Review: Samsung R700 notebook computer

It's hard to see where Samsung's R700 notebook is designed to be used. It's just too heavy, at a touch over 3kg, to be easily portable – and, in any case, the 17in screen means that it's a bit too big to pick up and put under an arm.

So could it be used as a replacement for a desktop computer, then? Well, there's a separate graphics card (an Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS with 128MB of its own memory), which gives it superior video capabilities compared with most notebooks at this price. But in our tests the graphics weren't quite up to scratch, meaning that it'll struggle to play recent games at high quality settings. It should be fine for video and DVDs, though.

As an office (or study) workhorse, it fits the bill reasonably well: the Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor, which runs at 1.66GHz, is capable of running several applications at once, even taking into account the demands of the supplied Windows Vista Home Premium operating system. The 2GB of memory helps with this. So it's a jack of several trades, then, but that's not to say it's a bad computer.

On the contrary, it's quite capable at all of the above tasks, so it's fairly well suited to life as a general-purpose home computer. At this price it's going to be hard to find a computer that can do much better at all of them. It's extremely well built, too, particularly when budget models from high-end makers such as Sony are not quite as well designed as their more expensive siblings.

The R700 has a smart black glossy casing, and the case is nicely rounded so that it's fairly easy to carry, not that you'd want to carry it too far. The design also avoids the boxy looks of most similarly priced computers, and if looks are an issue for you, it could easily pass for a computer several hundred pounds more expensive.

The keyboard is relatively deep, meaning that the keys are comfortable to type on for long periods, and the mouse buttons and trackpad work well. There are no extraneous buttons on the case apart from the keyboard itself – no music playback or volume controls – but that's no great loss.

It's a little lacking in connectivity: while there are three USB ports (two on the back, one on the side) there's no Firewire connection for a camcorder. It does have a network connection and a modem, plus an output for connection to a high-definition television and a standard VGA monitor socket. There are also audio connections, a PC card socket and a memory card slot.

Usefully, the multi-format DVD writer is able to burn Lightscribe labels into the top of special discs. The 250GB hard disk provides an impressively large amount of storage space – it's as much as we'd expect to see on some lower-end desktop PCs, which is huge for a notebook.

The 17in widescreen is glossy, which means it has good contrast for watching DVDs, but it's prone to reflection under lights or in sunshine. Battery life ran to more than three hours in our tests, so it shouldn't cut out in the middle of a movie, either. Although the warranty only lasts for one year, it's international, so the notebook is covered even if you're abroad.

Also consider the Toshiba Satellite Pro A200HD