Samsung is quickly becoming my favorite in the netbook industry. Rather than hastily jumping onto the bandwagon as many manufacturers did after the popularity surge of the EEE, it waited it the netbook frenzy would catch on with consumers. When it was obvious that the craze wasn’t just going to die down, they showcased the NC10 to a pleasantly surprised market. Up to now, it is considered an exceptionally well-crafted netbook; it ranks better than many other companies’ first attempts into the industry.
They’ve ridden on the waves of this initial success, and have since come up with the newest addition to their netbook products; all twelve and a tenth inches of the NC20. Essentially a scaled up NC10, the design is quite identical to that of its smaller brother. It basically just went up to 12 inches and increased in weight by about 200g.
The primary concern here is that the NC20 is so close to the territory of the dedicated notebooks. With 12-inch units capable of outperforming the modest NC20netbook, will it be able to measure up? It all depends on what you want; those who want raw power will find more to like in the traditional laptops. But if you like the price of a netbook and don’t care too much about power, then read on.
Those who share my opinion that many netbooks have a keyboard that is too small will have plenty of reason to rejoice. The NC20 is bigger than 90% of the netbooks, so it has a more normal-sized keyboard and a welcoming large trackpad. It’s not yet perfect; the windows key somehow found its way to the right rather than the left of the spacebar, but it is still one of the best netbook keyboards so far.
One complaint that I heard was that the NC20 does not look as sleek and sexy as the NC10. Why is that so, considering they look the same? Apparently, the cute look becomes less-appealing as you make the machine bigger.Don’t get me wrong; it’s not ugly. It’s just a step down from the impressiveness of NC10’s overall look.
Stamina-wise, the NC20 packs a lot of juice through the choice of a generous 6-cell battery. Even with the larger display, it rivals its little Samsung brothers by lasting almost seven hours in light use. Otherwise, an NC20 feels much like any other Atom-based netbook in comparison.
But wait. It isn’t an Atom. this is where the NC20 dares to be different. While almost any other netbook is installed with Intel’s Atom, NC20 uses the rarely seen Via Nano U2250. So far, there aren’t any noticeable differences on my end, but I’ll get back to you on that one as soon as I can.
The only real problem with the NC20 is that you might probably need to compare it with notebooks rather than netbooks. In doing so, the only advantage with the NC20 over the notebooks is the endurance of the battery (notebooks still last around 2-3 hours, tops). As a netbook, however, Samsung continues to show that they are one of the best.
