intel GMA 950
Wireless: 802.11 b/g
Expansion: 3-in-1 media card slot (SD, SDHC, MMC)
Ports & connectors: 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, DC power-in, RJ-45/Ethernet (10/100), Stereo headphone/line out, Stereo microphone in, VGA webcam, Kensington lock port.
Dimensions (H x W x D): 28.5mm x 185.5mm x 263.8mm
Weight: 1.25kg (not including the weight of AC adapter)
Power: 6-cell Li-ion battery (4000mAh, 44Wh)
Warranty: 1 year standard International warranty
OS: DOS
[BREAK=Packaging & Accessories, Build & Design]
Packaging & Accessories:
The consignment was shipped inside a handy cardboard box with the netbook wrapped in a polyethylene cover and secured in place by styrofoam nests on either sides of the netbook.
The AC adapter, battery and the power cable was sealed inside polythene packs and secured inside a separate cardboard box with the manual, warranty information booklet and a CD (which had the system softwares) thrown in.
The packaging in short, was very robust.
Build & Design:
The Samsung N128 netbook is essentially a low-cost version of the new NCX0 series netbooks and features the same 6-cell battery and bluetooth being stripped off so as to cut down on the retail pricing. Like the Samsung NC series, the N128 uses matte plastics on the top of the screen cover as well as around the entire LCD.
Unlike most netbooks which feature glossy plastics all around, the N128 uses matte and whilst you're inside a brightly lit room with sources of glare all around, you wouldn't want all the glossy plastics to reflect the light being shone around!
The Samsung logo is neatly etched in silver colour on top of the matte screen cover slightly offset towards the top-center of the cover.
Build quality is quite decent and the construction does feel neat & strong. You could possibly throw the netbook into a bag and not worry about it being tossed around. The hinge is quite strong as well. Overall, this is a solid little netbook!
A holographic sticker briefly indicates some of the very good features of the netbook. I liked everything apart from the holographic part of it!
Flip over the netbook and you would notice there're not many choices left for upgrades & future expandability which by the way, is NOT a concern - I shall tell you why! The only access panel provided, is for replacing the RAM. There're no access panels for the hard drive or the mini-PCI card slot. Not a total let-down to be honest which's why the low price!
Since the specifications read 'SATA hard drive', I decided to unscrew the back panel to find out if there was a possibility of upgrading it. Surprisingly none of the screw holes had the 'Warranty void if tampered with' sort of seals so this was a safe bet! Unscrewing was easy as I type it - you've 12 phillips head scews. A mini screw driver did the trick and the back panel was held in place using the retention locks and came off quite easily.
And as I thought it would be, the hard drive was a 2.5" one which was secured in place using a backplate screwed to the motherboard. Voila, the hard drive can be upgraded! Icing on the cake for a cheap netbook! You could as well spot the Wi-Fi chip, a small low-profile Al heatsink common for the G945 chipset and the Atom processor, a Delta centrifugal fan and a puny little speaker on the corner! The stock RAM was a 1GB DDR2 533MHz stick with Samsung chips and the stock hard drive was a Samsung Spinpoint HM160HI SATA drive.
[BREAK=Display & Sound, Keyboard, Touchpad & Onboard Indicators]
Display & Sound:
The Samsung N128 uses an LED-backlit display panel with a native resolution of 1024 x 600 which's a defacto standard for 10" netbooks. An interesting feature not to be found on a majority of netbook displays - the N128 sports a matte screen! For a measly INR 13, 500 worth netbook, this's a blessing in disguise if you ask me - I HATE glossy displays!
The screen offers good color and contrast with sufficient readability indoors under strong lights or outdoors under direct sunlight. I'd like to see other netbook manufacturers switch to matte screens in the future revisions of their netbook lineup!
Horizontal and vertical viewing angles were brilliant. Color inversion was minimal when the screen was viewed from below and above. When viewed horizontally, the colors stayed accurate at extremely wide viewing angles.
As far as the sound department goes, Sasmsung has manged to strip down the onboard speakers from stereo to mono which essentially means just a single speaker - which should not be a let down for the average discerning user who may switch to the line-out/headphone-out for sound. Cost cutting is pretty much evident here.
The netbook uses a Realtek HD Audio sound chip. The onboard 1.5W speaker is not very loud nor does the sound crack when the volume is notched up. The SQ was good, when switched to the line-out. I managed to hook my desktop speakers Altec Lansing MX5021 to the headphone out and listened to quite a few FLACs using FOOBAR and I was quite impressed with the SQ.
Keyboard, Touchpad & Onboard Indicators:
The N128 uses a keyboard which is virtually identical to the one used onboard the NCX0 series. Surprisingly, the keyboard isn't cramped although sometimes I happened to mistype the letter 's' for 'a'. A new user may take time to get adapted to the keyboard featured onboard netbooks which in general have a smaller footprint compared to standard keyboards found on notebooks and desktops.
