Review: Samsung Q330 laptop

Samsung's Q330 Core i3 laptop. Photo / Supplied

Samsung's new Q330 laptop is as aesthetically stunning as it is practical. All told, it was hard to fault it.

Heft-wise the Q330's petite and yet portable 13.3-inch form factor and serviceable sub-2kg weight meant it is also pretty usable in a wide variety of situations, consuming a minimal amount of space in a backpack or laptop bag.

Look and feel

It's also a very practical bit of kit, and thanks to the combination of a Core i3 CPU and Intel 3D graphics it was able to deliver a solid mobile performance on a bang-per-buck basis.

The Q330 also sports a rather tasty metallic finish. Where the 330 really shines however is its keyboard. It's oversized return, backapace and enter keys also make knocking out documents (like this story) a breeze. Acres of connectivity options also round things out with an HDMI output allowing you to watch full HD movies via a flatscreen (which is ideal for hotels when travelling), add to this a VGA out, three USB ports plus DVD drive and you're cooking with gas.

As a red-blooded Android phone owner, I usually charge my phone using a spare USB cable. Samsung has taken this one step further with what they call USB sleep charge technology which lets you use a spare USB port to charge up digital doodads without having to start the laptop up.

The Q330 also has another nifty trick up its sleeve - called AllShare, it allows the Q330 to wirelessly stream HD video to DLNA compatible network connected gadgets, including Samsung's more recent TVs and its Galaxy handset.

Getting media on and off my phone used to be a time-consuming exercise in finding lost and tangled cables and finally waiting till files had transferred, but thanks to the Q330's Bluetooth 3.0, I'm synching podcasts and music to my phone at the astonishing speed of 24Mbit/s.

Performance

The review model had 3GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive plus an Intel Core i3 clocked at a respectable 2.27GHz, running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit. The Q330 felt positively zippy and responsive.

As you'd expect with a lappy from Sammy, its LED-backlit LCD screen was top notch. Whilst vivid, bright and crispy, it's resolution of 1366×768 HD video meant full HD video playback wasn't a goer and Intel's HD Graphics silicon was also barely able to cope with most games I tried on medium graphic settings. This said, for knocking out documents, emailing, word processing or watching a movie in standard definition, the Q330 barely broke a sweat.

The press release materials talked up a five-hour battery life and the Q330 uses a capacious six-cell battery model and a multitude of clever power management options to wring just over four and a half hours of uptime before needing some wall socket nourishment.

Verdict

At $2299 the Q330 is a solid and well spedcc'd choice that represents eye pleasing and solid value for money to business travellers. Having said this, gamers may feel somewhat underwhelmed by the Q330's lack of dedicated graphics processing grunt.

Samsung Q330 laptop
$2299

Tech Specs
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Screen: 13.3inches 1366×768
CPU: Intel Core i3 at 2.27GHz
RAM: 3GB
Storage: 320GB HDD, DVD drive
Connectivity: 3x USB, mic and headphone jacks, HDMI, ethernet, monitor, Bluetooth 3.0
Size: 293x207x25mm
Weight: 1.97kg