Size / Price / Performance. Review Samsung 305U1A-A03 Netbook

    Having served me faithfully for two years, the Samsung NC10 with Wimax has already begun to get its inhibition. My patience snapped, and I began to look for a more productive alternative.

    Basic requirements: small size (frequent business trips and, consequently, the netbook form factor), acceptable performance for a netbook, low price (NC10 took for 12,500 rubles).

    It was decided to abandon Wimax: the experience of using Yota, the size of coverage and the quality of communication, coupled with the new iota tariffs, showed that Wimax, by and large, is useless pampering for me.

    I began to look closely at what is now on the market, and as a result, my choice fell on the Samsung 305U1A-A03.





    Of course, first came to mind netbooks on the Atom platform in conjunction with Ion2. But then I found out about the AMD Fusion family with the integrated Ati Radeon 6310 GPU. I won’t be hollow out which is better and more productive. Just for myself, I realized that I want to take a netbook on this platform.

    The choice so far is not particularly: ASUS 1215B, which has the largest screen among “classmates” (half an inch more), but has congenital birth problems (eg glitches with a touchpad). This is solved by self-gluing with tape, or by sending immediately after purchase directly to the service center.

    I will not list the other alternatives (in general, there are not so many of them ), I will only say that, apparently, the best option on this platform is the HP PAVILION dm1-3201er: it has a lot of attractiveness (4 gig of RAM, hard for 500 gig, and it works not on the usual 5400 r / s speed for laptops, but on the usual "desktop" 7200 r / s, Windows 7 Home Premium), but the only thing embarrassed and stopped, this is the average price in Yandex at 17635 rubles.

    And recently, an offer from Samsung codenamed 305U1A-A03 appeared on the market and at a price of less than 15 thousand rubles. I decided to remain faithful to the brand, although I choose, as a rule, in terms of functionality / price / quality, and not on the basis of commitment to a particular brand. But here the case happened when the attractive price coincided with the requirements and wishes.



    So, the main characteristics:

    Processor : E-350 1600 MHz
    Processor Code: E-350
    Number of processor cores: 2
    L2 cache size: 1 MB

    Memory : 4096 MB DDR3 1333 MHz

    Display : 11.6 inches, 1366x768, widescreen
    Screen type: matte (an indisputable plus nowadays!)
    Screen backlight: LED
    Graphic chipset: ATI Radeon HD 6310M

    Hard disk : 320 GB Serial ATA
    Hard disk rotation speed: 5400 rpm

    Also:
    gigabit LAN, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11n, USB 2.0x3, VGA (D-Sub), HDMI, microphone input, audio / headphone output, SD card reader, 1.3M webcam.

    Installed OS: Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit (glad that it is not Starter).

    Here are the results of evaluating the performance index on Windows:



    Battery capacity: 8850 mAh (for some reason 4000 is written on many sites - they copy it, it seems, from the old review, where, most likely, they looked at some pre-sale sample).



    I note the peculiarity of the network connector: it partially develops (I don’t know how practical it is, it causes concern that it may break off over time).



    Netbook looks business-like strictly, has a solid look. The surface is either semi-glossy or semi-glossy (in comparison with NC10 its glossy tongue does not turn to be called). However, fingerprints are quite noticeable, although it does not bother me at all.



    The netbook has a wide touchpad:



    Samsung remained true to itself and retained the ability to easily access RAM:



    However, as I understood from the reviews, there is only one memory slot. The maximum that can be done is to replace the 4-gigabyte bar with an 8-gigabyte bar. Although they say that there is never much RAM (and I agree with this), but in this case such an operation loses its meaning (the costs will exceed the achieved effect, if any).

    The island type keyboard is large, it’s convenient to type, I liked it:



    The only thing when I put Punto Switcher, I found out that there was no Pause / Break key. While I am at a loss and wondering what combination of keys to hang switching the text typed in the "wrong" layout.



    Compared with a 10-inch netbook, the object of review is not very different in size:



    And now a fly in the ointment: upon acceptance, when I began to insert the battery, I found this unpleasant thing under the battery compartment:



    It seems that this is the soldering on the back of the motherboard. She is bashfully covered with a film that is poorly glued and bubbles on the ledges.



    One can only guess what it is: a feature, or marriage. I hope the representatives of Samsung who read Habr will help me in a solution. In the store where I took it, they could not give a clear answer in the complaints department. I understand that “this does not affect the speed”, but I'm afraid it will only get worse with time, the temperature of the film under the battery will peel even more. In general, the positive impression of the purchase was very blurry.

    conclusions


    The netbook has a pleasant, strict (business) appearance. As stated by the manufacturer, the case is made of aluminum. It is built on a fairly productive platform, you can view HD content, many even manage to play fairly demanding games. However, when I began to watch videos on youtube in full HD, I could not achieve hardware decoding, the video was slow. So, I still have to delve into the settings.

    Unfortunately, I still can’t decide whether I am satisfied with the purchase (time will tell). All due to the battery compartment problem described above. In general, although the netbook seems to be assembled quite soundly, I still found a small backlash of the top cover in the closed state, and the solution with the Ethernet connector, I repeat, raises questions about its durability.

    However, if you think about it, the price, specifications and appearance (as well as, for example, the presence of a 100% reject in the ASUS 1215B) give the right to call the Samsung 305U1A-A03 the best choice among competitors.

    PS Interesting links: Samsung 305U1A-A03: an almost perfect netbook with a matte screen based on the AMD Brazos platform , netbooks on the AMD 2011 mobile platform - Brazos (Fusion) .

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