Though a late comer in the netbook market, the Samsung NP-NC10 is a state of the art netbook and has something solid to offer. I personally like it a lot because it is good enough to give a solid business on the go. While it has almost all the features of a common netbook, it surely has something different to make me skip a lovely meal and have a closer look at it.

The screen has a decent size of 10.2 inches with an integrated webcam of 1.3 MP. The screen resolution is decent enough for official use and is of the magnitude 1024×600 pixels. Not bad I guess for some elementary business work and occasional and quick web browsing on the move. Well some occasional movie and some light gaming can really be a good fun!

The common features of the netbook are:

• Intel 945GSE chipset
• Intel Atom N270 processor which is clocked at 1.60 GHz.
• Gives a 1 GB RAM
• Has a 160GB HDD
• Onboard Intel GMA 950 GPU

Well about the connectivity, there is not a big difference and in fact, I did not find any exception at all. There is a 10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi b/g. However, I feel that Samsung NP-NC10 could have provided Wi-Fi n owing to the greater HDD space.

It has a VGA port and 3 USB ports. It also provides audio slots and a slot for Kensington lock. An SD card reader is found in front of the device. Microsoft Windows XP Home edition comes preinstalled. You are lucky to get a McAfee Virus Scan installed and ready for use. One of the greatest utility is the inclusion of the Samsung Recovery Solution for XP. However, it will need an external optical drive for the disc to be used. This is a place where the Samsung NP-NC10 once again mimics the regular netbooks.

Now that we are done with the discussion on the regular specifications of the Samsung NP-NC10, I believe that I must better discuss the experience I had with the netbook when I grabbed it for the first time and had an opportunity to work on it and have a closer look. It really impressed me a lot and I will prefer to have smooth nail tips so that I don’t destroy the look and the build!

Quality of the build

Well, I will give it 101 points out of 100. The build of the Samsung NP-NC10 is way above the standard build quality of the other netbooks. It may sound a little exaggerated but the truth is that it is robust, chunky and flaunts a solid design. The color selection is also solid. In addition, the Samsung NP-NC10 has a sturdy lid and a nice bezel.

The keyboard deserves a good amount of praise and to be honest and not cynical, the keyboard with the aptly arranged keyboards is one of the best that we have seen so far. Typing is real easy and fun and the keyboard actually passed all the standard keyboard tests that I conducted!

The touchpad is small but is quite comfortable and there is a scroll zone present for smooth scrolling. These features no doubt give a solid impression of the build quality. A long wait before entering the netbook market has paid off!

Performance

In terms of performance, it was amazing to find that the Samsung NP-NC10 comes close to the Asus Eee 1000H. While the memory bandwidth remains the same as in Asus Eee 1000H, what I found and was really excited about was that the processing power also did not falter at all. To be straight, it works equally well as any Atom N270 based netbook.

When I turned to the battery performance, the surprise element was powerful enough to the make my eyes glitter. The battery lasted for a whooping 5 hours nearly with all the standard applications running!

Conclusion

The quality and the performance of the Samsung NP-NC10 make it a very strong player in the market and if you are looking for a solid battery life with some good performance, this must be a perfect choice! Remember that if you are an advocate of sensible colors, this is again something that you must eye for!

The new Samsung NC20 has been reviewed - see what the netbook has to offer!