Samsung N110 review: Samsung N110

The Samsung N110 is a fairly anonymous-looking Netbook, with a matte black interior (accented by a very subtle maroon stripe around the outer edge), and a glossy, black lid. Unfortunately, the glossy surface of the lid was among the more smudge and fingerprint-friendly we've encountered, and keeping it looking clean for even a single day was a struggle. While not as thin as something like the HP Mini 1000, Samsung gets points for making a Netbook with a 6-cell battery that doesn't look like it has a kickstand.

The keyboard is of the more traditional tapered key design, with individual keys that are wider at the base, and narrower at the top. We've seen many more PC makers, including Dell, HP, and Asus, move to a flat-key design. Still, the keys were large and we were especially pleased to see a big right Shift key; that's one that sometimes gets butchered on compact keyboard layouts. The touch pad on the N110 is slightly larger than on the original, and is about as good as we've seen on a Netbook--it even includes a specially demarcated scroll zone.

The 10.1-inch LCD display has a native resolution of 1,024x600, which is standard for Netbooks. That's generally fine for most Web surfing, but long, vertical pages and Word documents can require a lot of scrolling to read. We were, however, disappointed to see the matte screen finish of the original NC10 replaced with a glossy one. Most consumer laptops have glossy screens, but we generally find that the glare on the overly reflective glossy surface outweighs advantages, which include more vibrant colors and better overall brightness.

While it lacks the ExpressCard readers found on several other Netbooks in this price range, we were pleased to see three USB ports; many Netbooks have only two.

With Intel's 1.6GHz Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM, there aren't a lot of surprises with the N110's performance. We've found that systems with AMD's Neo processor and Via Nano CPU--both aimed at a similar Netbook audience--are slightly better at single-app tests, while the Atom performs faster in our multitasking test. For basic tasks such as word processing, Web surfing, and e-mail, an Atom-powered Netbook is more than adequate, as long as you keep your expectations modest. Opening too many browser windows at once, or running several apps simultaneously, for example, can lead to slowdown and stuttering.