BEST FOR BATTERY LIFE

SAMSUNG NC10 £300

Samsung is one of the last big laptop makers to release a netbook, and this swish-looking effort is worth the wait. The Korean giant says that with careful use the NC10 will run mains-free for almost seven hours – twice as long as all here but the Asus. The trade-off is that the large battery makes it 100g or so heavier than the 1.2kg average of the netbooks here. The 160GB hard drive is impressive, as is the fast-scroll trackpad feature, unique in this test. Like all the machines on test, the Samsung has a built-in webcam and card reader; they also all have Bluetooth except the Medion. The 10in screen is excellent and the keyboard feels solid and responsive. If the NC10 has a fault, it’s that there’s no option of a built-in 3G card. Also, it doesn’t support the new, faster 802.11n wi-fi standard, though that’s a minor gripe.

Verdict: Samsung has turned up late to the netbook party, but at least it has brought a first-class contender with it.

www.samsung.com/uk

BEST FOR EASY INTERNET ACCESS

DELL INSPIRON MINI 9 £299

The Mini 9 is available as a standard netbook or with a Vodafone Sim-card slot secreted beneath the battery to give 3G broadband access without a USB dongle. Vodafone offers the Mini 9 for free if you commit to paying a £25-a-month contract for two years. There was no speed advantage over a dongle, though having the 3G Sim card built in does make the machine far more compact. The Mini 9 is a well-built netbook that weighs just 990g and boastsa sharp 9in screen and a good keyboard. The 8GB solid-state memory is restrictive; Dell’s own version has twice the storage capacity but no built-in 3G card option.

VerdictThe Mini 9’s memory is too weeny for us to be able to award it the fifth star.

www.vodafone.co.uk

BEST FOR WINDOWS HATERS

ASUS EEE PC 1000 £325

Asus pioneered the netbook concept with its Eee PC range. Although this machine has the same principal hardware specification as its rivals – Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1GB of Ram – the Eee’s Linux-based operating system marks it out from all the others on test, which come with Windows XP. The combination of nimble Linux software and 40GB of fast solid-state memory sounds great on paper but in reality fails to gel. It felt slow, and the large desktop icons on the 10in screen looked as if they were designed for kids, while the keyboard is a cheap, bouncy horror. Adding insult, it failed to recognise a 3G broadband USB dongle.

Verdict: Eee machines ushered in the netbook age, but aside from its five-hour battery life, this new model is a big disappointment

eeepc.asus.com/uk

BEST FOR COOL RUNNING

MEDION AKOYA MINI E1210 £280

The French company Medion supplies UK supermarket chains with budget technology, so you can find the E1210 in certain Sainsbury’s stores, and the Akoya Mini is £50 cheaper than the MSI Wind machine it’s based on. The Medion felt solid and functional, with a 10in screen, excellent keyboard and decent software for its 80GB hard drive, including CyberLink webcam tools and the useful WordPerfect office suite. Like all its rivals, the Medion features a memory-card reader. It heated up far less than the others on test, probably thanks to its four cooling side vents. Battery life was poor, at just 2½ hours, and there’s no Bluetooth.

Verdict:It’s solid, but the Samsung is a more attractive proposition

www.medion.co.uk

BEST FOR THE FAT-FINGERED

ADVENT 4212 £250

The 1.4kg Advent has only a 9in screen, despite a casing as bulky as that of its 10in rivals. At least it has plenty of keyboard space, although the function keys are squashed around the edge, and the tiny shift key is awkward. The Advent’s webcam was the best on test and comes with excellent software, but battery life was less than three hours, even in energy-saving “silent mode” – a misnomer, as all the netbooks ran quietly. As for gripes, it got very hot in extended use and while recharging, and the dongle wouldn’t stay in the socket.

Verdict: A decent option, but the Advent’s big brother, the 4213, is better value for £100 more, as it has a Sim-card slot and double the 80GB disk space

www.pcworld.co.uk

NOW ADD BROADBAND . . .

Netbooks are all about connectivity. Here’s how to get online with one.

Cable Each machine on test has an Ethernet port to be plugged into a home broadband modem or an office network.

Wi-fi They all connected to a standard 802.11g wi-fi network without fuss. The Asus machine also recognises the newer “draft N” wi-fi standard, which makes it easier to stream video or transfer files quickly across a home network if you own a suitable router.

HSDPA This newer variant of 3G claims to offer broadband-like speeds of up to 7.2Mbps to a laptop via either a USB dongle or, in some cases, a built-in Sim card. All the laptops were tested using a Virgin Mobile HSPA dongle, apart from the Dell, which has a Vodafone Sim built in. There was no difference in performance between these two methods of internet connection.

Connection In and around London it was good, although speeds rarely exceeded 1Mbps – about a quarter of what you’d expect from ADSL home broadband but sufficient for e-mail and web browsing on the go. The big mobile networks say their HSDPA coverage reaches about 90% of the UK’s population – which means good in cities, but modest in remote areas.

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