Product Reviews

We don't see a lot of budget notebooks from Samsung, as it's better known for snazzy ultra-portables such as the Q40, reviewed in last month's Labs. The R20 doesn't look like a budget notebook, though, as it's slender and has a stylish, glossy black lid.

The battery is a long, thin cylinder that protrudes out past the lid. It has a built-in indicator with five LEDs to tell you how much charge remains. This is visible on the bottom of the notebook even when the battery is inserted.

However, the battery's small 38.5Wh capacity meant the R20 managed only a disappointing one-and-a-half hours in our light usage test. This is a real pity as it's a lightweight and compact notebook, and would be well suited to mobile use. The size is kept down by the small 14.1in display. This has the same 1,280x800 resolution as the more common 15.4in displays, though. It's capable of a clean and fairly bright white, but there's an unpleasant grain across the surface of the screen that detracts from fine detail. It also has poor vertical viewing

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angles, so you have to angle the display precisely to get the best picture.

Between the display and the keyboard is an engraved pattern of swirls. The keyboard is marked with an italicised font that looks rather ugly. In every other respect, though, the keyboard is fine and the big keys make typing easy.

The edges of the R20 are light on ports. There are only two USB2 ports, and no FireWire port. The memory card reader supports only Sony's Memory Stick format, which is annoying as even Sony has started putting SD card slots on many of its own notebooks.

Inside there's an Intel Core 2 Duo T2250 dual-core processor along with 1GB of memory, which is an impressive combination at this price. Sadly, the onboard graphics chipset uses up more RAM than necessary: either 128MB or 256MB, depending on the BIOS settings. This didn't affect our benchmarks too much, but those doing demanding tasks should reduce this setting to 128MB to free up as much memory as possible. The graphics chipset isn't up to playing modern games, but you will be able to play older titles at low detail settings.

The 160GB hard disk gives plenty of space for storing media such as music and video files. This notebook comes with Windows Vista Home Premium, so you can use Windows Media Center to organise and browse your files. A DVD writer is fitted so you can back up files or burn home movies.

The R20 has a good specification for the price, and is a good choice for those on tight budget that want a dual-core processor and a large hard disk. However, the grainy screen, limited number of ports and poor battery life hold it back.