IN THE LAB^
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARESamsung N230 Netbook
It’s thin and sleek—too bad it’s an Atom netbook
W
e didn’t want to admit it, but it’s true:
The Atom netbook market is a snooze.
Netbooks based on Intel’s Atom plat-
form (currently in its Pine Trail incarnation) ship
with a 10.1-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz
single-core Atom processor, Windows 7 Starter,
blah blah blah. Netbooks with Nvidia’s Ion graph-
ics architecture are more interesting, but they’re
few and far between. At night, faint echoes from
the ventilation shaft s whisper of AMD’s forthcom-
ing Atom smasher, code-named Ontario, which
could signal a new dawn for the genre. But for
now, the best we can hope for in this thoroughly
commoditized market is a netbook that performs
as well as its peers but looks good doing so. Sam-
sung’s N210, which we reviewed in July, rocked
a gorgeous Space Age aesthetic and a great key-
board but was packed to the exhaust ports with
bloatware. The N230 has the same hardware, but
in the slimmest, sleekest frame we’ve ever seen
on a netbook. Where the N210 was Space Age, the
N230 is pure modern.
By eschewing the multilayer clear-on-white
plastic shell of the N210 for a single-layer, slim
black carapace, Samsung made the N230’s profi le
sleeker—at its thickest it’s still less than an inch
thick, and most parts of it are three-quarters of
that. It’s also the lightest netbook we’ve ever test-
ed, at just two pounds, fi ve ounces (tied with the
very fi rst Acer Aspire One we tested in Decem-
ber 2008 for lap weight, and even lighter than
that netbook when the power brick is included).
Skipping the 6-cell battery did wonders for the
N230’s weight and lines, but with a 3-cell bat-
tery, the N230 doesn’t last as long as its peers: It
tapped out of our video rundown test 10 minutes
short of the four-hour mark—70 minutes sooner
than the N210 and nearly four-and-a-half hours
short of the HP Mini 5102 (September 2010). All
other benchmark scores were indistinguishable
from those of any other Pine Trail netbook.
The N230’s lid is glossy-black plastic, while
the interior is matte black and the wrist rest is
brushed metal. We wish Samsung would have
taken at least a little style from the N210 and
gone without the exterior’s sheen, which only
looks good if you handle the netbook with kid
gloves, or leave it at home. Given that the whole
point of a netbook is to have a fully functional
real computer (as opposed to a tablet) that you
can chuck into a bag and take with you, we pre-fer ones that don’t look dirty as soon as you take
them out of the box.
The island-style keyboard is just as roomy
and comfortable as its predecessor’s, and the
multitouch trackpad, though a bit small for our
tastes, is accurate and easy to use. The N230’s port
and connector array is standard—three USB 2.0
ports (one of which can charge electronics while
the computer is sleeping), audio jacks, VGA out,
10/100 Ethernet, and a multicard reader, and it
has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, though no Bluetooth.
With the N230, Samsung dropped its Hyperspace
instant-on OS, which we can’t help but applaud,
along with the decision to include less bloatware.
We still had to drag a bunch of desktop icons to
the Recycle Bin, but they were mostly for Sam-
sung’s onboard maintenance tools, not third-party
soft ware (aside from the inevitable Norton trial).
The Samsung N230 takes the standard net-
book loadout and crams it into the lightest 10-inch
chassis we’ve ever held. Though it’s a magnet
for fi ngerprints, it has great lines, and at around
$350, it’s a pretty good deal. The N230 manages to
impress us despite our netbook ennui. That’s not a
lot, but we’ll take it. –NATHAN EDWARDS76 | MAXIMUMPC | JAN 2011 | http://www.maximumpc.com
VERDICT$350, http://www.samsung.com8
Slimmest, lightest
netbook we’ve tested;
good keyboard.Sub four-hour battery;
boring internals;
fingerprint prone.FOGHATSAMSUNG N230 NETBOOKFROGHATSPECIFICATIONS
Processor 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450
Chipset Intel NM10 Express
Graphics Intel GMA 3150 Intel GMA 3150
Display 10.1-inch LED-backlit LCD@1024x600 10.1-inch LED-backlit LCD@1024x600
RAM 1GB DDR2/667 1GB DDR2/667
Storage 250GB HDD (5,400rpm)
Ports Three USB 2.0, audio in/out, multicard Three USB 2.0, audio in/out, multicard
reader, VGA, 10/100
Wireless 802.11b/g/n 802.11b/g/n
Lap/Carry 2 lbs, 5 oz / 2 lbs, 14.5 oz 2 lbs, 5 oz / 2 lbs, 14.5 oz