Despite what the folks in Cupertino may lead you to believe, the netbook form factor will continue to survive in the face of these new-fangled Internet tablets. The technology continues to advance in this realm, introducing us to higher-end finishes and improved horsepower. Just as the Intel Atom N280 provided some good performance upgrades over the N270, the “Pine Trail” Atom N450 is supposed to be pretty hot stuff too.
One of the newer netbooks to feature this processor is the Samsung N220 and, by the looks of things, it could be a very viable option for mobile computer users.
Features at a Glance
Easily the most notable feature that you’ll find on the Samsung N220 is the Intel Atom N450 processor. While it is not the dual core Atom that we all desire, the 1.66GHz CPU does offer two threads and a 512KB L2 cache.
Running our way through the spec sheet, we discover Windows 7 Starter as the operating system, as well as 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 10.1″ WSVGA matte display, Intel GMA3150 integrated graphics, 250GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, built-in webcam, and multitouch trackpad. For ports, you get a multi-card reader (in the front), three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, LAN port, and jacks for headphones and a microphone.
What’s in the Box?
Cracking open the stylish brown paper box, you find the usual assortment of accessories that accompany most netbooks. In addition to the Samsung N220 itself, there is the six-cell battery, power supply with wall cable, and the supporting documentation. There is also a neoprene protective sleeve included in the box. It’s plain black and a little on the thin side, but the zipper portion does have a raised ridge on the inside to protect your N220 from scratches. The non-zipper side, however, feels quite cheap by comparison.
First Impressions and Build Quality
One of the first things that struck me about the Samsung N220 was the choice of materials. It feels a little more like a premium product, thanks partly to its superior build quality, but mostly because of the choice of plastics. The keyboard and palm rest area is a matte black that exudes a certain aura of class and the whole thing feels quite solid in my hands. This is in sharp contrast to something like the Gigabyte M912, which despite being much more expensive, felt quite cheap in the hands.
This Samsung netbook otherwise looks like a pretty standard netbook in stature, but it is interesting that the multi-card reader (SD/SDHC/MMC) is located in the front rather than on the sides. Similarly, there is the power slider switch in the front, rather than somewhere above the keyboard.
Just like what they do with their LCD monitors and HDTVs, Samsung has also taken the Touch of Color styling cue to the netbook. The top cover may look like a regular glossy black, but this version actually has an aqua green tinge when held under certain light. It’s an extra dash of class that sets it apart from many other netbooks.
Gotta Look Straight on to the Screen
I suppose this isn’t a huge problem, but it could be a cause of concern for some users. While I appreciate the use of a matte (rather than glossy) display on this netbook and it is very nice to see that it features LED backlighting, the viewing angles are remarkably bad.
The matte screen means that you can still work under bright sunlight, but you do need to be “square” with the display to do so. Both the horizontal and vertical viewing angles offer a very narrow range, making it difficult to share things with people sitting around you.
What’s with the Bloatware?
The whole reason you want a netbook in the first place is that it’s a lightweight and easily portable computing solution. The resources are on the light side already, but the N220 is weighed down by all kinds of bloatware.
As expected, many of these are not full versions of the software, including trial games, an antivirus, a screen resolution tool, some data recovery tool, and a bunch of other stuff. Some of these are supposed to be useful, like the quick-boot environment, but others are more of an annoyance than anything.
On the bright side, the use of Windows 7 Starter is a vast improvement over the Windows XP that populated netbooks in the previous generation. It’s about time that netbooks got a more current operating system and I’m thinking that Win7 might even be more efficient than XP too.
The Island-Style Keyboard
The whole netbook keyboard thing has come a very long way since the remarkably cramped and uncomfortable situation offered by the original Eee PC 700 series. The keyboard on the Samsung N220 feels decidedly high end.
As you can see from the image above, the keyboard is chiclet-style in nature, very much like what you find on current MacBooks. Samsung calls this an “island style” keyboard, because the keys are distinctly separate from one another. This quite similar to the keyboard on the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which remains one of my favorite netbooks to date.
As much as I like this keyboard, it is not without its shortcomings. You’ll notice that the right shift key is smaller and way too far to the right. The same thing happens with the Enter key, which is double height but not double width. I would have preferred if the “\” key were moved up and the Enter key took up that space instead.
