Samsung N510

Netbooks were never intended to be much more than cheap and cheerful ultraportables for people who didn’t need — or couldn’t afford — anything more powerful, but their huge popularity has manufacturers to look at ways to widen their appeal with better specifications.

The Samsung N510 is a prime example. Although superficially just another Intel Atom-powered portable, the 11.6” screen and NVIDIA ION LE address the two main complaints levelled at other netbooks — namely cramped, low-resolution displays and poor graphics performance.

An 11.6” screen means that the Samsung N510 is obviously larger than 10.1” netbooks like the Samsung N140, but its desktop footprint is only about an inch extra in each direction. It’s 140g heavier too, but neither the increase size and weight is enough to make the N510 any less portable than any typical 10.1” netbook (which doesn’t include the likes of the Sony VAIO X Series…).

As usual, a bigger chassis means more room for the keyboard, but although the Samsung N510’s is a little larger than those on most 10.1” netbooks, it still falls just short of full size. Not that this is a complaint — the keys are large with plenty of travel, and the keyboard’s solid base makes it easy to type on.

The large Return, Shift and Backspace keys are also very welcome, but we wish Samsung had put the Windows key in the proper place — sandwiching between Alt Gr and Ctrl to the right of the spacebar is just irritating and silly.

The 1366 x 768 resolution means that the Samsung N510’s screen gives a much better view on web pages and it’s much easier to work with a couple of windows open side-by-side. The extra 1.5 inches of screen diagonal are offset by the increased resolution though, and elements of the Windows XP UI is still rather small as a result — so, the bigger screen won’t be much help for anyone who needs to squint with a 10.1”/1024 x 600 display.

A matte finish does mean that the Samsung N510’s screen is clear under most light conditions though, and it displays a bright, sharp image. The stereo speakers are surprisingly good, too — despite being tucked away beneath the palm-rest, where they face straight down.

Since it runs on a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, the Samsung N510 feels little different to any other netbook when it comes to running productivity applications. 1Gb of RAM also means that there is some lag with more than a few applications running at once, but you’ll need to ditch the existing memory module if you want to upgrade to 2Gb, as there’s only one SODIMM slot.

Benchmarks show the Samsung N510 to be a little faster than other Intel Atom netbooks though, and the performance is closer to 1.2GHz Intel Celeron ULV laptops we’ve reviewed. But this extra oomph doesn’t come from the processor — it’s the work of the NVIDIA ION LE graphics chipset. This is intended as a more capable, but still energy efficient alternative to the usual Intel GMA950 netbook graphics chipset and is intended to address the two main netbook graphics complaints — 3D graphics and HD video playback performance.

Now we’ll ignore the issue of whether or not 3D gaming and HD video playback are really key features for a netbook — after all, manufacturers are only responding to demand. The good news is that the NVIDIA ION LE chipset does open up light 3D gaming and Torchlight ran more or less smoothly at the Samsung N510’s native resolution with visual settings set to maximum.

Unfortunately, HD video performance is less impressive. QuickTime video is jerky and suffers from tearing at resolutions higher than 480p, while YouTube 720p video is not only unwatchable, but it brings the rest of the system to its knees. The problem, however, is that neither QuickTime player nor (the current) Flash 10.0 employ graphics hardware acceleration and so the Samsung N510 is no more capable than any other Intel Atom netbook for these two applications.

Switch to Media Player Classic Home Cinema and Flash Player 10.1 beta, however, and the situation improves dramatically — at least for 720p video. 1080p playback is still less than smooth and not something we’d want to watch on an HDTV — so we can’t see the Samsung N510’s HDMI port seeing too much use.

Thankfully, battery life is something to get a bit more excited about and the Samsung N510 ran for almost 4.5 hours in Battery Eater’s Classic test and for almost three more hours in the Reader test. This equates to around five hours of typical Wi-Fi enabled use — not quite a whole working day, but enough to make the N510 one of the longer lasting Atom netbooks.

At £394 from Amazon, the Samsung N510 does command quite a price premium over 10.1” netbooks and we’re not completely sure its worth it for what the NVIDIA ION 3D graphics chipset brings. If you like the big screen of the Samsung X120 though, but don’t need as much processor power (or the higher price), then the N510 is certainly a netbook to consider and the long battery life helps sweeten the deal.