Sooo... Samsung or Asus Netbook?

manveruppd · 26 Feb 2010 at 01:54

Is there much to choose from between the two brands? I'm gravitating towards a ~£300 netbook, and I'm currently between the Samsung N210/220 or the Asus 1005P/1005PE. I know they're both decent brands and have a good reputation for build quality. Reviews I've read seem pretty positive about any of these models. Anyone here have a particular preference?

The only fly in the ointment is the thought that for about £80 I could have an ION netbook, but I'll try to resist that temptation!

JonJ678 · 26 Feb 2010 at 02:09

Samsung. I base this on a comparison of the insides of the Asus 701 and the Samsung NC10 and the Samsung N110. The latter two were convincingly better built. The more expensive Asus netbooks may well be in a different league to the 701.

Suppose I should mention the rma process for Asus. There's someone on these forums who sent an Asus netbook off well over 6 months ago and is yet to see any sign of it. Don't know what Samsung is like yet, but it can't really be worse. I went with the purple shirts and their "you break it, in any way, and we accept liability and fix it" policy.

manveruppd · 26 Feb 2010 at 10:14

That's pretty worrying actually!

Wakinglimb · 26 Feb 2010 at 14:02

I had an NC10, was superb, my only issue is the res of the screen is too low, but then that's standard res for a netbook. Build quality was sturdy (for a netbook) nothing glossy or amazing, not on the same level as my Vaio P, but then that was £800, not £300. As £300 I would be tempted to add an inch to the screen, make it a "HD" res, and have ION. Would 100% recommend the NC10 either way, solid 6 hours battery life is awesome.

Samsung warranties are very good too, just had a HDD sent away for RMA and got a new one back within 28 days.

manveruppd · 26 Feb 2010 at 14:56

I can't really fit ION and HD on £300, at least not on any of the etailers I've looked at... :confused:

The only one within the budget is the HP 310c which has ION for £310, but that one only has Windows XP and no multitouch touchpad, things which would make working on a tiny netbook for extended periods of time much more tolerable.

The closest that ION gets to my £300 budget (that I could find at least) is the Samsung N510 for £385ish and the Asus 1201N, which at £400 is even more expensive (but might be worthwhile as it has a dual-core CPU, whereas the N510's 1-core Atom would be a bottleneck on the ION GPU, meaning I wouldn't be makign the most of my investment).There's also the HP Pavilion DM1-1102SA for about the same price range (£380) which has an Intel 4500. Frankly HP are stupid to price it that high, because the only reason anyone would pick the 4500 over an ION at the same price would be if they really needed every second of battery life they could spare.

Anyway, that's the closest netbooks get to having a discrete GPU at my £~300 budget, that I could find, unless anyone is aware of any other models I should be looking at? I'm open to brands other than Samsung and Asus, I simply trust those the most.

Wakinglimb · 26 Feb 2010 at 15:56

I meant if I was spending £300, I would be tempted to spend £385 on something which did a bit more.

Depends on what you want it for though. The NC10 is a super single core, non-ION netbook.

manveruppd · 26 Feb 2010 at 18:44

You saying if I'm not willing to go up to £380 there's no point in going up to £300 either and I should spend less? I know there's cheaper netbooks about, I was just really keen on multitouch and Windows 7 and I can't seem to find it for less than £270-280.

JonJ678 · 26 Feb 2010 at 19:52

I think he's saying that it's hard to be sure as we don't know what you'll use it for. I'm very fond of my netbook, but if I ask it to do anything computationally intense it falls over. Reviews of the dual core atom I read a while back suggested about 10% better performance for the second core, this never made any sense to me but is good reason to find comparitive reviews if looking at the Asus

manveruppd · 27 Feb 2010 at 15:48

Office work and internet browsing will be its main function (which is why I want a multitouch touchpad). I might need to very occasionally do some light video editing on there as well, which I know it'll be about five times slower than my desktop pc at, but it'll only be a last resort thing. Whatever else I'll do with it depends on how powerful it'll be, ie. if it can decode HD video without falling over I'll stick a few movies on there to watch on the road, if I go for ION graphics I might do some light 3D gaming, but, basically, whatever else it can do will be a bonus.