In an era where most netbooks have much the same innards, many vendors have shifted their focus to the usability of their devices. Yet in squeezing the most functional keyboards, best power-saving technology, and most desktop PC-like capabilities into their diminutive bodies, many netbooks come off as over-ambitious or simply misguided.

Samsung's N120 walks the fine line between the two extremes, packaging everything you need for a solid netbook experience into a comfortable and stylish body that packs a good array of features.

Inside, the N120 resembles many other units on the market: there's an Intel Atom N270 CPU at 1.60 GHz, 1GB of RAM, Windows XP Home Edition SP3 on a 160GB internal drive. There's also a/b/g wireless LAN connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, and 32-bit 1024x600 display courtesy of the Mobile Intel 945 Express chipset family. Three USB 2.0 ports, an external VGA connector, Ethernet socket, and headphone and microphone jacks provide plenty of places to plug stuff in. The 1.60GHz CPU and N270 chipset (as opposed to the newer N280) may make feature addicts run screaming, but for general usage they are enough.

Since those specs describe most of the netbooks on the market, it's worthwhile noting that Samsung have gone to great lengths to bundle lots of accessibility controls and ease-of-use concessions to compensate for the N120's limitations. A host of function keys combinations provide minute control over key operational features. For example, WLAN connectivity can be toggled with a function key combination, as can the touchpad, battery capacity, three speed modes (silent/normal/fast), and brightness and volume controls on the arrow keys. The net result is that it's easy to turn off features you're not using, to extend the usable life of the unit's capacious 6-cell battery.

Indeed, battery life was impressive during our tests: Over the course of a week of on-and-off usage, the battery turned in well over six hours' usable time. Startup was quick, and the unit showed no problems repeatedly hibernating and waking when the cover was closed.

Despite the unit's small size, the keyboard felt large and was comfortable for touch-typing, with large Enter and right-shift keys rather than the tiny, unnatural buttons in layouts favoured by some netbook makers. You won't want to retype that new translation of War and Peace on it, but this review was quite comfortably written on the N120 and the keyboard afforded good speed and accuracy.

In the netbook market, overall design and build quality are critical differentiators, and in this area the Samsung doesn't disappoint. The screen hinges are wide and sturdy, providing an overall solid feeling to the unit's design. Rubberised feet and an angled base mean the unit sits at an incline when placed on a table. Our only concern was the pearlescent white finish, which adds a bit of cachet to a unit like this but is more likely to show scratches than a darker colour would.

One particularly nice touch is the addition of a screen-scrolling area on the right-hand side of the trackpad: as if apologising for the 600 vertical onscreen pixels, Samsung has added this area to the trackpad to make it easy to move through documents that don't fit on the page Ð and, with any unit like this, rest assured that this includes most of them.

Graphics performance was neither stunning nor horrible, with the unit proving adept at smoothly playing full-screen DivX-encoded content. You wouldn't try playing graphics-intensive games like Crysis on it, but netbooks were never intended for hardcore gaming anyway.

Samsung advertises the unit as having 2.1 sound Ð implying a purpose-built subwoofer Ð and to some extent this was evident when playing music. The music sounded relatively full and rich for such a small box, but there was some distortion at high volumes. Included SRS WOW features expanded the music space, providing a fuller sound.

Samsung has included several proprietary applications to improve usability. For example, the Samsung Magic Doctor, launched using Fn-F7, scans current CPU, HDD, graphics, sound, network, virtual memory and security settings and recommends solutions (for example, unmuting the sound or connecting the LAN for Internet connectivity). Samsung Recovery Solution III enables full system backup and restores, while Easy Network Manager and Easy Resolution Manager add some user-friendliness to solve technical issues.

The N120 comes with McAfee Security Center software, which insisted on being activated online but never actually managed to do so despite having access to a clear Internet connection. The bundled CyberLink YouCam software enabled video capture and chatting with a host of cute video effects.

The bundled browser is, curiously, the antiquated IE6, which is not only two versions behind the current standard but is itself horribly inefficient; we quickly resolved this by installing Google Chrome, which ran snappily on the N120 alongside the free OpenOffice suite. On the N120 and other units, of course, choosing streamlined applications is a great way to get the best performance out of the little power you've got.

Like all netbooks, the N120 probably isn't going to make you happy if your requirements stretch to heavy-duty video and photo editing, graphics-intensive games and the like. It would have been nice to see the newer N280 chipset, particularly since it's available in competing systems having the same $899 rrp. But that extra cost gets you a strong netbook offering with solid specs, great battery life, and a sturdy design that shows Samsung isn't just trying to be a me-too player in the netbook space.

By David Braue

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