Samsung N220 tested – good all rounder
February 11, 2010 at 9:40 am
The 10-inch Samsung N220 is the company’s premium Pine Trail netbook mainly as a result of its 11-hour quoted battery life. The base specs aren’t too different from most other Pine Trail netbooks and includes a 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD and Windows 7 Starter. However, the N220 does come with a chiclet keyboard and two-tone colour design.
Riccardo from NetbookNews.it has posted his review of the Samsung N220. He was impressed with the 10-inch matte display and felt the keyboard was comfortable (good to hear after the apparent disappointment of the Samsung N150’s keyboard). Battery life was also good for 6-7 hours of real life usage and build quality was above average. At 100 percent CPU load and display brightness, the 6-cell 4400mAh battery lasted for 5 hours and 27 minutes.
It wasn’t all roses however, the Samsung N220 is more expensive than other Pine Trail netbooks, it has too many pre-installed programs on the device and the status LEDs are hidden with the lid closed. Click here for the full review (translated) and a video review in Italian.
April 11th, 2010 3:21 PM
being a user for this netbook, the praise is well deserve. the only down side was when playing multimedia; especially video playback. understandably, this netbook is for internet surfing n working on the road. but i also use it for watching downloaded movies and tv series. some of my movies can’t play smoothly especially those with high resolutions.
another problem is the memories. although i upgraded mine from standard 1GB RAM to 2GB the day i bought it, it still performed ‘slower’ than my old Acer Travelmate on Celeron and 752MB of RAM. it mean i cannot use my Mixcraft smoothly. but then, what to expect from a netbook? nonetheless Samsung N220 stand out from the rest. pricey, yet vaue for the money.
October 30th, 2010 12:14 PM
Bad: Samsung battery life – many times not as advertised
Comment: I had a Samsung nc10 which had a screen problem (screen became blanc from time to time – rarely, it’s true; somebody else I know experienced the same problem) and I returned it. Instead of this I got a n220 as nc10 was discontinued.
Make sure you test your Samsung product to be according to what adevertised when you buy it, especially the battery life. If you do not get the time they say, or a close fugure – return the product! Many Samsung laptops come with imperfect battery. They work, but not as long as advertised.
My laptop’s battery lasts 7 hours when running nothing but Windows (with no application on top, and reduced screen brightness) and about 4-5 hours when using it with internet browising, text editing, etc – the usual applications. The laptop is advertised with up to 11-12 hours battery life. I sent the laptop for repair to a company called Samuel King which does product repairs for Samsung (strongly recommended to avoid!!), and they said everything is OK, and that they do not replace the battery as … it works.
So make sure you test your Samsung battery (and the whole machine) within the grace period, when you can still return the machine and get your refund, otherwise you are likely to get a frustrating experiece with Samsung’s repair service, if the machine still works but poorly. If your battery would last 60 minutes although new, well according to them the laptop works, so do not expect any repair or replacements from Samuel King & Samsung …
One intelligent lady from Samsung Custemer Service said, when I called them, that their advertised 11 hours of battery life is just an estimate, that’s why I do not get the same figure with my 5-7 hours battery life. If 5 to 7 can be approximated by 11, a figure that is more or less the double, then Samsung definitely needs more intelligent employees, for sure …
Unfortunatelly I cannot get a refund as 2 months passed since I got the machine.
I used to like Samsung, but if I buy again this brand, I will make sure to test in detail the product at the beginning, and return it immediately if something doesn’t sound as advertised.