The typing surface does feel strong with no flex and the individual keys noy showing any signs of wobbling. Another point worth mentioning here is the dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys featured on the keyboard layout.
The shortcut keys have been integrated with the Function keys, the Escape key, the Insert key and the directional keys. The numerical keypad is integrated within the keyboard as well. The shortcut keys are enabled when the required driver is installed.
The Synaptics touchpad used on the N128 is fairly large, almost as big as the spacebar which's pretty standard for a netbook. The touchpad is gesture enabled and once the OS is installed, the touchpad demands that a driver be installed - downloaded off the web or from the supplied CD, which supports a horde of multi-touch gestures such as 'pinching' your fingers together or 'pulling' your fingers apart to zoom-in or zoom-out respectively.
The left and right touchpad keys are located beneath a single rocker-style button and the buttons sport a pretty responsive feedback so it shouldn't be be much of a problem to figure out if you've pressed the left or the right button.
The lack of a dedicated wireless on/off switch is something Samsung should've put thought to. In any case, we can turn it off by pressing the Fn key + F9. How hard is that!
Onboard Indicators:
With regard to the onboard LED indicators, you get 5 indicators for the Caps Lock On, Hard Disk Activity, Wi-Fi On, Battery Charging and Power on. The indicators are positioned adjacent to the left touchpad key adjacent to the onboard mic. The new 'intel Atom inside' logo with a partial holographic image at the top-right corner, brightly shines on the left-bottom of the netbook!
[BREAK=Input & Output Ports, Performance, Battery Life]
Input & Output ports:
The N128 sports a standard set of input & outport ports which're found onboard most netbooks. You get three USB 2.0 ports, a 3-in-1 media card reader (SD, SDHC & MMC), 3.5mm headphone-out/line-out jack, 3.5mm microphone jack, Ethernet port and a VGA out port. Miscellaeous ports include the Kensington Security Lock slot and the DC-in port. Not much conclusions to be drawn here since these ports are a defacto standard onboard netbooks.
A quick tour around the Samsung N128 -
Front: Heat-vent, 3-in-1 card reader, Power On/Off switch.
Left: Ethernet port, VGA out, Heat-vent, USB port, Mic-in, Headphone-out
Right: 2 x USB ports, Kensington security slot, DC in.
Back
Performance:
There's not much to be written about the performance of a netbook. A netbook is NOT meant to do high-end gaming, run 3D rendering applications, AV editing or viewing HD rips - at least not yet! We may have netbooks or handheld devices in the future which may do all that and even more but as of today a netbook does what it is supposed to - web browsing, email, IM, using MS Office apps, do presentations, mobile entertainment such as listening to music, viewing 480p SD movies & trailers etc. to name a few.
Video playback performance was decent. 480p files such as the DVD rips played flawlessly with the CPU usage accounting to about 25% to 30%. A 720p file layed with some stutter and a few dropped frames - the CPU usage was around 50% to 60%. A 1080p file played with broken audio, frequent stutter and dropped frames most of the time which concludes this is not your next multimedia laptop!
Here's a screenshot which shows the HDTune benchmark for the stock Samsung Spinpoint HM160HI hard drive:
The boot time of the netbook with Windows 7 Ultimate x86 loaded was as well recorded and the test was repeated thrice to ensure I wasn't being deceived here! The laptop booted within 35 seconds to the desktop with the Avira Antivirus Trial version loaded! Considering it's a 5400rpm SATA 1.5Gbps hard drive, this's mighty impressive a feat, to say the least.
Battery Life:
The N128 features a 6-cell Li-ion battery - something which low-priced netbooks do not come up with! In an endurance test where the battery was charged to 100%, screen brightness set to 3 bars, WLAN active and the power plan set to 'balanced', the system stayed on for 6 hours and 43 minutes of constant use. When the screen brightness was turned down the lowest setting and the rest of the setup maintaned the same, the battery should see through another 15 minutes before the netbook switches to standby mode . The best balance between battery and life and the brightness could be when the brightness is set to 3 bars.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be an upgrade option for the battery.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion:
The Samsung N128 offers a great value for a netbook priced at 13,500 INR. The netbook uses a well laid out keyboard & touchpad, a matte LED backlit display and best of all, a 6-cell battery - something which's left me a little more than impressed! Samsung's late entry into an already crowded netbook market has proved beneficial for the curious onlookers. I'm sure quite a few of them should have already owned this netbook by the time this review's done!
If you're looking for something you need to make a travel companion with or make presentations to your customers or catch a trailer or watch a video on Youtube, look no further - grab a Samsung N128 right away!
Pros:
- Low Price
- Excellent build quality
- Matte display
- 6-cell Li-ion battery
- Well laid out keyboard
Cons:
- No bluetooth
- VGA camera
That concludes our review on the Samsung N128 ultraportable netbook. Brickbats, comments and queries are welcome!
