A Look at the Samsung NC20

The 12.1 inch ultraportable marketplace is quite crowed nowadays and is destined to become more so with more entrants like the Vostro 1220. But Samsung has always had a strong position with their NC10. Samsung announced the successor to the NC10, the aptly named NC20, a few months ago and this small laptop is now on sale in the UK and the US.

From a technical point of view the NC20 is interesting it doesn’t use the Intel Atom CPU which the majority of netbooks and ultraportable use. Instead it uses the VIA Nano Processor. What does that mean to the average consumer? Two things really, 1) it is a 64 bit CPU unlike the Atom, this means that you can run the 64 bit version of Windows 7 on this machine (although you might want to upgrade the memory), 2) The VIA Nano CPU integrates tightly with the VIA Chrome9™ graphic chip to provide fast DirectX 9.0 3D graphics with hardware video acceleration.


So how does the NC20 fair? The overall build of the NC20 is good and the 1,280 x 800 glossy screen is excellent especially when you consider the cost of this machine. Although some people prefer matte finished screens, the NC20’s brightness and contrast are both impressive.

The NC20 has a large trackpad (larger than its predecessor the NC10) and it supports vertical scrolling and zoom. The keyboard could be an issue for some. As with all ultraportables and netbooks the keyboard has been squeezed into a small space and if you are looking for easy, full speed touch typing you won’t find it here. However considering the size, the keyboard is nice but some of the layout designs the Samsung engineers have made are a bit strange. For example we are all used to the Windows key being on the left next to the space bar but on the NC20 it is on the right of the space bar.


While we are on the keyboard, Samsung uses Silver Nano Technology to coat the keyboard with incredibly small silver ion powder, which makes it impossible for bacteria to live and breed, creating a more hygienic personal computing environment.

The battery life of the NC20 is impressive and you should get six hours of usage from the supplied 5200-mAh six cell battery.

Other things worth noting are that the NC20 comes with a 1.3 megapixel webcam, XP SP3, 1GB of memory and a choice of 80, 120 or 160GB hard drives.

In conclusion the Samsung NC20 is a good machine and with the six hour battery life it would be a good machine for those who spend a long time away from a wall socket! The keyboard layout issues aside, the NC20 will make a good companion computer but as with all netbooks and ultraportable it isn’t designed to replace your desktop.

The NC20 retails from £372.57 (inc. VAT).