Samsung R20 Laptop Review

Samsung is not necessarily the brand to be indulging in the budget laptop arena. Samsung are the more premium range of laptops and yet this laptop comes in under £500.

The R20 F002 does not look like a budget laptop. The lid is finished in glossy black and the internal design is a subtle swirl design along the top of the keyboard. Furthermore, this laptop weighs just 2.3kg, and is only 34.0cm wide by 25.8cm deep. Overall it looks as though it should cost alot more.

Nonetheless, the core specifications for the R20 read surprisingly well. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T2350 with a processor speed of 1.86GHz, which is backed by 1GB of RAM.

However, the only major disappointment with the R20 is that the 14.1in screen has a noticeable graininess that makes it appear duller than it actually is. This situation is not helped by the glossy finish. The comparatively poor screen also makes the R20 a bad choice for anything that requires colour accuracy or lots of detail. You can forget gaming, too: the ATi Radeon Xpress 1250 GPU failed even to play some of the most basic games.

The final compromise is battery life: on a laptop of this size, a battery life in the region of four hours would be ideal. In our light-use test, however, the R20 ran for just 2hrs 3mins, while our intensive-use test result of 58 minutes means the R20 won't be much use on long flights. It's sufficient for toting from one meeting to the next, though, and should provide enough power to last the average commute.

The small chassis inevitably leads to its own minor problems; the provision of just three USB ports could become limiting if you're looking for a laptop to adopt as your primary work PC. Bizarrely, the memory card reader on the front of the R20 caters only for Memory Sticks, although this is balanced out by the ExpressCard/54 slot, plus the DVD writer.

However, you can view these compromises with the price firmly in mind. The R20 feels like a considerably more premium offering than the price suggests, particularly once you have it in your hands. Build quality is excellent, and the screen has very little flex. The wristrest has just a little give, but you'd need to give it a good thumping to risk doing any actual damage. The keyboard is good, too. It has an outstandingly solid base, with keys that provide a healthy amount of travel and make fast typing easy. Our only grumble is the Fn key, which sits at the extreme lower-left of the keyboard where you'd usually find the Ctrl key.

As incredible deals go, the R20 is up there with the best. It looks and feels like a premium laptop, and thanks to a decent range of components, it rarely performs as you might expect a budget laptop to.

Samsung has done a terrific job in making the R20 available at this price and specification - it's almost perfectly balanced, and for less than £500 we're happy to forgive it a few foibles.