Samsung NB30

We haven’t seen many netbooks with build quality we had serious concerns about and as long as you don’t go throwing them around with wild abandon, most models should be tough enough to cope with typical mobile use. Still, this hasn’t stopped Samsung from pitching its new NB30 as a netbook that’s more durable than most, though at first glance, it’s tricky to see just what it’s toughened up.

Fresh from the box and the NB30 looks like standard netbook fare and it’s the same general size and shape as other 10.1” Samsung models we’ve seen. The matte black case is all-plastic and while it feels robust, it doesn’t seem any more so than most other netbooks.

There is one notable difference to more mainstream netbook fare, though — the NB30 doesn’t have the usual glossy lid. Instead, it has more matte black plastic, but with spiral pattern of deep grooves that resemble a gigantic fingerprint. We like it, but we’re not sure it does anything more than do away with the problem of greasy smudge marks and fine scratches.

There’s else little of note on the outside of the NB30 — it has the usual selection of netbook ports and a big battery that we’ll come onto later. The underside is finished in the same pattern as the lid and has a convenient panel for access to the single SODIMM slot, but small cooling vents make the NB30 no more suited to use in a dusty environment than any other netbook.

Lift the NB30’s lid and the matte black finish follows through on the inside, though without the spiral pattern. Other than a strip of tiny blue status LEDs sit on the bottom left of the palm rest, the inside is unadorned — again, something else we rather like after seeing a number netbooks decked out in chrome strips and big, shiny buttons.

The NB30’s low-profile keyboard is also matte black, which makes the large, white key legends very easy to make out in low light. The keys themselves are wide, flat and comfortable to use, and the keyboard is solid across its whole width. Our review model did have an odd bump under the F7/F8 key area — not enough to create a problem for typing, but not something we want to see on any keyboard, either.

A touch-sensitive screen is a factory-fitted option for the NB30, but our review unit went without. We can’t say we see much point in a touch-screen on any laptop that can’t be used in tablet mode, particularly one with a 10.1” display and we’ve read reports that it adversely affects brightness on the NB30. The matte screen is certainly bright enough without it though, and is displays a crisp image.

The ‘rugged’ features we’ve mentioned so far are really little more than marketing for the NB30, but Samsung has at least fitted one technology that really should be standard on all laptops — a shock sensor. When a sudden movement is detected, the hard drive read/write heads are rapidly ‘parked’ to prevent them from ploughing into the magnetic platters that are spinning mere nanometers below. Such sensors have been standard issue on business laptops (where keeping data safe is a very serious issue) for some time, so it’s good to see it filtering down to the low end of the market.

We mentioned the NB30’s big battery earlier and this bulges from the back of the laptop’s base in way that tips the keyboard forward a little, but doesn’t otherwise get in the way. The 5900mAh pack does add to the netbook’s weight, but we suspect that this won’t bother many people considering the long battery life it brings — 6.5 hours in BatteryEater Classic and 10.5 hours in Reader. The ‘real’ figure lies somewhere in between, of course, but that’s still enough for a full working day with Wi-Fi enabled. Impressive stuff.

The best online price for the Samsung NB30 at the time of writing is around £250 for the model with Windows XP and a 160Gb hard drive — and that’s really a pretty good deal for an Atom N450 Pinetrail netbook that lasts so long away from the mains (Windows 7 with a 250Gb hard drive costs £50 more). Samsung’s talk of toughness may be a bit misleading for a netbook that’s really only more resistant to cosmetic damage rather than actual abuse, but the NB30 nicely styled and the anti-shock hard drive is a small USP that’s certainly worth having.