Nokia Booklet 3G review

Where the Booklet 3G excels, however, is in its battery life. Despite their age, the netbook's power-efficient CPU and chipset -- in conjunction with its enormous battery -- helped the Booklet 3G last an extremely impressive 6 hours and 45 minutes in the intensive Battery Eater Classic test. This test runs the CPU at 100 per cent until the battery is exhausted, and represents a worst-case scenario for battery life. With more frugal use, we fully expect the Booklet 3G to last somewhere in the region of Nokia's claimed 12 hours.

Put your life online
The Booklet 3G provides plenty of options for connecting to the Internet. It ships with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, has an Ethernet port for hooking it up to the Web via cables, and is one of relatively few netbooks to have an integrated 3G modem.

Unlike most 3G netbooks, the SIM card slot isn't tucked inconveniently beneath the battery -- it lives under a flap on the right side of the netbook, meaning you can pop the 3G SIM card from your regular 3G mobile phone in and out of the Booklet 3G in seconds, without having to switch the computer off. The Booklet also has a built-in A-GPS unit and a copy of Nokia Maps, so you can use it as a sat-nav of sorts.

Handles like a dream
The Booklet 3G's keyboard takes a while to get used to, as, although its buttons are well spaced, each key is very small. The trackpad is certainly large enough, but it lacks multi-touch gesture support and its selector buttons have so little travel that, if it weren't for the loud click they make upon pressing them, you could be forgiven for thinking they were broken. Oddly, the netbook also has an accelerometer, although there are no supplied applications that make use of this.

Display of affection
We're pretty fond of the Booklet 3G's screen. It's not perfect -- look closely and you can see individual pixels -- but we must give credit to Nokia for supplying a 1,280x720-pixel panel, which offers more screen real estate than the 1,024x768-pixel panels on most 10.1-inch displays. We're also grateful for the HDMI video output port, although you may rue the lack of a more traditional analogue D-Sub video output if you're using an older display or projector.

Conclusion
Nokia is several years late to the netbook shindig, but its Booklet 3G is so fashionably attired and parties for so damn long -- without the need for a recharge -- that we'll happily let it inside. Bear in mind, though, that rivals like the Samsung N150 are considerably cheaper and have comparable battery life.

Edited by Charles Kloet