Samsung N110 Review

The Samsung N110 impressed us in a lot of categories, but we also found some areas that could be improved. The keyboard felt cramped compared some other netbooks and the screen felt washed out in some aspects. On the other hand the build quality was excellent, the design was great, and the battery life was phenomenal. The price is somewhat high when you look at some of the larger 11.6" and 12" netbooks on the market, but it does lead the way in battery life. If unplugged performance is the most important thing you are looking for the Samsung N110 easily has you covered.



The Samsung N110 uses the older 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, instead of the newer and slightly faster 1.66GHz N280 with a faster bus speed. In terms of real world performance difference we didn't notice anything that stood out that made this model feel slower than others, outside of looking at the benchmark results. Boot and shutdown times were quick, and with the computer resting at an idle desktop screen shortly after you logged in. The netbook easily handled internet browsing, playing mp3s, watching streaming video, and 2D gaming without any hiccups. HD video played fine as long as it was 720P content or below. 1080P video pushed the Intel Atom N270 over the edge with many dropped frames and unsyncronized audio

Our Samsung N110 has an attractive design with a slick black cover, red accent trim, and matte finish interior. The looks are classy, looking appropriate for business users or even a parent using it inside of a coffee shop. Samsung doesn't go overboard with the brand logo, with a simple chrome raised letter "Samsung" on the front cover and a white painted logo underneath the display. Inside I think Samsung could have gone with glossy black paint, since it looks great on the outside cover. You might have had to deal with fingerprints and smudges, but it would have looked incredible. Outside we see that Samsung went with a flush mount extended battery that sticks down slightly in the rear, instead of sticking out the back. It doesn't stick down as far as the extended battery on the HP 2140, which is perfectly fine by me. One interesting and helpful think Samsung thought of when they designed the location



The Samsung N110 blew me away with its battery life. When we generally think of insane battery life figures from netbooks, we think of huge batteries with cells sticking out in every direction. It usually ends up being a hand grip of sorts. Samsung made an almost-flush mount 66Wh battery for the N110, which that in itself is pretty impressive. The manufacturer battery life claim was 8.5 hours, which is pretty good as is, but we managed to go longer. In our standard test where the screen brightness is reduced to about 70%, processor set to automatic, and wireless active the Samsung N110 stayed on for 9 hours and 44 minutes. This beats out the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA, which only got 9 hours and 37 minutes. Power consumption varied between 6 and 9 watts during the test. This is almost the perfect definition of all-day battery life, since it was turned on an hour or so after I got into work, and turned off two hours before I went to sleep later that night. With light usage this could easily last an entire weekend.