I’m apparently not the only one feels this way, because you can try to hunt down a Samsung N210 netbook instead. The N210 is virtually identical to the N220, from what I can tell, aside from the keyboard layout.
General Usability and Web Surfing
It’s not high resolution, but the WSVGA (1024 x 600 pixel) display will accommodate most websites without too much trouble at all. General web-surfing performance is perfectly acceptable and having the multi-touch trackpad for pinch-zooming and double finger zooming makes the experience a joy.
Despite having the newer Pine Trail Atom N450 processor, the Samsung N220 still wasn’t able to do much heavy lifting. When I tried streaming a 720p HD video from YouTube, the netbook stuttered considerably. Any kind of multitasking can cause it to slow down too, but it was able to handle live-streaming video to UStream.tv.
From a performance standpoint, I had high hopes for Pine Trail. In the real world, however, it doesn’t seem to do much better than the Atom N280 that preceded it. We expect similar performance from other Pine Trail equipped netbooks so it’s not just a Samsung thing. There may be a slight advantage in the battery life department with this Samsung, but there were N280 netbooks boasting 10+ hour lives too.
Mighty Long Battery Life
I always take battery life claims with a big bucket of salt and so should you. Samsung says that this netbook will keep you going for up to 11 hours on a single charge. That may or may not be true if you dial everything down, turn off all the radios, and do almost nothing.
To test the battery, I let it stream 480p video from YouTube, letting the clip loop over and over again. Brightness and volume were both set at about 60% with Wi-Fi turned on. With this configuration, the six-cell battery kept pumping for just under six hours.
That’s pretty good, I’d say. By putting it through a heavier video streaming cycle, I was able to get a truer representation of how well this battery would hold up under real life conditions. Stick to more basic web surfing and you should be able to get some more time out of that battery. However, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere near the claimed 11 hours without major sacrifices in functionality.
Benchmarks: HD Tune 2.54
So, how does the Samsung N220 hold up against our usual slate of benchmarks? Running the included Samsung 250GB hard drive through its paces in HD Tune 2.54 yielded an average data transfer speed of 57.0MB/sec, a perfectly respectable figure.
You’ll notice that the data speed, aside from one notable dip, stays very consistent for the first 60% of the drive, but it has a steady dropoff for the remaining 40%. Make of that what you will.
Benchmarks: PCMark05 and 3DMark06
We also run the netbook through PCMark05 and 3DMark06 from Futuremark. PCMark05 gives you a good overall productivity overview while 3DMark06 gives you the goods on basic gaming functionality. I was able to complete all the tests in PCMark05, resulting in the overall PCMark score of 1350 shown above.
To put this in perspective, the Eee PC 1005HA Seashell was able to get 1570 PCMarks, even though it has an older processor. In fact, the 1005HA had a CPU score of 1559, compared to the 1458 achieved by the N450 in the Samsung. As expected, the Samsung N220 was not able to complete the full suite of benchmarks from 3DMark06. This is par for the course for netbooks in general, so as before, I removed the Batch Size Tests and got a score of 140 3DMarks.
Closing Thoughts
With all of the hullabaloo surrounding the new Pine Trail platform from Intel, I had high hopes for what the Samsung N220 netbook could offer over its predecessors and competitors. Ironically enough, it actually scored lower on benchmarks compared to Eee PCs powered by Atom N280 processors. That’s pretty disappointing for the N220 and possibly other Pine Trail equipped netbooks.
All is not lost, however. The overall performance is still perfectly suitable for a casual netbook and I really appreciate the overall sense of quality that this device offers. The “island” keyboard is comfortable (just fix the right shift issue) and the overall choice of materials is good. You can definitely call the Samsung N220 a “premium netbook”.
The Samsung N220 can be had for about $380 Canadian (after rebate), which isn’t much more than the price of an equivalent N280 netbook, though the latter can be found as little as $250. Just the same, the N220 is a cut above in quality and the premium price is part of that for this N450 equipped netbook.
Pros
- Great finishes and sense of quality
- Impressive battery life
- Chiclet-style keyboard is comfortable
- Handles live video streaming over Internet
Cons
- Awkward keyboard design (enter key, right shift key)
- Loaded with too much bloatware
- Performance of Pine Trail is a little disappointing
- Very weak built-in speakers
Overall Rating: 8.0/10.0
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Samsung N220 10-Inch INTEL ATOM N450 “PineTrail” Netbook Photo Gallery
