Notebook Samsung Np300v5a: specifications, price, reviews, review. Battery life

Samsung 300E 5C with a diagonal of 15.6 inches will certainly appeal to budget users. The matte screen of the device is perfect for both personal and professional use. The laptop has good performance, which is due to the use of the i3-2310M processor, four gigabytes random access memory, integrated graphics chip Graphics 3000 standard hard drive with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm. The manufacturer Samsung relies on the excellent value for money of the 3-series models. The company offers a choice of the following device options - 11.6 "(305U1A), 13.3" (300V3A), 17.3" (300E7A), and also considered in this review 15.6 inch laptop. Processors are mainly used to reduce the cost of devices. Sandy Bridge 2011.

Samsung 300E: case design

The body of the Samsung 300E is somewhat reminiscent of the 305E7A and 355V5C-S05DE. The body of the device is made of black or gray plastic. The only glossy panel present in the design of the device surrounds the keyboard. She seems to be attracting dirt. The laptop's lid has a familiar ribbed pattern. Pressure resistance could be more high level. But the device still resists bends well. The same applies to the display cover. The design uses fairly rigid hinges, which does not allow opening the device with one hand. However, this element also prevents the lid from beating. Samsung does not offer a laptop transport lock.

Samsung 300E: Connectivity

The list of used interfaces and their layout correspond to the model 300E 5A-C01. The layout of the connectors is clearly aimed at right-handed users. External monitors can be connected to the device via analog VGA or digital HDMI. According to users, the manufacturer could take at least one of the three USB 2.0 connectors under the 3.0 standard. However, for some reason, this did not happen. The presence of a Gigabit-LAN Realtek RTL8168/811 port, as well as a network wifi adapter Atheros AR9485WB-EG and Bluetooth 4.0 cannot but rejoice. The 0.3 megapixel webcam certainly provides a quality that is far from perfect, but it is quite enough for video telephony.

Samsung 300E: Accessories

In addition to the necessary components, such as a 65W power supply and a 48Wh battery, the package also includes several information brochures, including a quick start guide. The user, as is now customary, must independently create a recovery DVD disc. This can be done using software from the manufacturer. Samsung Recovery solution.

Samsung 300E: Maintenance

How to properly disassemble Samsung 300E? You can access the system memory and hard drive using the maintenance cover on the bottom of the device. Unfortunately, there are no free slots and 2.5-inch bays here. Any device update will require removal installed elements. Disassembling the Samsung 300E to clean the heatsink and fan is much more difficult and may void the manufacturer's warranty. The manufacturer gives a 24-month warranty on the operation of the device, but this period can be extended by the seller. The input/output devices in this case are exactly the same as in models 300E5A-S01 and 305E7A-S03DE. The Samsung 300E is running Windows 7. Probably, the user will want to replace it with a more modern one. Drivers for the Samsung 300E laptop for the Windows 10 operating system can be downloaded directly from the manufacturer's website. You can update them automatically using Windows programs update.

Samsung 300E: touchpad and keyboard

The keyboard of the Samsung 300E is quite ergonomic. It provides good tactile feedback and has a separate digital block. The location of the buttons does not cause any complaints from users. Thanks to the matte surface, the touchpad provides precise cursor positioning. Elan smart pad supports multi-touch gestures. Below it are two mouse buttons that respond quite well to clicks.

Samsung 300E: Display

The factory-installed 15.6-inch screen is called AUO21EC. This component was manufactured by the Chinese manufacturer AU Optronics. The maximum resolution value is 1366×768 pixels. This is quite in line with the price range of the device. The aspect ratio of the screen is quite consistent with the common 16:9 format. The display of the device has a matte surface. The device also demonstrates a good maximum brightness - 212 cells / m 2. The user should be satisfied with uniform illumination and a relatively low black level of 0.6 cd/m 2 . Device owners are subjectively satisfied with the contrast and color reproduction of the device. Samsung 300E, like most laptops of this price category, is not capable of covering all Adobe RGB and sRGB color spaces. However, this is only relevant for professional users. computer graphics. For Internet applications and office software packages, color reproduction is quite sufficient. The matte screen surface of the Samsung 300E outdoors becomes a big plus. Brightness of 200 cd/m 2 will be enough to work with a laptop in the shade. There are no distracting reflections that usually appear at a certain angle of incidence of light. In order to use the device in direct sunlight, the screen rage must be higher. The stability of viewing angles in this case is quite typical for TN panels. The working area of the laptop in the horizontal direction is quite wide. When viewed vertically from below, the loss of contrast and color inversion can be easily seen.

