Product Reviews

Samsung's new V30 notebook certainly looks smart, with its natty brushed silver finish. Even better, it also comes at the bargain price of only £899, excluding VAT. Style isn't everything, though - and cheap is only good if it doesn't also mean nasty. To really cut the mustard, a budget laptop has to pack enough power to cope with demanding tasks on day-to-day basis. It also needs to be sturdy enough to stand up to everyday use. Down in Buyer labs, we put the V30 through its paces.

The components in a notebook that are likely to wear out first or take the most knocks and bumps -keyboard, mouse, screen - feel robust on the V30. The screen doesn't flex - something that many notebooks with less solid lids are prone to. It's attached to the chassis by two large hinges, so it's not too fragile. We were a bit concerned that Samsung hasn't allowed enough space between the display and the keyboard when the notebook is closed. Rubbing from a keyboard can damage a screen. Despite the small gap, though, this didn't seem to be a problem on our review unit - in the short term, at least.

The Samsung's 15.1in display has a native resolution of 1,024x768dpi. This is a tad disappointing, as many screens of this size manage a resolution of 1,280x1,024dpi. However, it's more than adequate for most tasks - and may only be a problem for users who do a lot of graphics, or who work with a number of application windows open at the same time.

The 89-key membrane keyboard has the brightness and volume controls as secondary functions on the main keys. This is a bit of a shame, as it is always preferable to have separate, manual controls for these features. The keys have a nice action - firm, with a decent amount of travel. Too shallow, and fingers quickly get tired. Too much travel quickly leads to wrist ache.

Gamers

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should be reasonably pleased with the V30's graphics chipset. It's a 32MB ATI Radeon Mobility 7500. This isn't ATI's latest graphics technology, and the V30's 3DMark score of 4108 doesn't compare too well with the 9041 scored by the Multivision's Solus 1030, reviewed in our December 2003 issue. That machine had a 64MB ATI Radeon Mobility 9600.

Still, the V30's graphics give it enough oomph to outpace the Acer TravelMate and the Rock DTS in this issue. They're also enough to handle the current crop of 3D action games, which is what really matters. The setup is completed by a Samsung CD-RW/DVD combo drive, 256MB of RAM and a 30GB Fujitsu MHT2040AT hard disk.

The Samsung V30 is powered by a 2.4GHz Mobile Pentium 4. Many manufacturers skimp by putting cheaper desktop processors in their entry-level notebooks. These don't have the power-saving and heat-reduction features present in mobile processors, so we're happy to see Samsung go for a mobile processor. That said, the V30 put in only an adequate performance in our intensive battery life tests, lasting 1 hour and 45 minutes.

This may not seem outstanding compared with other machines in this issue - the Rock DTS, for instance, managed 2 hours and 43 minutes. However, the Rock uses a Centrino processor, specially designed by Intel for its power-saving - and that means a higher price tag. The Samsung should still provide the user with a fairly productive amount of time away from the mains. We found that using a word processor solidly for an hour took only 40 per cent of the battery's life.

If you need to hook the V30 up to other PCs, you're in luck. It has 802.11b wireless networking, as well as a normal network connector. The V30 also has plenty of ports, slots and sockets to plug in external devices. There are two USB ports at the rear, along with mini-FireWire, parallel, modem, and monitor ports. There's also a PS/2 port for an external mouse or keyboard, as well as a PC Card slot (the notebook equivalent of a PCI slot). Finally there's an S-video out connection, allowing you to play DVDs on the PC, and watch them on your telly.

The V30 won't turn heads when you pull it out of your bag. But it doesn't need to. Samsung obviously knows that many users need good, solid workhorses to get them through their job - and this one fits the bill. Unluckily for Samsung, the Multivision Solus 1030 reviewed last issue does it better.