Samsung N145 Plus - 10.1" - Atom N450 - Windows 7 Starter - 1 GB RAM - 160 GB HDD > Reviews (2)

I, as a student, required a netbook to allow myself to work at school on my revision and homework. Having a desktop pc meant i didnt need it as a primary entertainment device: and so i was looking at good value netbooks. After having spent many hours, pouring over reviews and magazines. I decided at £249 from Amazon, it was a pretty good deal considering it had been only recently released, and assumed that the model having a "Plus" on the end meant, any problems with the first model, would have been eliminated in this one.

The netbook's speed is on par with other netbooks in this price bracket - ie pretty slow. The log on speed is very slow, with it taking me about 2minutes to log on. Me being a student requiring quick access, means this is unfortunate. Video processing is predictably very slow seeing as it only has a 1.6Ghz processor. Youtube footage takes forever to load, with often me having to let it load so i can watch it, while i make myself a cup of hot chocolate. Obviously 720p footage is also out of the question and it loaded around 15 seconds worth in 25 minutes, and even this was extremely jerky when watched. Internet TV catchup services varied with the BBC iPlayer proving impossible to watch, and while Demand5's audio was fine - the visual was like watching a slideshow of pictures and extremely laggy (it was not my internet as my ipod touch as a comparative device was running these programmes fine) . Video that i had loaded onto the Samsung netbook, tended to be slow and not good at producing smooth video. However there are a few plus points in that the internet speeds are very fast using Google Chrome - on par with my desktop in fact - and with the exception of video sites, pages loaded very quickly. However as you can see the netbook shouldn't be used as an entertainment device.

The styling looks impressive with a chrome bar running around the sides of the netbook and the off-center Samsung icon providing additional style. The screen has a matte finish which (despite my preference using a gloss finish which in my opinion gives a more professional appearance) stands up to being used in strong sunlight and is very clear. The colours on screen are also very strong with a good contrast between different blacks. The keyboard is very spacious and extremely comfortable to use, providing near full sized speed of laptop typing (This actually gives me more speed typing than a laptop as my hands are smaller and so prefer smaller keyboards. However the keypad below is extremely small (in tests, it fits only just 2 two pennies side by side in length, and 1 one penny coin and a 5 pence coin on top of each other in height). The larger than average keyboard is probably the reason in the decrease in size of the keypad, and also the palm rest area is very small, meaning in order to type quickly, the hands have go past the keypad and so always moves where you are in the document and so messes up your work. Samsung has provided a keypad lock which turns the keypad off, but most work requires quick access of a mouse and so turning it on and off becomes tenuous very quickly.

This netbook definitely requires a mouse in the long run as the constant problems with the keybad become very frustrating very quickly.

The netbook itself is extremely light and is perfectly capable of being held in one hand for a short while. The size of it - being a netbook - is very small and for me is very easy to slip into my handbag and off i go!

However being a boy, means i am very clumsy and i made sure this got a protective sleeve straight away as the surface, despite having a solid and strong build which wont be flattened by anything very quickly, it is very scratch attractive! The screen also only folds about 100 degrees and i reckon that it wont take much for it to snap, especially as there is a lot of give in the screen when it reaches it final opening point.

I like the netbook, in that i have never had a netbook before and i enjoy the abiliy to take it anywhere and for it to last longer than a laptop (despite this netbook having a quite poor netbook battery life of around 6 hours when charged fully and on power saver option). However that is me saying i like the concept of netbook and if i could take this netbook back now, i would because the cons by far outway the pros and there are probably lots of better netbooks out there for the same price and to be honest i have been put off netbooks hugely.