Samsung Series 5 Ultrathin review

Considering how thin the main body of the laptop is, Samsung has done well to squeeze in a keyboard that has enough key travel to make typing comfortable. Each full-size, Chiclet-style key is bouncy and responsive, with a straightforward layout that won’t see you searching for keys or mistyping words. Naturally there’s no room for a numeric keypad and the keys aren’t backlit, so you may struggle to work in dim lighting, but it’s otherwise difficult to pick faults in it.

The oversized touchpad is a good match to the widescreen display, as you can span the Windows desktop in a single swipe. It responds well to multi-touch gestures and has a smooth plastic finish that lets you glide across it with minimal friction. The physical touchpad buttons have very little tactile feedback, which can make it difficult to know whether you’ve pressed hard enough to register a click, but at least the short travel distance makes it unlikely.

Compared to Intel’s Core i5 CPUS, AMD Trinity is quite far behind in terms of raw performance, but unless you’re running processor-intensive applications you’re unlikely to notice the difference in everyday use. The main reason to consider a Trinity-powered laptop such as the Series 5 is price. It costs just £480 and is one of the cheapest ultra-portable machines you can currently buy, without dropping down to underpowered netbooks.