The successor to the famous Samsung NC10, this new N110 is the smaller brother of the N120 that we also tested.  These last two netbooks are identical, right down to their 10.1'' 1024 x 600 pixel screen, Intel Atom N270 CPU and 1 GB of RAM.  Only the case and exterior design has changed.

Handling & Connectivity

The Samsung N110 is entirely white with matte surfaces.  It's great not having to constantly wipe away greasy fingerprints that usually appear on glossy surfaces.  It's been carefully put together.


The N110 has a large keyboard, but each key is just a little smaller than it would be on a normal keyboard.  Typing is very firm and responds well, but it's still less comfortable than on the bigger keyboard of the N120.

The touchpad has a matte surface, and your finger slides over it easily and accurately.  There's no revolutionary increase in size which is still relatively small because of the narrow space available in front of the computer.  It's still bigger than the one on the Samsung NC10.

Typical webcam shot

The webcam manages pretty well.  The colours are accurate, and movements are fluid.  We would have appreciated more precision in lower light levels.  The microphone doesn't start well because it's directly above the keyboard, and therefore picks up the sound of typing, and leaves voices sounding stuffy.

The connectivity includes just the bare minimum: three USB 2.0 ports, one Ethernet port, a pair of mini-jacks, a VGA output and a memory card reader.

Underneath the netbook, a flap gives access to the RAM.

Power, RJ45, 2 USB 2.0	Touchpad
Memory card reader	Headphones, microphone, USB 2.0, VGA, power

Processor Power

Computers that share an identical configuration should perform the same way, but to check, we ran the same tests on the N110 as we did on the N120.  The results were generally similar.

The two laptops have Intel Atom N270 and N280 have very similar performances.  In general, it's still below the capacity of a standard laptop computer.  To help you compare, converting two dozen audio tracks to MP3 in iTunes would take 110 seconds on a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi 3650, 596 seconds on the Asus Eee PC 1000HE but 602 seconds on the Samsung N120.

That means you can forget about HD video on this netbook--and all the others that rely on the pairing of the Intel Atom processor and the 945GSE built-in chipset.

Audio

The sound is the same as we've found on the majority of netbooks.  The speakers exist, at least, and produce a dry, sharp sound, without any bass.  You can't make much use of them for listening to music or watching films, unless you think the sound quality from a mobile phone is good enough.  The audio output from the headphone jack is reasonably clean.

Portability & Battery Life

Although it's 20 grams lighter than the N120, the N110 is still 220 g heavier than the Asus EeePC 1000HE.  The battery life is excellent, with 6 hours 4 minutes of video playback (with WiFi turned off and the brightness at 100 cd/m²).  As astonishing as it sounds, that's 25 minutes more than the N120, and 11 minutes better than the 1000HE.  It's an excellent result, even though it's still a long way behind the MSI Wind U115 and its 7 hours 10 minutes of battery life.