Not as large as a 15.6″ laptop, and not as small as a netbook, but slightly larger than 13.3″ laptops, the Samsung Q430 offers everything you’d get with a laptop, but comes in at a netbook similar price, has a battery life approaching a netbook, and is lighter than your standard laptop. What else does it feature to make it stand out? Well compared to it’s smaller brother, the Q330, the Q430 features a dedicated Nvidia Geforce (Cuda) graphics with it’s own 512mb memory. See below for it’s key features:

Samsung Q430 Features:
- Intel Core i3 350 2.26ghz CPU (dual core with hyperthreading – enabling 4 cpus)
- 4GB RAM (DDR3 – 3.86gb available)
- 320gb HD
- 14 inch 1366×768 16:9 screen with LED backlight (gloss – boo!*)
- DVDrw/CDrw
- NVidia Geforce 310m 512mb GFX
- 2.1kg
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
- Built in webcam, SD card reader, HDMI out, 3 USB sockets, ethernet, wifi etc

First switch on – easy enough, quick to go through the Windows setup process, entering the laptop name, wifi connection etc, then “Samsung Software Installing” takes over… and 20 minutes later you’ll still be waiting for it to finish installing… what I do not know (yet). But it’s probably stuff you don’t want clogging up your laptop… this is a somewhat frustrating start, as it doesn’t tell you what it’s installing or give you any explanation or choice regarding whether you want it or not.

Part of this is to ask you to partition your hard drive (I went for default settings, 160/120gb for C and D or something similar). Then after about 30 minutes in total you end up on a nice shiny blue Windows desktop. IE8 comes pre-installed, and comes with mcafee site advisor / mcafee security centre, google toolbar, already installed and active.

Design: Latch-less shiny black lid. Silver inside. Quite rattley plastic silver, textured to appear as metal, but you can tell it’s not. The keyboard looks neat with square black keys much like an Apple laptop, or Sony Vaio. There’s also an extra row on the very right hand side with Del, Home, PgUp, PgDown, End which should make it easier to access compared my current laptop (a Dell Vostro 1510), and the \ and / slash keys are in the correct place (unlike my current Vostro!). There are not really any dedicated volume controls apart from the FN + Left/Right buttons, on the keyboard. The trackpad’s mouse buttons are good with little travel and a re-assuringly responsive click.

Windows score: (Windows Experience Index)
Overall: 4.9, CPU: 6.3, RAM: 5.9, Graphics (Desktop): 4.9, Graphics (Gaming): 5.9, HDD: 5.9

Idle volume: the idle volume of the laptop is quite noticeable – there is a constant fan noise even when the CPU is doing very little. The Vostro 1510 on the other hand is silent unless under quite heavy load.

Samsung Q430 Volume Controls

The keyboard is really quite good and takes very little time to get used to so that you can quickly start touch typing on the laptop. Although the wrist rest area is a little small, as the keyboard is not as far back as some other laptops, the keyboard is still quite comfortable to type on.

Samsung Q430 Side Ports

Screen: gloss is bad for reflections, when looking at a black background you’ll either see a reflection of yourself or lights or other (terrible outdoors in the sun for example), however, the black is often very black and the gloss finish makes photos look very colourful, rich, saturated, etc, almost like a high quality photo print. The optimal viewing angles for the screen aren’t great, although when you do angle it correctly the blacks are very black, angle it wrong and you get what looks like backlight bleed. The screen is also quite low, so long periods of looking at the screen with your head bent down may not be the best for you.

Samsung Q430 DVD Drive

Flickering VGA output? using the VGA cable connected to an external monitor, the screen / image seems to wobble / flicker… fault or just a design / quality flaw – is this something they all do?? It’s worse when you are using the mouse, so could be power related, however, if the cheaper Vostro 1510 doesn’t do this, then a more expensive machine shouldn’t do this!

Battery life – Fully charged, Windows says the battery should last 3 hours.

