Samsung Q1 review

We were also intrigued by the inclusion of Dialkeys, an application that launches a translucent on-screen keyboard overlay. Tapping your thumbs on the relevant keys enters text into the top-most document window. It's a very clever tool, but it isn't always precise and takes a lot of getting used to. We found it ideal for entering short blocks of texts, such as instant messages, but tedious for creating longer documents. 

The left side of the Samsung Q1 plays host to a video-out port, a USB port, an audio jack, volume control button and a hold button which disables all user input, including via the touch screen. There's a VGA-out port on the right alongside another USB port, but you may find it hard to connect bulky USB devices as the port is very close to the AC power socket.

Inside the Q1, Samsung has opted for components you'd normally find in a low-end ultra-portable laptop. There's an Intel Celeron M CPU running at 900MHz matched with the Intel 915GM chipset. This ageing combination doesn't offer strong performance, and neither does it serve for very long battery life, as we'll explain later. There's 512MB of RAM, 32MB of which is allocated to the on-board Intel Extreme Graphics display adaptor. But don't be fooled by the 'Extreme' moniker -- it's extremely useless at displaying anything other than movies and pictures.

A range of hard drive options are available for the Q1, ranging from 20GB to 60GB. Our review sample shipped with a 40GB Hitachi Travelstar with a relatively slow spin speed of 4,200 RPM, but whereas this may cause problems in a desktop PC, it's quick enough for a portable such as the Q1. Our review sample has enough space to handle around 30 DivX movies, or approximately 10,000 songs, but there's no integrated optical drive, so you'll need to convert films to a digital-video format before transferring them to the device via USB.

Samsung has attempted to enhance the Q1's multimedia capabilities by furnishing it with a dedicated media playback suite. This functions in a similar manner to the Media Center portion of the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system, minus the television playback features. It can be launched by sliding the device's power switch to the left (instead of right to launch Windows).

Performance
The Q1 isn't particularly fast. It is fairly responsive and can run everyday applications with ease, but you won't want to do anything more demanding than play a movie, surf the Web or carry out office productivity tasks. It achieved a PCMark 2005 score of just 907, which is poor in comparison to the sub-par score of 1,327 achieved by the Sony TX2 laptop. And don't even think about playing games with the Q1. It scored a paltry 57 in the 3DMark 2006 benchmark.

Battery life was also very unimpressive. Samsung claims it can last as long as 3.5 hours during normal use or up to 1.5 hours while watching a movie. In our tests it lasted around 2.5 hours during normal use and 1.5 hours during movie playback. As a result, you'll want to make sure you don't stray too far from mains power, or better still carry a spare battery.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield