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It’s the one we’ve been waiting for, and now it’s arrived – rather unhelpfully, late on a Friday afternoon. The Samsung NC10 is the one we all think will challenge the Eee PC for the netbook crown, and from first impressions we remain convinced.

It’s the first netbook we’ve seen that actually looks like a laptop. It has much in common with Samsung’s larger portable models, and the manufacturer has been sure to spend a little time on the styling. Where the brilliant Eee PC 1000H looks like, well, a my-first-laptop, and the MSI Wind is curvy but feels like a toy, the NC10 has the silver trim and little style touches that make it feel like a polished, fully-fledged laptop.

The keyboard is every bit as comfortable as the Eee, and the screen looks like every other small TFT we’ve seen in the netbook range. If we have a complaint it’s that the touchpad is on the small side, and all too easy to slide off without realising. The joint mouse buttons aren’t ideal either. But we like what we see so far, and with battery life rumoured to be as impressive as the Eee, we look forward to benchmarking it thoroughly.

UPDATE: Read the full Samsung NC10 review here.

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Harrod’s unveiled its refurbished Sound & Vision department last night – and very nice it was too – with a host of major manufacturers, including LG, Sony, Philips and HP, taking over various corners of the hall to hawk their latest HDTVs, camcorders, mp3 players and more.

Samsung managed to somewhat steal the show, though, by formally unveiling several new notebooks. We’ve already seen the X360 and X460 in all their luxurious, portable finery, but the more intriguing – and surprising – event was a somewhat low-key appearance by Samsung’s entry into the netbook market, the NC10.

As you can see from the photos, it’s a stylish-looking machine – the blue, slightly glittery finish looks far better than the traditional Eee PC-white which, predictably, is also available.

The chassis felt reasonably sturdy and easily able to withstand trips in the average bag, and the usual ports and sockets are present: three USB, ethernet, VGA output and headphone and microphone jacks. The power button is another stylish touch – it’s on the right-hand side of the central spine, much like Sony’s VAIO range, rather than sitting above the keyboard.

The 10.2in screen offers the same native resolution – 1,024 x 600 – as the majority of 10in netbooks these days, and quality certainly wasn’t lacking in the model we laid eyes on. Like the Eee PC and MSI Wind, colour accuracy doesn’t compete with larger laptops, but again, it’s more than ideal for tapping out documents or answering emails.

The keyboard itself looks and feels similar to the rest of Samsung’s range – it’s light, comfortable and offers a surprising amount of travel for such a small laptop. We’ve been assured that the keyboard is 93% of a full-size unit – and uses up almost as much width as the Wind to make the keys as large as possible – and, while it takes a couple of minutes to get used to it, we were soon tapping away relatively confidently. There’s also no sign of the Function key being positioned awkwardly to the left of the Control key, as in the Wind, although the Enter key isn’t full-height.

The trackpad is predictably small and, as such, takes a little longer to get to grips with although, again, it didn’t take long to adjust. It’s very flush to the chassis, and so looks pretty indistinct on the white model, although it stood out a little more on the classy-looking blue version. Interestingly, the blue model – a pre-production prototype – featured two separate mouse buttons, whereas the working white version now comes complete with a single rocker-style button. It was light and easy to use, although perhaps a little too insubstantial for our liking.

The chassis is an accomplished and good-looking unit, then, with a decent keyboard and trackpad and the added kudos of the Samsung label – far better to pull out of your bag on the train than one of the many identikit versions of the MSI Wind. Under the hood, though, the NC10 is virtually identical to the rest of the netbooks on the market.

Predictably, the processor is the ubiquitous Intel Atom N720, running at 1.6GHz, with a gigabyte of RAM to keep Windows XP running along at a decent speed – which it did when we got our hands on it last night.

Between 80 and 160GB of storage is available in the NC10, although there’s no word yet on whether or not Samsung will be offering SSD models alongside those with traditional hard disks. 802.11bg wireless is provided – although there’s no draft-n, as in the Eee PC 1000H. Bluetooth is optional, and was included in the unit that we saw, and a 1.3mp webcam and 3-in-1 card reader provides added connectivity.

Battery life is still something of a mystery. Samsung claim that the 6-cell battery will last for 8 hours, but experience has told us that these manufacturer-provided figures often vary wildly under real-world use. We’ll hold off on judgements until the finished product arrives in the PC Pro Labs and we subject the NC10 to the full review treatment.

The price is something of a divisive issue, too. Samsung assure us that the NC10 will be available for £254 – a mere £299 inc VAT – which sounds enormously tempting as netbook prices creep above and beyond £300. Several retailers are already listing the NC10 for £280 (£330 inc VAT), though – so it’ll be interesting to see if the price will drop on release.

Until then, though, all we can do is speculate: can the NC10 topple the Eee 1000H to take the A List netbook crown, or will it fall by the wayside like so many of the other contenders that we’ve seen in this burgeoning market? We can’t be sure, yet, but our first impression certainly suggests that the Samsung will provide some stiff competition when it’s released in early November. As usual, look back nearer the time for the definitive verdict from PC Pro.

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UPDATE: Read the full review here.