Samsung 300E performance

The Samsung 300E laptop is based on Intel chipset HM75, which has support for Sandy Bridge and Ivy processors. The Samsung 300E is powered by an Intel Corei3-2310M Sandy Bridge processor with 4GB of RAM, as well as hard drive with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm. Graphics work is provided by the integrated Graphics 3000 chip. Such a set of components indicates that the laptop is focused mainly on using Internet applications and office software packages, and not on working with three-dimensional graphics. Alternative Model Notebook 355V5C is equipped with a mid-range discrete graphics chip. The Intel Corei3-2310M processor is a dual-core Sandy Bridge generation solution. Thanks to the use of hyperthreading technology, the device can simultaneously process up to four streams. Only the turbo mode is missing, since the graphics chip can change its clock frequency in the range from 650 to 1100 MHz depending on the heating. In all oriented tests, the performance of the processor is at the expected level. In the CinebenchR10 test, the laptop scores 3421 points for one core, and 7517 for two cores.

Samsung 300E: Performance Characteristics

The effectiveness of each individual element and the overall result was evaluated using PC Mark7 and PC Mark Vantagec 5216 tests. In this case, the memory device has a positive effect, and the performance of the graphics system can be called insignificant. The overall performance of the laptop was at the expected level. At the same time, a faster storage device could provide a significant increase in efficiency.

Samsung 300E: HDD

The Samsung 300E has a Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 hard drive with a capacity of 500 GB and a speed of 5400 rpm. The results of testing in Crystal Diskmark and HD Tune for a model of this class can be called quite typical. The data transfer rate in this case ranged from 36.5 to 80.5 Mb/s, the access time was 18.3ms.

Samsung 300E: video

The Samsung 300E uses the Graphics 3000 GPU, which is integrated into the CPU. Although the Corei3 processor does not support Turbo technologies Boost, you can overclock graphics from 650 to 1100 MHz. Samsung, when creating this model, was mainly focused on users with moderate demands in terms of 3D performance. Notebook Samsung 300E as a whole is not inferior to analogs with a similar graphics system both in the 3D Mark 06 and 3D Mark Vantage tests, as well as in the Open GL CinebenchR11.5 test. In both versions of CinebenchR10, shading tests showed rather poor results. Given the purpose of this graphics card, it makes no sense to run gaming tests on it. The 300E5C will only be enough for gaming at the lowest settings.

Samsung 300E: noise level

Notebook Samsung 300E in a state of inactivity seems to be quite quiet. The fan sometimes turns off completely, leaving only a slight rustling of the hard drive. The noise level under load reaches 41.3 dB. Users who find this mode of operation too loud can use simple configuration tools and use silent mode. The value of the maximum volume under load in this case will be reduced to 35.3 dB. This comes at the cost of reduced performance levels and reduced processor clock speeds. Users have not noted any deviations in the control of the fan.

Samsung 300E temperature

Under light load, the surface temperature of the Samsung 300E remains within the normal range. However, in the case of unrealistic tests for several hours at 100% load on the GPU and CPU, the temperature can be increased up to 50 degrees. In practice, users are unlikely to experience problems. The temperature of the graphics chip and two processor cores remained in the green zone during the stress test. At the same time, the value of the clock frequency of both cores remained stable. GPU operates around 950 MHz. There was no throttling observed, as all 3DMark tests that were run immediately after that ended with a small difference compared to a cold start.

