Samsung N310

Naoto Fukasawa is the Japanese designer to whom Samsung turned to create the lines on this model, the N310. It’s available in four colours: red, blue, violet and balck and has a glossy ten inch panel and an Intel Atom processor. Samsung is marketing this model with the accent on design and invites you to "express your lifestyle"

Handling, design and build

At last a computer with an original look! Audacious, minimalist, vintage looking and robust, the NC310 stands out from the glossy-black-with-a-bit-of-aluminium standard.

Naturally, it’s making waves, causing reactions. Remarks on the design have been attracting diverse opinions. One less positive remark has likened it to a household drill box. In spite of the divergent opinions, we rather like the fact that Samsung have tried something different. Whether you like it or not, this is not a bad thing. The fact that the manufacturer has gone for a definite design is more interesting than a total absence of attention to aesthetics.

The keyboard uses the available space well and the keys are nicely spaced with a minimum of resized keys. The multitouch touchpad takes up a good amount of space (6.5 x 3.5 cm) and is nicely reactive. It is placed above a monobloc bar to handle left and right clicks. Note that screen brightness is also adjusted with this block for better managing battery performance. This is a bit confusing at first and good to know so as to avoid losing time searching for the feature to adjust the panel backlighting elsewhere.

The webcam is fine as long as you don’t expose it to over bright light that tends to burn the clearest zones of the image. The microphone, coupled with speakers, is not sufficiently sensitive. You’ll have to raise your voice to make yourself heard.

You’ll find the following connectivity on the side of the netbook: 3 USBs, 1 RJ45 (behind a plastic cover), 2 mini Jacks, 1 SD card reader and 1 VGA also with a plastic cap. This is a standard configuration outside of the plastic covers which fit in nicely with the overall aesthetic.

Under the netbook a panel gives access to the RAM but that’s all. No access to the hard drive or to the different chips.

2 USBs, VGA and cap	USB, RJ45 with cover
2 mini jacks	SD reader

Processor Power

From one netbook to another, this aspect of the spec is pretty much the same. They almost all use the same Intel Atom processors. While one machine may be a little faster on file compression, it can lose ground in terms of processing of video files. In the end, all netbooks score an index of around 20; our reference mahcine being the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi3650, that scores 100 with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor.

Playing films, you’ll have to draw the line at heavy HD files (Blu-Ray type files).

Gaming

Generally speaking, gaming on netbooks is only for real enthusiasts willing to put up with highly compromised quality.

Audio

Little to say in terms of the N310’s audio. The loud speakers, as is often the case with netbooks, are not particularly good and are more of a fallback solution. The headphones socket is pretty clean in spite of a slight hiss that can only be heard at full volume when nothing is playing.

Battery life and portability

We’ll say it straight away, battery life is not good. At 2h45 when continuously playing video (brightness at 100 cd/m², WiFi disactivated and headphones plugged in), the result is rather average and far from the scores obtained by the competition. Samsung has told us that they have a longer lasting version in the pipeline. As yet, we have no date or price on this.

At 1.2 Kg, it is nice and light but the charger is overweight at 360 g (200 g for the lightest).