Besides Wi-Fi it also has Bluetooth 2.0+EDR on board – useful for transferring data directly from mobile phones. Not unexpectedly for such as small device, there's no optical drive, which is only really a hardship when it comes to installing some programs which are delivered that way, without a download option. Fortunately, netbook-friendly USB optical drives, such as LG's own GP08NU10, are cheap.
Cheaper alternatives available
It being such a petite device, you wouldn't expect the battery to sustain extended working sessions, and sure enough, we barely go two hours out of it before it packed up suddenly. There are others which will comfortably outstrip this, such as Asus' Eee PC series, which can go comfortably over the three-hour mark.
On its own, you're looking at around £350 for the X110, which is what the same-spec MSI Wind goes for. Of the two, the black-and-white LG is the better looking. Don't care about styling? Then look elsewhere: you can pick up a plain grey Advent 4211c for £274 (it only has a 120GB hard drive and no 3G) or the equally grey Medion Akoya Mini E1210 for £255 (no 3G and an 80GB HDD).
Incidentally, Advent's 4213, which does include a built-in HSDPA modem, only costs £330, but it's currently on sale on PC World's website for £280. Bargain.
Phones4U will sell you a pink - bleugh - X110 for £313.
Verdict
It's a very cute, almost pocketable addition to the netbook genre and while the 3G modem addition could be useful, it also comes at a price. Even without it however, this is still a very attractive netbook for use on the move, preferably with the back-up of a proper desktop at home or at work, though the shortish battery life won't allow you to stray from the mains for long. ®
More Netbook Reviews...
Acer Aspire One |
Eee PC S101 |
Dell Mini 9 |
Advent 4213 |
LG X110 netbook
COMMENTS
It's not a netbook.
It's a shrunken laptop. A netbook would be half the price and use Google docs to store everything in the cloud. Surely that's the definition of a netbook.
pink
I think lots of these will be bought in the run up to Feb 14th...
And the users of these machines will hardly care about the specs as long as it has a 'Start' button and is shiny & pink.
My wife already wants one. Honestly, I despair sometimes.
Where's the IT angle merely because it hardly matters to my wife, and presumably others.
My 2p
>"Why no review of the Samsung NC10 yet?" - EdWeb
-Indeed. Especially when it's widely accepted as being the bees knees by everyone. "Samsung haven't sent us one yet" is a poor excuse.
>"The X110 is currently on sale online for a credit-crunchtastic £299 without the 3G option" - El Reg
-£299 is definitely not buttons and washers but the [superior in every way?] Samsung NC10 can be had for £299 from Amazon too. Which surely reduces the relevance of (yet) a(nother) rebadged Wind.
>"It's almost pocketable at a mere 264 x 177 x 30mm in size and 1.2kg in weight." - El Reg
-Like pretty much every other aspect of this machine. This is a thouroughly average spec compared to competitors that have been available for 6 months or more. Why the overly gushing text and fairly weighty final percentage for a thouroughly average (and thus, at £300+, overpriced) machine? Quite comical in light of your recent article on UGC vs 'expert' reviews.
>"Aspire One!!!" - Mr & Mrs Johnny & Jenny Predictable, every hour, on the hour.
-Yes. If 2 hours of battery life (and upgrading the innards being a b!tch) is sufficient for peoples needs. Which for most folk, it isn't. So you need to drop £50+ on an extended life battery that'll stick out the erse of the AA1. And by then you'll have spent more than you would've on an EEE 901 or similar.
>"Linux?!" - Mr & Mrs Johnny & Jenny Predictable, every hour, on the hour.
-Linux: So good, they couldn't give it away, eh? Which is maybe a shame for the undoubtedly noble cause of (F)OSS, but them's the breaks and £20 for a copy of XP is hardly the rip-off of the century, all told. Admittedly there are a few proprietary stumbling points, but the iron MS grip is definitely loosening in many key areas, with the ever increasing uptake of cross platform apps like Firefox, OOo, Gmail, etc. If it really irks you, send off for your XP EULA refund - which, at the end of the day, will be approx. £7.39 at best). Linux is like the Lib Dem party - all worthy etc. Not gonna be a dominant force any time soon though. But very useful as a pressure group of sorts for snapping at the heels of the big boys and keeping 'em in check.
>"Bar Charts Need Work" - AC@17:03
-Agreed. Not just the colours. The arrangement of the legend is counter-intuitive (it should be arranged so that sequentially, the legend corresponding to the bars from top to bottom are read in the legend as column 2 following column 1, rather than the legend being arranged in sequential rows). And why is the EEE 901 (as a onetime benchmark in the eyes of El Reg, non?) not included in the results?
Bar Charts Need Work
In this day and age when nobody is running 8 bit displays anymore, why do we have bar charts with 2 or 3 very similar shades of the same colors? Isn't the whole point to make the colors as distinctive as possible? I'm sure there's some reason why this didn't happen, it just wasn't a good one.
Heard of a VGA out?
>> many web pages appear cramped and cut off in their prime – no one is likely to use this as >> a replacement for their desktop. (from the article)
It has a VGA out, so why wouldn't you use it as a replacement for a desktop - provided you kept your monitor and the machine was powerful enough?