Samsung 300E: Speakers

The Samsung 300E has speakers above the keyboard. Thanks to this, the sound remains undistorted even at the maximum volume level. However, bass is a little lacking, as is always the case on devices without a subwoofer. Users recommend using external acoustic systems or quality headphones. Testing the 3.5 mm jack showed no problems.

Samsung 300E: power consumption

In standby state, the power consumption of the Samsung 300E is 11.2W maximum. At moderate load, this value rises to 45.1 W, and at full load - up to 56 W. Silent mode reduces the processor clock speed. At the same time, the power consumption level drops to 23.6 W in the 3D Mark 06 tests.

Samsung 300E: time battery life

Notebook Samsung 300E is equipped with lithium-ion battery, the capacity of which is 48 W8h. The battery life of the device with the minimum brightness level, the Wi-Fi module turned off and the power saving mode turned on is 7 hours. With high performance, maximum brightness level and the included module wireless communication charge battery enough for 1.5 hours.

Conclusion

The manufacturer in the 3rd series decided to focus on providing an optimal ratio of quality and price. In this case, the good news is that the savings didn't affect key user points, such as input devices or screen quality. The Samsung 300E's display isn't bright, but thanks to its matte finish, it's good enough for outdoor use. The input devices in the Samsung 300E are also well chosen. At the same time, the manufacturer saved on interfaces.

A few weeks ago we published a preview of the Samsung i300. Then we were dealing with an early prototype, which allowed us to draw only preliminary conclusions on the smartphone, and recently we had a working sample of the model at our disposal. Accordingly, we publish an updated/final version of the review.

The need for the development of the manufacturer's company, moving forward and, as a result, increasing the market share requires constant innovation, flexible pricing policy and strengthening of positions in all price segments. it the necessary conditions for growth in any market with monopolistic competition (when the product is not standardized).

For a long time, Samsung has been perceived as a manufacturer of fashion expensive phones with poor functionality. The company was not represented in the budget segment, but then the super-popular Samsung C100 and other models of the budget C-series appeared. Long time in model range The company also lacked devices that could be attributed to the "business" segment, but even here the situation changed with the advent of the Samsung D500 model. Now we see the company's increasing pressure in various price segments, and as a result, an increase in sales.

An important segment in which the company has actually been absent at the moment is the segment of smartphones and communicators. We are used to the fact that Samsung announces new products, transports a lot of smartphones from one exhibition to another, but in the end, only an insignificant part reaches the buyer, and then with a delay. For example, the Samsung i700 model appeared on the market only when it became uninteresting to most buyers (it was sold exclusively at the expense of the brand). Any innovations in the field of smartphones from Samsung have always been perceived only as prototypes that will not go into mass production. But the company, demonstrating developments, achieved several goals: firstly, to gain experience in the development of smartphones and, as soon as the direction becomes obviously promising (it crosses a certain critical mass), immediately enter it with ready-made, already proven solutions. That is why the company supported all operating systems for mobile devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, Linux) in order to release devices at the right time on those operating systems that will be most in demand. Secondly, it is a demonstration of strength, which adds points to the manufacturer's image. A kind of PR campaign, the same as the race for the number of megapixels in cell phones(remember the recent announcement of a 7-megapixel phone).

At CeBIT 2005 in Hannover, from conversations with the company's management, product managers, it became clear that Samsung is changing its strategy towards smartphones. Devices will begin to appear on sale in the global market, moreover, the direction is now one of the priorities for the company. The efforts of engineers will finally be able to be appreciated by end users who are tired of reading about prototypes doomed to remain “on paper”. In the current product line, I series devices based on Windows Mobile are positioned as smartphones, the D series includes Symbian-based smartphones (Series 60), but the company positions them as regular phones (as well as Nokia). As you can see, there is no place left for Palm OS, the company considers this operating system unpromising.

