Netbooks Galore: A Tale of Seven 10-inch Netbooks!

Samsung N120

Samsung N120

Fresh from Samsung's oven comes the Samsung N120, their latest netbook model that's the successor to their original NC10 and NC20 netbooks. The Samsung N120 comes loaded with plenty of claims, from a full sized keyboard found on 12-inch notebooks to a super long battery life, so we'll see if it holds up to its claims later in our benchmarking section. Meanwhile, for its external appearances, the Samsung N120 comes clad in white, though a piano black version is available.

You'll first note that the netbook is pretty slim thanks to its tapered design. It's also wider than your usual netbook, because of the fact that Samsung wanted to squeeze in a full sized keyboard onto the netbook. Other then these abovementioned traits, the netbook is a pretty standard affair by any means, though unlike the others, it doesn't use a glossy exterior cover, making it more smudge resistant compared to the other netbooks.

Peeking Inside

Upon opening the netbook, the first thing you'll likely notice is the wide keyboard. Looks like Samsung did manage to pack a normal sized notebook keyboard into the netbook after all - thanks to the extra width of the netbook. There's certainly plenty of space to type comfortably.

One of the features that make the Samsung netbook stand out from the pack was the inclusion of the 2.1 channel sound system. This basically means a 'subwoofer' is located at the bottom of the unit, but it's really more like a simple dedicated low-channel driver. While the volume of this netbook was loud, the 2.1 speakers didn't actually do much to differentiate the N120 from the other netbooks. If you listen hard you can discern that it has slightly better mid-range than its competitors, but most people can't tell apart such minute differences in audio quality on the compact netbook scale.