Netbook Reviews – Laptop Reviews

Last year netbooks were so in vogue that we had to creat a new category for them in the rankings list. The winner this year is the Samsung N210.

The spec sheet looks similar to that of the competition, but what makes it the best netbook is its astounding battery life of over 10 hours. With it, the user will never fall short of power.

Specs: 10.1-inch LED display; Intel Atom 1.6 GHz ; 1GB RAM, 160 GB HDD; 3 USB; a VGA, Card Reader; weights 1.25 kg and runs on Windows 7 starter OS.

The Q530 is another beautifully made laptop from Samsung, with a graphite-effect lid and silver keyboard panel that isn’t cluttered with excess buttons or LED lights.

Its beauty is more than just skin deep, too. Inside is an Intel Core i3 350M processor that provides near-desktop performance, and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics chip that’s capable of playing 3D games.

The Q530’s 15.6in display makes up for it’s reduced size with higher quality. It has a bright, even LED backlight and a glossy finish, which between them produce an image with vibrant colours and superb contrast – provided you find the best vertical viewing angle. Read more…

Sony’s Vaio EE3E0E is one of few laptops known that uses AMD’s Vision platform, which combines an AMD processor and ATI graphics card.

The laptop comes equipped with an AMD Athlon II X2 P340 processor, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 graphics.

While the onboard graphics chip isn’t powerful enough to play 3D games, it can handle HD video content. Alternatively, you could connect an AV amplifier through the HDMI port to process both audio and video. Read more…

Acer’s latest laptops have adopted a new slim design, and the 7741 is no exception. The smart, textured lid opens to reveal a brushedmetal keyboard surround, with none of the gaudy LEDs or touch-sensitive controls of previous designs. It’s not all about looks, though: you can find packed inside the 17.3in 7741 a powerful Core i3  330M processor.

The backlight is bright and even, and the glossy finish adds vibrancy to colours. Colour accuracy was also good, and contrast was excellent, although tight vertical viewing angles mean you have to adjust the tilt of the screen carefully. Read more…

The HP DM3 looks great from almost every angle. The metallic-effect body is smooth, with rounded corners and few LEDs or shortcut keys to clutter the appearance. The chiclet-style keyboard looks smart and is great to type on. Keys are widely spaced and full-sized, but to avoid breaking the design scheme by adding extra keys, shortcuts such as the volume and brightness keys are paired with the function buttons.

While many laptops do the same, the DM3 sets each shortcut as the default, rather than secondary, action. This is annoying if you frequently use the function keys in combination with the Alt key, as it also requires holding down the Fn key. Read more…

From the outside it’s difficult to notice any differences in this new model. The smart textured lid and silver case remain unchanged, as do the chiclet-style keyboard and large touchpad.  The keyboard is comfortable to use, but minor issues such as the small tab key and relocated backslash are annoying.

The 10.1in screen has a glossy coating but is fine to use in well-lit areas and doesn’t create distracting reflections. Brightness isn’t dazzling and color reproduction is slightly inaccurate.

The 1,024×600 resolution is the standard for this screen size, but images look sharp. Audio is disappointing: the downward facing speakers are quiet and poor quality. Read more…

The EeePC 1015PE is the latest Asus netbook to use the Seashell design scheme. Its rounded corners and straight lines look great from any angle. The wedge-shaped body appears very thin from the front, but even from the back it’s a very sleek netbook. The white colour scheme looks great, even if the contrasting black screen bezel looks slightly out of place.

The 10.1in screen is very thin, but it includes an embedded webcam. This has a low resolution of 640×480, but it’s still fine for basic tasks such as Skype conversations. The screen itself has a resolution of 1,024×600, which is standard for netbooks of this size. Read more…

HP’s Pavilion DV6-2113sa is a chunky laptop with a 15.6in screen, 4GB of memory and a 2.5GHz AMD Turion II M620 processor. Although its screen isn’t particularly large, its weight and bulk make it feel more like a desktop replacement notebook than a typical general purpose laptop.

It has an unassuming but attractive black chassis with reflective silver ring designs both inside and outside the lid. It’s very solidly built and we were pleased to find that the keyboard surround didn’t become warm to the touch at any point during testing. The flat keyboard is traditionally laid out, making it easy to get used to if you’re accustomed to touch-typing on a standard desktop keyboard. A smaller than standard numeric keypad is squeezed in on the right-hand side. Read more…

Acer’s Aspire 5741 is one of the latest generation of inexpensive laptops with Intel’s powerful 2.27GHz Core i5-430M processor. With an overall benchmark score of 86, it rivals the performance of laptops that cost around $800 just a couple of months ago.

The Aspire 5741 has just 3GB of RAM and lacks a powerful graphics processor, but the Core i5‘s built-in graphics chip is a significant improvement over the on-board Intel graphics chipsets found in Core 2 laptops. However, it’s no rival for the latest dedicated ATI mobile graphics chips, and managed 10.2fps in Call of Duty 4 test. Read more…

MSI added new 15.6-inch (1366×768 resolution) laptops to its CX-Classic series: CX500DX, CX620MX, and 14-inch CX420MX.

The MSI CX500DX is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and integrates ATI Radeon HD545v graphics, 512MB of DDR2 RAM(up to 4GB).

The MSI CX620MX is packed with an Intel Core I Series processors, HM55 chipset, the same graphics as for CX500DX, LCD display with 1366×768 resolution, up to 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 500 GB HDD.

Unfortunately we are not informed about the pricing of these MSI laptops.