I purchased a new netbook called the Samsung N120 during the first week of June for Rs 25,000 (INR) incl of all taxes, which is a bit on the expensive side for a netbook but this netbook deserves it as it is a feature rich netbook, the best part about this netbook is that it has almost a full sized keyboard making typing on the same a pleasure, the trackpad is also of a decent size compared to netbooks standard and it has an awesome battery life and still you can say it is light netbook.

Before we go into an in depth review of Samsung N120 netbook, this new netbook has replaced my Mileap UMPC (my wife now uses the mileap which is now running windows 7).  N120 is a bumped up version of the famous Samsung NC10 netbook and engineers at Samsung have listened to customer feedback and made it one of the best netbook that you can have, to find out why this is one of the best netbooks read on.

My Requirements for a Netbook

As I was already using a netbook I had a very clear idea what I wanted in my new netbook, I am listing the various parameters below (highest requirements first).

1) Good Battery Life (5 hrs or more).
2) Good and large comfortable Keyboard with correct layout for shift keys.
3) Has to be light weight around 1.2 Kgs (the problem with netbooks with larger battery life their weight also increases considerably and the extended battery just sticks out).
4) Sceen size above 10″ inches and a minimum resolution of  1024 x 600.
5) Has to be based on a Intel Atom based processor having at least 1.6 Ghz speeds or more.
6) Removable battery (many of the new netbooks have started to have non-removable battery).
7) Decent trackpad (some netbooks have a very small trackpad making it a pain to use).

It was tough to get a netbook with all the requirements I had. I was almost going to purchase the ASUS 1000HE but the only problem I had was that it was on the heavier side 1.45 kgs and the keyboard layout is a bit off (the right shift key and the trackpad keys) luckily I happen to stumble on the Samsung N110 and N120 which has all the features that I wanted.

Samsung N120 Hardware Specs

Processor: Intel Atom N270 (1.6 Ghz)
Graphics 950 GMA shared memory.
Ram: 1 GB Ram 667 Mhz DDR2 (Can be easily upgraded to 2 GB Ram).
Hardisk: 160 GB 5,200 rpm SATA HDD.
Screen: 10.1 Inches LED Glossy screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600.
Battery: 6 Cell 5200mh battery.
Keyboard: 97% size keyboard, the biggest till date for a 10″ netbook.
Headphone and a Mic Jack.
Wireless Lan Wifi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0
1.3 Mega pixel Webcam.
3 USB ports 2 of them are powered USB slots, 1 SD card slot, 1 VGA out port.
3 Speakers, 2 around the screen and one mini-sub speaker (the best sound in a netbook) 2.1 speaker system.
Operating System: Windows XP Home.
Weight: 1.26 Kgs.

Software Included

Apart from the standard XP, there are tons of useful Samsung utilities installed with the system, Samsung also install the Mcafee Anti-virus suite, which I found to be a resource hog which I replaced with Avast anti-virus I also also replaced the Adobe Acrobat reader with Foxit free pdf reader.

The other Samsung software included with the system were

Easy Network Manager
Easy Resolution Mager
Magic Keyboard (for on-screen display and to make the hot-keys works)
Samsung Battery Manager (To tweak the power usage to get extended battery and it works, keep it installed otherwise you will not get the 7-8 hrs battery life).
Samsung Magic Doctor (a software to fix and diagnose any problems you might have).
Samsung Recovery Solution (to restore the system from backup).
Samsung Update Plus (to update easily to the latest device drivers).
User Guide

In depth review

The first time you open up the Samsung N120 the first thing that strikes you is the keyboard, the keys look a bit big for the chassis if you have seen other netbooks the keyboard in comparison looks huge which is not a bad thing coz they keyboard is as comfortable to use as an regular size keyboard (touch typist will love this keyboard), all of my friends who used this netbooks their first reaction was wonderful keyboard dude! The keyboard is so good that I am not preferring to write most of my articles on this netbook including this one, I do hope other netbooks manufactures take hints from this netbook, due to the full sized keyboard this netbook is about half-inch wider than most other 10″ netbooks in the market, this netbook also has a matte finish for a change which is welcome change as it doesn’t attract finger prints like all the other glossy netbooks.

Moving on to the trackpad its a standard netbook type of trackpad a bit smaller in size but the

tracking is very good so you wont find anything bad about the same, Samsung has decide to use a single rocker key at the bottom of the trackpad for both the left and right click thought it works perfectly and the rocker is easy to press the feedback from the rocker is good but I would have preferred a two button instead of the single rocker. The trackpad had dedicated area on the right for scrolling it also had two gestures the pinch and Chiral scroll wheel motion, I found the trackpad software provided by Synaptics to be great to further customize the trackpad features such a hot zones area etc, sadly the trackpad with this netbook dosent support the two finger and three finger gestures found in the newer ASUS netbooks.

Moving on to the screen its a LED backlit screen hence its a slim screen it has a width of 10.1″ supporting a native resolution of 1024 x 600 there is a also a Samsung software provided called the “Easy resolution manager” which can increase the resolution to 1024 x 768 if needed, the screen is the Glossy type so there is a fair amount of reflection if you work outside but its much better compared to other glossy sceens, the screens brightness range is very good and you can make the screen very bright or dull as per your liking.

Left side profile of Samsung N120

Right side of Samsung N120

Upgrading the RAM is very simple, you just need to open one screw to access the RAM bay and replace the RAM, as with other netbooks there is only a single slot for a RAM stick and the maximum supported RAM is 2 GB. The build quality of this netbook is very good it does not creak when you try to bend it it’s a good quality built machine with nice curves and chrome finish.

Click on the next page “2″ to continue the review

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