NbC: Samsung N120 Review
May 18, 2009 at 9:32 am
Performance
The Samsung N120 is powered by the most common chipset combination seen in netbooks today. It has a 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom processor paired with the Intel 945GSE chipset. Graphics are served by Intel’s GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 950 chipset. It would have been nice to see the N120 come with the slightly faster 1.66GHz N280 Atom CPU or GMA 500 graphics chipset.
Whilst some may rightfully say that there is little real world difference between the N270 and N280 Atom processors, the tools that manufacturers provide also make a difference. For instance, Asus provides the ‘Super Hybrid Engine’ utility in its Eee PC netbooks which allow you to overclock (or underclock) the CPU depending on usage. This means that the 1.66GHz N280 CPU found in the Eee PC 1000HE can be overclocked to 1.75GHZ if you need the boost.
Unfortunately, Samsung provides no such utility. Yes, you can ‘flex’ the CPU speed within the Battery Manager from Minimum, Maximum or Auto. However, there is no overclocking or underclocking done here, all that these settings do is to change the multiplier used for the CPU. So on the Minimum setting, the multiplier will stay at 6x (c800MHz), whilst on the Maximum setting, the multiplier will stick at 12x (1,600MHz). This means that if you need the boost, the Asus 1000HE at 1.75GHz should, in theory, be over 9 percent faster than the Samsung N120.
I found the Samsung N120 to be perfectly acceptable for light multi-tasking which included browsing, streaming music as well as using Office documents. You won’t have any problems running a few applications at a time, although this does depend on which applications you use. Using more CPU-efficient applications, as highlighted in a recent feature, should enable you to make the most of the netbook experience. Using the Opera browser, for example, I had no problem in opening over 10 windows without causing the N120 to slow.
Video
Streaming videos on YouTube was no problem, whether in the browser window or in full-screen mode. CPU utilisation crept to over 80 percent, but the video played clearly and smoothly. Trying to watch HD videos on YouTube was a different kettle of fish, none of the videos I tried worked and were a bit behind the capabilities of the N120. HD videos on Vimeo were much better, but I did notice some skipped frames, something I didn’t notice on the 1000HE.
Playing standard-definition videos from the hard drive, in the AVI file format, was a smooth experience. CPU utilisation averaged 25 percent when using the Videolan utility app. There were no hiccups in performance even in the very busy scenes. In terms of HD 720p video, I had much more success in playing a range of different HD trailers than was the case with the Asus 1000HE.All files were played through Vlan, rather than Quicktime or Windows Media Player. There were some frames dropped, but only very few and not enough that spoiled the experience.
Benchmarks
We ran a number of different benchmarks similar to the one used for the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. We have also used a few new benchmarks to round off the overall picture. This includes lightweight applications to test some relatively typical uses for netbooks in the form of the Futuremark Peacekeeper and Powerbench Powerflasher browser benchmarks.
It is worth noting, that in some of the benchmarks below, we have included the results recorded by the Asus Eee PC 1000HE as a point of comparison. The 1000HE was benched in the High Performance Mode and not the overclocked Super Performance Mode. The Samsung N120 was benched on the Auto CPU speed setting. All benchmark tests were undertaken in battery mode.
Boot time
The Samsung N120 was reasonably quick to boot up, taking just 34 seconds to reach the Start menu. Shutting down took longer at 54 seconds. Both of these were average times taken across three attempts. It didn’t have the fastest boot time seen, but was respectable nonetheless.
PCMark05
We spent quite a few hours to try to get a result in PCMark05, but for some it just wouldn’t work for us. For our last review, it took a similar amount of time to get a result. Whilst we did end up getting a result last time round, we feel that the time invested is just not worth it. Therefore, we have decided to drop PCMark05 from our future benchmark tests.
GeekBench
Geekbench provides a number of different benchmarks to accurately measure processor and memory performance. The Samsung N120 produced a score of 877 against the 913 scored by the Asus 1000HE.
3DMark03
It feels slightly pointless running 3DMark tests for netbooks, given how far behind they are compared to low-end desktops. Regardless, we recorded the results across the 3DMark03 and 3DMark06 benchmarks. In 3DMark03, the Samsung N120 scored 734 3DMarks, slightly behind the 1000HE at 780 3DMarks.
3DMark06
In 3DMark06, the Samsung N120 managed 87 3DMarks, once again just marginally behind the 1000HE which scored 93 3DMarks.
Super Pi
Using Super Pi to calculate Pi to 1 million digits took the Samsung n120 93 seconds, 5 seconds slower than the Asus Eee PC 1000HE.
For those that may be interested, we ran Super Pi across all digits and we have included the results below.
wPrime
The wPrime test threw a spanner in the works compared to the results seen so far. Under the 32M setting, the Samsung N120 took 124 seconds to complete. This is 21 seconds faster than it took the 1000HE to complete.
I don’t really understand why this would be the case, however the N120 also bettered the 1000HE on the 1024M setting. On this setting, the N120 took 3,968 seconds compared to 5,776 seconds for the 1000HE. That is a difference of over 30 minutes in the N120’s favour.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a free compression tool and genuine alternative to WinRAR. Decompressing a large file is one of those places where a slower CPU can leave you waiting for a few seconds, so we thought it would be a fitting application to test. Using the internal benchmark this measures compression and decompression performance in MIPS and provides an average result.
It is multi-threaded so takes advantage of the latest multi-core enabled CPUs. The N270 Atom CPU supports Hyper-Threading Technology, allowing the operating system to run two threads on one core. We therefore ran the benchmark using two CPU threads. We left the benchmark to accumulate at least 10 runs using a 32MB and 64MB Dictionary size in order to get a solid, average result.
