Smoked finish?
The Samsung Series 3 range does standout in the sea of grey or black notebooks currently available and, to my eyes at least, the lid design resembles a huge Lambert & Butler cigarette packet of old. However, Samsung calls it a Duracase. The whole of the lid is corrugated, and it's apparently it scratch resistant.
Cigarette case?
Another reason behind this look is that it stops the lid from being a finger print magnet that so many other finishes are. The silver and black styling continues on the chassis top with the silver wrist pads and track pad being set against the black finish of the rest of the chassis top.
Benchmark Tests
PCMark 7 Results
Longer bars are better
Battery life for the NP300E5A isn’t bad with the 4400mAh (48Wh) battery giving results in Futuremark's new Powermark battery test ranging from 100 minutes for the Entertainment profile up to 232 minutes for the Productivity option. I also tested the battery run down time for DVD playback and managed to squeeze out around four and a half hours – more than enough time to watch the latest Peter Jackson epic, just.
Affordable and capable, but forget about gaming
Samsung's website favours promoting the Core i5 Series 3 model with this Core i3 version of the NP300E5A appearing pretty much exclusive to Curry’s, Dixons and PC World – so, easy enough to find when you know where to look.
Verdict
The Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A-A01DX is a nice enough budget notebook but it exists in an incredibly cluttered market. Indeed, just about the only thing that makes it stand out from the competition is its styling and the screen's matt finish, which is certain to find favour for many tired of seeing overhead lighting and typing manoeuvres reflected in a mirror display laptop. ®
More Notebook Reviews |
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 Toshiba
Portégé Z830-10N |
 Dell
Latitude E6220 |
 Asus
Zenbook UX21E |
 Samsung
Series 7 Chronos 700Z5A |
 Acer
Aspire S3 Ultrabook |
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A 15in notebook
COMMENTS
Re: You do realize...
Lenovo bought IBM's laptop business in 2005. Even a budget laptop will take a long, relaxing slash on a 2005 machine.
Help!
Can anyone recommend a simple 15" laptop that has a better screen resolution that doesn't cost "£100's" more? I don't want to do gaming, just programming so I don't care whether it has an Intel graphics
Love the £400 laptop reviews.
They read like a car review.
"For your £14000 the Ford Focus doesn't have a carbon fibre chassis, paddle gearbox, ostrich leather seats, ceramic brakes or a 10 cylinder twin turbo engine!
Well that's disappointing! I was hoping for more.
Re: Manufacturers give customers what they want.
In short, there are many people afraid of computers. They only want a combined DVD-Player/TV/wordprocessor/browser. That's unfortunate, but the result of stopping to educate people about what computers actually are.
no gaming needed!
I see I'm not the only one who was going to say that I don't need or care about gaming capabilities. I've practically never played a game on a computer, I don't use it for that, don't need those capabilities at all. I'm not saying it's all work and no play, but everything's got its relative priority, right? I'd be interested in knowing how a computer does at: email, generic website access, Excel, Word, YouTube, and occasional content creation or editing with some photo editing software. In that order. That's the nut to be cracked for most people with a brain, and without kids.
Otherwise it's like watching Top Gear reviews of "regular" cars. Even though buying a car today that is far more decent than anything offered 10 years ago is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel, Jeremy and the boys will have you thinking that if you pick the wrong one, you're not gonna be able to get around Hammerhead quickly enough.
Who cares?