As someone who uses an external monitor when using the laptop on a desk, I find the flickering of the external display really quite disappointing. (Something a budget Vostro 1510 doesn’t suffer from) Likewise, after using the virtually silent Vostro 1510 (the only noise you hear most of the time is the hard drive accessing), I find the default / idle noise of the Samsung Q430 disappointing. The first issue seems like it may be a fault, the second, seems like a design or configuration flaw. I don’t know whether I can learn to live with these issues… (I’m wondering whether I would have been better off with the Intel graphics based Q330… even though it has a smaller screen…)

Pros:
+ 14inch screen / compact size
+ Good keyboard – good layout, and easy to touchtype
+ Good spec for the price

Cons:
- Flickering VGA output
- Loud fan (even when CPU idle)
- Would be nice to have a slot loading drive
- unimpressed by the memory card reader – easily loses contact

The Toshiba Portege R500 – a couple of years ago – before the netbook world took off – the ultra compact Toshiba Portege R500 was a premium £1600+ laptop – it features a 1.2ghz (or 1.33ghz) core 2 duo processor, built in DVDRW, 12.1″ screen, wireless, 2gb ram, 160gb hd, and even the option of solid state hard drive, before these even were heard of. So it was a fully featured mini laptop rather than a stripped down large netbook. And what’s even more important, and relevant today, is that it is available for around £300 second hand on ebay, which is the price you will pay for a new mid-range netbook. But instead of minimal features, memory, and built to a budget price and build quality you get a premium ultra compact laptop, with premium features.

However, is it any good? Or would you be better off with a “modern” netbook with low power and efficiency built in? Or perhaps even a small laptop with a 12 or 13 inch screen? Continue reading below to find out…

The keyboard is a standard laptop layout without anything obviously wrong (unlike the Vostro 1510), although when you do compare it to normal laptop keyboards it is roughly 1cm smaller, so this does seem to effect touch typing speed.

The speakers are missing – and instead there is only one speaker that seems strained when the volume is at a reasonable level.

The screen seems to have a very poor viewing angle – blacks are grey – the range between white and black (dynamice range) doesn’t seem very good. The resolution is very good though with the same resolution at normal laptops with 15.6″ widescreens. You have to sit in front of the laptop at a very specific viewing angle otherwise it’s difficult to view.

The “power” – the CPUs offer 1.2ghz or 1.33ghz dual core (Core 2). This should be adequate and better than most netbooks.

The Windows score is: 2.2 Overall (the overall number uses the lowest score and not an average – the average would be 3.66 if Windows used this)

CPU calculations: 3.8
Memory (RAM): 4.2
Aero (Desktop) Graphics: 2.2
Gaming graphics: 3.0
Disk performance: 5.1

Noise? The cpu fan is quite noisy when watching BBC iplayer – I wouldn’t really expect a laptop to be strained when watching iplayer and should be able to cope without making noise – not so with this one unfortunately. Most modern laptops are optimised to make minimal noise, even budget laptops such as the Dell Vostro range.

Battery life – says you should get 4 hours out of it. Although this will depend on usage. I got about 4 and a half hours out of it with very light use.

It has wifi, bluetooth, VGA connection, 3 USB (1 powered), firewire (mini), mic / headphone sockets, analog volume control, fingerprint reader, LAN, wifi switch, DVDRW, SD slot, built in microphone? (no webcam), Tested running Windows 7 Professional 32bit.

Size, and weight? It’s small – shorter than an A4 piece of paper in length, but wider than the width of an A4 piece of paper. It’s light as well, with an ultra thin (and fairly wobbly) screen. The screen is roughly half a cm thick, and the whole laptop when the screen is closed is less than an inch thick.

Overall – it could be worth considering. However the screen makes it quite difficult to recommend for anyone who does photography or web design. In fact it’s not great for watching TV or films either. There is a lot of backlight bleeding, and viewing angles are very poor. The fan noise is quite disruptive to watching online tv (especially with the placement of the speaker on the left near to where the fan is) and the volume doesn’t really get loud enough to counter the fan speed at times, especially when the internal speaker distorts above a certain volume.

Finding a similarly high specification netbook could turn out to be quite a lot more expensive. The Samsung NC20 with 12.1″ screen is £349 and uses a VIA Nano processor (1.3ghz), and the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is £399 and uses an Intel Atom cpu at 1.6ghz, however very few, or probably no netbook actually features an optical drive… making DVD playback somewhat difficult. And when you are looking at spending £350 – £400 you are also in the same price range as normal “entry level” laptops with full size screens, DVDRW, and all the other features you’d want in a laptop such as dual core processor.

However – if you’re looking at spending £350 – £400 on a laptop, you are now able to afford most entry level 15.6″ laptops, or even 12.1″ and 13.3″ Dell Vostro laptops, which are available with 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo processors, and full size keyboards etc. The Dell Vostro v13 – with aluminium body is also quite a stylish laptop available for under £400 – and with low power CPUs and a 1 year warranty this could be a good option. Click the pictures to embiggen.