In the 32MB test it scored 1295 MIPS whilst in the 64MB mode it scored 1265 MIPS. We will look to see how this compares to other netbooks in future reviews.
Peacekeeper
FutureMark’s Peacekeeper is a benchmark that uses JavaScript to measure browser performance during web rendering. Given that one of the main tasks on netbooks is surfing the net, we thought it we would be an apt benchmark to start tracking. However, as you would expect, the performance can differ greatly depending on which browser is used.
For this test, we ran it across Internet Explorer 8 (8.0.6001.18702), Firefox (3.0.10) and Opera (9.64). As can be seen below, Opera gave the best performance, followed by Firefox. IE8 was a distinct third.
PowerBench Powerflasher
Powerbench Powerflasher measures the performance of applications designed in Adobe Flash 10. As with the Peacekeeper benchmark, we tested it across three different browsers as stated above. This time around Firefox took the marginal lead from Opera, whilst IE8 remained bottom.
CrystalMark
CrystalMark is a benchmarking utility for testing your computer performance by running various benchmark tests. CrystalMark lets you test your CPU, memory, HDD and Video (GDI, Direct Draw, OpenGL). The overall score of 28,369 was slightly lower than the 1000HE which scored 30,146.
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark evaluates the performance of your hard drives based on two tests – a sequential read/write test and a random read/write test. You can select the drive to test, the number of test and the size of the data to test which can be 50MB, 100MB, 500MB and 1000MB.
The results displayed below have been conducted using 5 rounds of the 100MB test. The read/write speeds were found to be slightly lower than the HDD found in the Asus 1000HE.
HD Tune
HD Tune is a hard disk utility that can measure the raw performance of your drive, including transfer rate, burst rate and access time. The average transfer rate was 51.0 MB/sec whilst access time was 17.5ms.
May 18th, 2009 1:19 PM
Feedback so far suggests that people are liking the larger N120 keyboard. Well played Samsung.
May 19th, 2009 8:33 PM
i would like a larger keyboard, but with a larger screen too.
something like 11,6″ oder so – i think it would fit in the n120 case
is this one a review smapleor have you bought it ? in Germany they sell the N110 only with the 58 Wh // 5.2 Ah battery, but the reviewers get the 64 Wh // 5.9Ah one.
good review
May 19th, 2009 9:15 PM
We tested a final retail version, as you would find in the shops here in the UK. As far as I know all Samsung N120 netbooks come with the 5900mAh 6-cell battery.
May 20th, 2009 11:29 AM
In my view, literally, the most important aspects in regard to netbooks are display quality and weight/size. Because I will use it for seeing informations not writing that much, that I will do either at the office or home desktop. And unfortunately, the bulk of newer and announced netbooks is worse than before: the unending trend for glossy displays kills the usability at least for me. (plus that so few are available with built in 3G/UMTS modems.)
May 20th, 2009 11:51 AM
No doubt, everyone has a different view as what are the most important netbook considerations. We should perhaps do a poll at some point to find out what comes out on top!
May 20th, 2009 9:45 PM
The U.S. version has a 5200mah battery. Interesting as the U.S. N110 is 5900mah while most N110’s in Europe are 5200mah..
May 20th, 2009 10:47 PM
I wasn’t aware of that, thanks for the clarification!
June 11th, 2009 6:25 AM
Sorry, but this is stupid.
If they’re going to make it this big, the display should be BIGGER. A 1024 x 600 display has you scrolling around constantly, especially vertically. If you have room for it, a 720p display at 11″ or so would be MUCH BETTER.
Sorry, but the size of a netbook matters. I take my 9″ netbook (too small) lots of places I would never take my 13″ laptop. Make it too big and its not a netbook anymore, at least to me. If you’re going to put a 10″ display in the thing, make it no bigger than necessary. You can find perfectly acceptable keyboards on 10″ netbooks (check out the HP 2140 for example), without resorting to this.
They didn’t “squeeze” the keyboard into anything. They just cranked the bezel up until the regular keyboard fit. Not for me.
June 25th, 2009 5:13 PM
It bears mentioning that the N120 also supports charging peripherals while in sleep mode through a BIOS setting. In addition, the internal wireless card can be changed for one that supports draft 802.11n (the Intel 5300 is your best bet).
June 25th, 2009 5:19 PM
We did mention that two of the USB ports are chargeable on page 4, something that most other reviews missed. Also, not many mentioned the fact that the N120 has a multi-touch touchpad.
September 8th, 2009 8:36 PM
I just ordered the samsung N120. I would like to play dvd movies on it. what do you suggest I do to accomplish this.
Thanks
ann
September 23rd, 2009 2:51 AM
Thank you for your review of N120, it’s mostly convinced me to buy one – my local university has a sale, it’s priced at USD $371, and its battery is 9-10 hours (regional Hong Kong variation I’ve been told).
September 23rd, 2009 2:52 AM
PS. No sales tax
January 24th, 2010 5:59 PM
I have one of these machines that i picked up for $299. I’m fighting the kids over who gets to use it. The battery seems to alst forever, it’s fully functional, and yes, the screen size is a bit small but for the price i’m happy to deal with it. The screen size is adequate to watch video, and there are only a few websites that require careful scrolling and panning. This is a great airplane worker – small enough for the tray table, big enough to get real work done.
I asked my office to buy two more for “floaters” that employees can grab on their way out the door for work trips.
in short, i love it.