PHOTOS: Samsung N130, N140 and N510 netbooks

Affordable, solid with no Windows 7 but just enough to keep you exicted

30 September 2009 18:03 GMT / By Dan Sung

There's nothing wildly spectacular about the looks of the refresh to the Samsung N-series netbooks but then there isn't supposed to be. The tech giant has affordability in mind with the N130 and N140 which are designed to take over from the popular NC10.

On first look, the keyboards are typically small for 10-inch machines but well spaced given what there is to work with but the hinge doesn't allow you to push the screen back very far which could be a problem for taller people. With 1.60GHz Atom CPUs, 1GB RAM and 160GB HDDs, the difference in prices - N130 at £279 and N140 at £329 - is purely down to a bigger battery and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

If you'd rather a little more finger space and a proper WVGA resolution, then the N510 offers something more comfortable and luxurious with the major additions of an 11.6-inch screen and the backing of the NVIDIA Ion platform for HD playback and even some gaming. It will cost you £429 but still only runs XP, the same as the others.

The big netbooks push comes at what Samsung believes is the peak time for these devices. Phil Brown, Samsung UK general manager for mobile devices, said:

"We were always led to believe that Q4 of 2009 will be the best time for netbook sales."

It was also confirmed that Samsung will be sticking with Intel for the foreseeable future, despite the AMD Vision launch, and that touchscreen netbooks would "certainly be on the radar" for 2010. It seemed very much a case that the company could quite easily make OLED, 3D, 3G and other such netbooks right now but it's a question of the devices being cheap and marketable enough while the technologies are still relatively young.