Samsung Q35 review

Samsung's Q35 arrived too late for our ultra-portable notebook Labs test in Shopper September 2006.

It's a similar size and weight to our Best Buy, Toshiba's U200. Its angular chassis is finished in a bright silver plastic. It doesn't seem very business-like and this is confirmed by some of the features. Instead of using Windows, you can boot the notebook quickly into a media playback mode. This is laid out like Media Center and allows you to browse photo, video and audio files, and play DVDs and CDs. This lets you enjoy your media files with ease.

The 12.1" widescreen display isn't the ideal size for watching DVDs at home, but on the move it's more than sufficient, making this notebook an ideal portable DVD player. The screen is bright with plenty of contrast. It produced a clean white, smooth greyscale and bright colours. It's an excellent display, suitable for any task. The keyboard is very tough, and doesn't flex when typing. The keys could do with more resistance and feedback, though. It's a decent keyboard for occasional typists, but those with large documents to write should look elsewhere. The touch pad is excellent. It's very accurate and the buttons are responsive.

Unfortunately, the Q35 has only two USB2 ports, so gadget lovers will need a USB hub. There is a memory card reader, which reads MS, SD and xD memory cards.

The large battery protrudes slightly from the rear of the notebook. Battery life is excellent, though, lasting almost five-and-a-half hours in our light-usage test. This is half an hour better than any notebooks in last month's Labs test. The battery has a built-in power gauge, with a series of LEDs that tell you how much power is remaining, which is useful if you use multiple batteries.

Unusually, more than 1GB of RAM is supplied as well. This is because there's 256MB of RAM integrated on the notebook's motherboard and Samsung has added an additional 1GB module into the only memory slot. You can't add any more memory to this notebook, but with 1.25GB you'll probably never need to. There's a fast 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo T2400 processor as well, so performance was excellent across all our application benchmarks. It's easily powerful enough for any task you'd consider undertaking on a small notebook.

The Q35 has great performance and battery life. The shortage of USB2 ports and the average keyboard prevent it receiving an award, but it still deserves top marks as the price is reasonable for such a well-specified portable notebook.