9. Samsung X360

Samsung's X360 is a thin, light laptop with an external DVD drive to maximise mobility.  Indeed, the manufacturer is so proud of how much they've managed to cram into such a small case that Samsung claims to have "redefined the standards of mobility with the X360."

It weighs as much a netbook, but costs around four times as much, so what do you get for your money?

Handling & Connectivity

The X360 is made from a mixture of glossy and matte surfaces, and the screen is an example of the former (see right), as is the frame around the keyboard.  On the reverse, however, two-thirds of the outside of the laptop is enclosed in red metal trim.

Samsung has pared the keyboard back to the bare minimum.  There's no numeric keypad or multimedia hotkeys.  The only accessory is a fingerprint reader at the bottom right.

The keys themselves are made from plastic, and well spaced out.  In front of the keyboard is a large touchpad, although its left and right-click buttons are pretty loud for their size when you press them in.

As long as you adjust the white balance, the webcam gives great results.  Without calibrating it beforehand, everything looks purple.  Our other tip is to set the camera's refresh rate to 50Hz to avoid the slight flickering we noticed at other settings.  The internal microphone is not particularly powerful, so be prepared to speak up.

Along the sides of the laptop, there are three USB ports, HDMI and VGA video outputs, a mini Express Card slot, an Ethernet port, an SD card reader and a pair of mini jacks for audio in/out.  That's by no means a bad haul given the size of the computer, but there's still no denying that both e-SATA and FireWire would have been useful additions.

Flipping the X360 over, there's no easy way to get to the RAM or the hard drive, so if you need to replace or upgrade either component, you'll need to unscrew the whole base of the laptop.

Fingerprint reader	Open Express Card Slot
Memory card reader	Video options: HDMI and VGA

Processing Power
Windows Experience Index: 3.1. CPU: 4.4 - Memory: 4.7 - Graphics: 3.1 - Gaming Graphics: 3.5 - Hard Drive: 4.6.

Let's get one thing straight to start with: if you're looking for a powerful computer, you should look elsewhere as the X360 doesn't come anywhere near close to the front of the pack. On average, it's almost 50% slower than our reference laptop, the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi 3650.

Comparing it to a netbook, on the other hand, the results are much more favorable and the results are two-and-a-half to three times better.  

When reading Blu-ray video files, the CPU reaches a load of 9% and draws 23 W of power when the hardware acceleration for graphics is activated.  Without the extra boost from the graphics card, the CPU load peaks at a 100% and the quality of the video suffers as a result.

Gaming
There's no dedicated graphics card, just a chipset with a built-in chip, which never leads to a happy ending for gamers.  You can forget the latest 3D games as you'll only be able enjoy older games or those that don't make a lot of use of 3D.

Sound
The sound produced by the X360 is an example of just about everything that can go wrong on a laptop: the speakers are very quiet, the sound distorted and lacking any correction.  

The results struggle even to sound mediocre, and sound empty with no bass, meaning you can't use the speakers anywhere noisy.  As for trying the headphones, there's a gentle feedback as soon as you plug them in.

Portability & Battery Life

At 2.86 pounds, the X360 weighs as much as a netbook but is bigger thanks to its 13'' screen--laptops don't get more mobile than that.  

Fortunately, you get good battery life too, with 4 hours 15 minutes of continuous video playback (screen at 100 cd/m², WiFi turned off and headphones plugged in), an excellent result.

Taking the DVD player out to save space and lose weight on the laptop is a great idea, and it means that the X360 ends up lighter than a netbook like the Asus 1000HE or at the same weight as the NC10, Samsung's own attempt at a netbook. We would normally expect to see an optical drive in a laptop of this size, but if you've got your on mobility and productivity on the road, you can easily do without it.

Computers like the X360 are this small for a reason--so you can use them on the go. Mobility doesn't come without making sacrifices, though, so you can forget about gaming or using demanding applications on the X360. The screen isn't too great either. Just keep focusing on the numbers: less than 3 pounds on the scales and 4 hours 15 minutes of battery life.