Good, but average, performance
The Q430 performs reasonably well. The GeForce 310M gives it a 3DMark 06 score that's slap bang in the middle - not up there with hardcore gaming graphics chips, but a darn sight better than integrated graphics. Its PCMark Vantage performance shows it delivering an average Core i3 rating.
Better your battery
Battery life, by contrast, is ahead of the 15in notebooks Reg Hardware looked at this year, thanks to a 57Wh, 5200mAh battery.
Samsung has installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, which warrants a thumbs-up. It has also bundled an array of utilities, but, other than its Battery Manager, nothing that really noticeably improves on the tools Windows itself provides.
Battery Manager is interesting. It allows you to charge the battery to a maximum of 80 per cent of its total capacity. Yes, you lose off-the-mains runtime, but, says Samsung, your battery will retain its overall capacity for longer. The value of this utility will depend on how much time you expect your machine not to be tethered to an AC power source - or how long you expect to keep the laptop.
The Q430's retail price is £699, par for the course when it comes to 14in and 15in Core i3-based machines. Better buying a nicer looking one...
Verdict
Not a bad laptop, just a slightly naff-looking one. ®
More Notebook Reviews |
|||
 Acer
Aspire 5940G |
 Samsung
X125 |
 Dell
Inspiron M101z |
 Apple
MacBook Pro |
Samsung Q430 14in notebook
COMMENTS
Well....
I quite like the design, but then again I did have one of those music centres and I loved it.
Not sure how the battery manager reducing capacity to 80% helps? Is it just a case that, as a battery loses about 20% a year anyway, the first years loss won't be noticed because it always ran at 80% capacity? e.g. "I bought my laptop a year ago, it had 2.5 hour battery life then and it still does today!"
Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.
Design?
What a quaint idea - that somehow design gets "better" as time goes on. Of course it's bollocks - as proved beyond doubt by the plague of those hideous piano-lacquer flat-screen TVs. "Retro" in itself is neither good nor bad, design-wise - it's just "retro"
Re; Batt. Man.
So, you're saying that such an application adds an increased chase of falling off cliffs?
They should add a consumer warning.
Sexy? Not even close!
Hell no! sometimes I feel like I am the only person left who likes technology to be plain flat black. I absolutely despise laptops with those god aweful silver or grey sections. This machine's color choice makes me nauseous.
Battery
Actually, it does make sense: these cells are all charged with a constant current source, making it difficult to tell when it's truly 'full' as opposed to 'overcharged' (this problem gets worse with cell age, as I understand it). Leaving the cells slightly depleted will extend their usable life, especially for the folk who leave the thing on mains pretty much all the time (Mrs. Ball boy: are you listening?) even a laptop has overcharge prevention - which all should have these days - because the initial state when the laptop is powered-up is to go into a charge cycle...hence the long-term overcharging effects.
As the author suggests, how useful this is depends on how long you intend to keep the laptop - personally, I'd keep a home laptop for a while & would probably still have this when brushed silver came back into fashion!
