Review: Samsung R700 notebook PC

Going by its looks, Samsung’s R700 notebook ought to cost more than it does.

While no-one is going to mistake it for a Sony Vaio or a Macbook, its design is better than those of similar computers priced at under £600. The glossy case looks stylish with its rounded design and, while it’s not light at a touch over 3kg, it’s easy to pick the R700 up and move it around the house. As a desktop replacement, albeit a fairly basic one, most people won't take it out of the house too often.

The reason it qualifies as being only a basic desktop replacement is its graphics card. While more heavy-duty workhorse notebooks will include a high-spec card to cope with modern games, this one only uses an Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS with 128MB of Ram.

That’s not bad and it certainly beats the onboard graphics to be found on smaller and cheaper models, but it’s not going to cope with any kind of recent 3D game graphics – not at good detail levels, anyway. The computer’s 3Dmark05 score of 3,188 bears this out.

That said, the other graphical aspect of a home desktop replacement is DVD and video, and in this respect the R700 fares well; it also benefits from the Media Center software included with Vista (Home Premium is installed as standard). The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T5450, running at 1.66GHz, backed up with 2GB of Ram. The PCmark05 score of 4,257 is reasonable for this kind of computer.

Samsung hasn’t been stingy with the hard drive and ships a 250GB model as standard, so it will have plenty of room for music and video files. The 17in widescreen display is well-suited for movie watching, too, being a high-contrast model, but its glossy coating means screen reflections will be a problem in bright light.

The computer comes with a good-quality keyboard, on which the keys recess well when pressed, making it pleasant to use even after hours of typing. This is something that good-looking notebooks tend to get wrong, so it’s especially good to see here. There are no customisable buttons (for media playback and so on), but that’s no great loss.

The three USB ports are welcome, but the R700 lacks a Firewire socket, which will be a problem for anyone wanting to use it for editing video. It does come with both wired Gigabit Ethernet and modem connections, as well as built-in 802.11g capability. Display-wise, there’s an HDMI port and a VGA connector, as well as standard audio connections.

There’s also an Expresscard slot and a multiple memory card reader (for smaller cards only, so it’s not much use for Compactflash users). The DVD drive is Lightscribe-capable, so you can burn labels directly if you have a supply of Lightscribe discs.

There’s a one-year warranty, which is shorter than can be found on some of the R700’s competitors, but it is valid internationally, something that’s worth a lot should you leave the country with it. That said, the R700’s size and weight tell us this laptop isn’t going to find its way into many travellers’ hand luggage.

A maximum battery life of just over three hours is another bonus, although again this notebook is likely to be plugged in much of the time. The Samsung R700 is a quality desktop replacement notebook housed in an equally impressive chassis. It’s certainly capable of impressive general purpose performance, but those after a portable gaming machine need to look elsewhere.