The 10.1-inch NC110 is the spiritual successor to Samsung's very first netbook, the popular NC10. Priced at around £280, it slots into the budget end of the market, but still has plenty of features tucked into its small frame, including a dual-core processor.
Gloss over it
Since launching the NC10 in 2009, Samsung has consistently managed to come up with stylish designs for its netbooks, and the NC110 is just the latest example. Available in a range of colours, including the eye-catching purple version we had in for review, it's a great-looking laptop with a classy glossy finish on the lid that's complemented beautifully by the all-white keyboard and palm rest. Viewed from the side, it has a swooping, curved profile that really looks the business.
Flip the lid open and you're met with a 10.1-inch display that has a narrower bezel than many competing netbooks. The screen is slightly unusual for a netbook too in that it has a matte finish that helps to pretty much eliminate screen reflections. As a result, it's much less tiring on your eyes if used under bright overhead lighting.
The display has a pretty standard netbook resolution of 1,024x600 pixels, but its viewing angles are quite wide, so you won't find yourself having to adjust it too often. It's bright and colours are fairly punchy too.
On the keyboard, Samsung has opted for isolated keys, with a fair amount of space between them. Because of this, accidentally hitting an adjacent key when hammering away at speed just isn't an issue. The keys have more travel than you'd think and they feel very responsive, so they're comfortable to type on. The layout is good too, with only some of the more minor punctuation keys reduced to two-thirds size. We're also fans of the trackpad -- at three inches across, it provides you with plenty of room to sweep the cursor around the screen.
The NC110's keyboard and trackpad are both excellent.
Like most budget netbooks, this one doesn't have an HDMI port, so instead you're limited to the VGA connector if you want to hook it up to a larger display. Nevertheless, it does have three USB ports and one of these supports 'sleep and charge'. This allows you to charge portable devices, such as digital cameras, while the laptop is turned off.
As you'd expect, there's an Ethernet jack and Wi-Fi built in, although, sadly, there's no Bluetooth support. Under the front lip, on the right-hand side, you'll find an SD card reader, and the 250GB hard drive provides a decent amount of space for storing documents and media files.
Like the vast majority of today's netbooks, the NC110 runs Microsoft's Windows 7 Starter operating system. Because of this, it has just 1GB of RAM, as Microsoft doesn't allow Starter to be sold on computers with any more memory than that. You can upgrade the RAM later if you want, but the NC110 only supports a maximum of 2GB. Adding an extra 1GB of memory is likely to improve performance considerably, especially when it comes to multitasking and switching between apps.
Up and Atom
The NC110 uses a dual-core Intel Atom N550, clocked at 1.5GHz. In the PCMark05 benchmark test, it managed to post a score of 1,607, which is not far off the score of Toshiba's NB520, which uses the same processor. Day-to-day tasks like surfing the Web and word processing are handled well, but, as with all netbooks, the NC110 can be very sluggish when trying to multitask.
When it comes to 3D graphics, the NC110 is as hopeless as all other Atom-equipped machines we've seen. The integrated graphics only managed a limp 148 in the 3DMark06 benchmark test, and it's not great at high-definition video decoding either. It'll handle standard-definition YouTube videos without any problems, but HD videos play at an unacceptably low frame rate. For video playback, Toshiba's N550D, which uses an AMD C-50 chip, is a much better option.
The netbook's battery life is good. In the extremely intensive Battery Eater Classic test, it managed to keep running for 4 hours and 52 minutes, which puts it up there with some of the best-performing models. You should get much longer battery life with normal usage.
Conclusion
Overall, the Samsung NC110 is a fine budget netbook, and a worthy successor to the original NC10. It may not excel at video playback, but it offers a really stylish design, decent performance for day-to-day tasks, and a good screen and keyboard.
Edited by Charles Kloet
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User reviews9
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RobtH 1 July 2012
Good: Small, lightweight, battery life, excellent performance with 2G ram.
Bad: Er, can't think of anything.
Comment: I purchased my NC110 and 2G ram from Amazon in March 2012. I bought it because I expected to spend a lot of time away from home this year but I'm also using it at home a lot. I'm not a games player so with the addition of the 2G ram it will do everything I require of a computer including photo editing with Picasa. The battery life is amazing, I would say the Samsung estimate of 10 hours is about right.
tyronet2000 29 April 2012
Good: Small footprint. Good keyboard. Enough software for immediate use. Quick network connection.
Bad: Right shift key could be bigger. Could has 2gb of ram pre-installed.
Comment: Had tried several netbooks in store and for the price this was a clear winner. I had it upgraded to 2gb ram so perhaps that is why it is performs so well. I have also got rid of the rubbish games supplied. Would recommend this to any looking for a netbook on a budget.
GJones 2 March 2012
Good: Extremely compact and lightweight, Decent keyboard for intensive word processing, Screen and sound are great, Battery life is awesome
Bad: Not found any problems with it yet
Comment: I did a LOT of research before purchasing a netbook, and I bought this one over the Acer Aspire One, with the intention of trying it out then selling it and changing if it wasn't quite right. Having used it now for a month, there's no way I'm letting it go.
The main things I needed from a netbook were a) portability; so it had to be extremely compact and lightweight to be easily carried around and b) a decent keyboard for intensive word processing. I work in IT and I'm a writer so I'm a very fast touch typer. I didn't want a small keyboard inhibiting my typing speed.
Portability:
This version has the 6 cell battery so will last around 10 hours without charge. This is probably the best you'll be able to get from a netbook. I can use it on the train all week and just charge it at the weekend. Perfect.
It's extremely lightweight. It doesn't weigh anymore than a paper notebook, so I just bought a silicone sleeve to protect it from spills and scratches and it goes in my bag without adding too much to the weight.
Keyboard:
This was the part I was most worried about. I used someone else's netbook for about 20 minutes a while ago, and almost threw it out the window because I just couldn't type on it. Having a 92% sized keyboard I was worried I'd have to really concentrate on typing or I'd make lots of mistakes. Not so. It's hard to even tell that it's not a full-size keyboard. Samsung have done a very good job on the keyboard. The keyboard may be smaller, but you'd be hard-pushed to notice. I think it's because of good spacing between the keys, so it's almost impossible to hit the wrong ones so my typing speed hasn't suffered at all. It really is just like using a normal laptop.
Operating System:
For those used to Windows it'd probably be perfect. It also comes with the option of using the free version of Microsoft Office which is ad-supported. So if you're a Windows user with simple needs, this will do everything right out of the box. It comes with a recovery disc so if you really needed to you could format and start again (there's no optical disc drive though, so probably best do your own backup on a usb stick).
Being a tinkerer who's only satisfied when I've got my computer just-so, Windows 7 starter was not really enough for me. I set it up to dual boot into it's original Win 7 Starter and Xubunu. No issues with drivers at all. It worked perfectly first time. In fact, after installing touchegg, the trackpad works better than it did by default, it now has mac-style scrolling.
This costs a bit more than the very cheapest netbooks, but then what's the point of a netbook if it's not super-portable with the benefits of being able to work anywhere like you would on a laptop? This, in my opinion is the best there is on the market and it is also in the lower end of the price range so I'm very pleased with my Samsung NC110 and wouldn't swap it for any other netbook.
*Note, If you're will buy the Samsung NC110, I suggest you have to compare prices before you decide at -> Prices-comparison.info/Samsung-NC110
Hope my review helps.
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