Samsung R20 notebook (14" widescreen)

[John Ratsey]

It seems that Samsung are adding the R20 to their line in UK. It is appearing on sites such as Dabs. There's another source here. A trawl of the Samsung download site reveals some more details.

The 160GB HDD is quite generous for a budget machine but the audio could be quite weak if there's only a single speaker located on the underside and a 4-cell battery won't give very good running time.

There could be a slot in the market for this model for those people who want something a little smaller than the standard 15.4" machines without having to pay a substantial price premium.

I will add more when additional information emerges.

John
Update: There is a review of the R20 published here.

[Andrew Baxter]

Thanks for the heads up on the R20 John, 14" is my favorite form factor for notebooks. It doesn't look like this is going to use the latest and greatest internals (I see Core Duo and integrated graphics are being used) but if the price is competitive this will be of great interest. Please do update if you find more info/pics of this offering.

[jimjam]

do you think they will be rollingout new models across the range to replace the X60, X11 and Q35. Lets hope so. The weight is a bit of an issue too, why so heavy, dabs quotes it as being 2.8Kg. Thats far too much, its more than my X60

Also, trustedreviews has some more info here

http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebo...tes-an-Aura/p1

Roll on Cebit. Anyone got any plans to go, I might try and swing it as a work trip.

Cheers

Jamie

[John Ratsey]

Thanks for the link to Trusted Reviews. The weight quoted by that review, 2.39kg, is the same as in the Chinese R20 manual. DigiUK also puts the weight as 2.39kg which is credible with a 4 cell battery.

I've got no reason to believe that there are any other significant imminent changes to the other Samsung models. The new shipment of Q35s has 512MB RAM on board. Samsung (at least in UK) haven't yet discovered that the X60 now comes with the X1700 GPU. The X11 will look a bit lost if the R20 delivers similar performance at a better price. The X11 is a bit lighter but, compared with the R20, is out of touch on HDD capacity.

I wouldn't expect any big changes in the line-up until the new Intel chipset appears, but there is plenty of potential for variations with some component changes. For example, a lower power CPU in the Q35 would give a useful boost to the battery run time. I wonder whether they are working on a replacement for the X1, while I also think there is room to expand into the 13.3" size.

John

[jimjam]

I wish i was incharge of samsungs design department, there's definitely enough larket space for them to move into the 13.3 area. They could take that niche and make it theirs. Come on samsung, get your act together.

Thanks John.

Jamie

[John Ratsey]

Now there's a mention of the R20 at The Inquirer.

John

[John Ratsey]

And now Samsung have the R20 listed on their UK business website. However, the specification doesn't include the T2250 CPU being offered by the retailers!

John

PS: 2nd March. They are now in stock at the retailers. eg DigiUK. Let us hope someone who gets one and reads this will prepare a review. I can't afford to buy another computer at the moment just to see how good it is.

[timjj]

Just thought I'd register and let you know I've ordered one! I'll let you know what I make of it...can't wait!

[John Ratsey]

Welcome timjj. I hope we will hear again from you within a few days with your initial impressions. And, if you have the time and inclination, there is a modest payment for posted reviews.

John

[Sub-D]

Interesting appearance of the Q35 Red Core 2 Duo at Digi UK since its cropping up with a 1024MB RAM allocation which means that the 512MB of on-board RAM is now being released for the Red Q35. Hopefully that means that some retailers that used to stock the Q35 Red such as Comet will see them back in store.