Today we will talk about Samsung smartphone i300. By a funny coincidence, the i300 model was already released by the company back in 2001 (the difference in name is visible if you only look at the full indices - SPH-i300 and SGH-i300, respectively). It was the era of Palm OS dominance, then the Palm m500 was in use, the first color Sony CLIEs have recently appeared. It's not surprising that the Samsung i300 model was based on Palm OS, there were no adequate alternatives at that time. According to users of that time, the model was a revelation, one of best smartphones on that moment. You can read a review of the model in the journal Pen Computing (article published in 2001 in English).

Prior to the introduction of the new Samsung SGH-i300 model, the company had experience in the production of smartphones based on operating system Windows Mobile for Smartphone. This is a CDMA-smartphone Samsung i600, which was available only to customers American network Verizon it. Then there was the announcement of the Samsung i250 GSM clamshell, which was eventually cancelled.

For the company, the Samsung i300 model is one of the key models in 2005: suffice it to say that the very first slide of Samsung's Hannover presentation featured the i300 model. The model combines an innovative wheel control, a built-in 3 GB hard drive, a QVGA resolution screen. The device stands out from the general stream, it is really innovative (which could not be said about the i600 or the i250, which did not appear anyway). The company positions the device as the world's first music smartphone.

The design is atypical for Samsung - the predominance of strict lines, the absence of streamlined shapes. The squareness of the contour of the case is emphasized by a round joystick. The planes of the upper and lower ends are beveled at an angle, due to which, when viewed from the sides, the device looks like an elongated parallelogram. End elements also repeat this shape. Here is a combination of elementary figures of geometry - a rectangle, a circle, a parallelogram. The smartphone has its own face, you can't confuse it with another device.

The smartphone cannot be called too big or small for its class, rather, its dimensions are average. The model is inferior in size to the latest generations of HTC smartphones (i300 is larger and heavier), but outperforms Nokia N91. It would be appropriate to compare the dimensions of Samsung i300 and Nokia N91. After all, the latter also has a built-in hard drive, similarly positioned.

Samsung i300 - 113 x 48 x 20mm, 130g
Nokia N91 - 113.1 x 55.2 x 22, 160 g

The device is somewhere on the border between smartphones without a touch screen and smartphones with QWERTY-keyboards or touch screens. If we compare it with the same Nokia 6681, then the dimensions are comparable, but the width is smaller.

The device lies confidently in the male hand, it is solid. Largely due to the correct proportions of length and width. When leaning against your ear, the smartphone will not cause the astonished glances of passers-by - unlike large communicators. A small discovery based on the results of a small survey was that the female audience adequately perceives this phone, the dimensions and weight do not cause rejection. If we look at Samsung's marketing materials, we see a girl with a guitar next to it - Samsung i300.

The company expects to core target audience girls are also included, the apparatus cannot be called purely masculine. In this regard, the appearance of the product in several colors is logical.

The build quality of the case is at its best, there is no backlash even with strong compression. Plastic is expensive, it's nice to touch it. The frame around the screen and camera, as well as the battery compartment are made of black glossy plastic. Fingerprints remain, but almost imperceptible, not like on the Motorola MPx200. The rest of the surface parts of the case are also black plastic, but of a different texture - not glossy. Yes, and the color here may vary: in addition to black (as in the review), silver is also provided (as in official photos and in the photos below).

An innovative control element in the model is a navigation wheel with a blue action key inscribed in it. The manufacturer deliberately draws our attention to it: the bezel is illuminated and in the dark its edge looks like a small halo.

Functionally, the wheel can be used like a regular 9-way joystick by pressing in the appropriate directions. Alternatively, the wheel can be turned clockwise or counterclockwise. By default, scrolling the wheel means moving vertically through the list. Accordingly, the faster we turn the wheel, the faster we move: this becomes relevant, for example, when several hundred songs are recorded on the phone. So, the rotation of the wheel is responsible for the following moments: vertical navigation through the menu, moving through the list of songs, contacts (in general, any list), adjusting the sound volume, zooming the camera, scrolling through Internet pages. The solution is used in smartphones for the first time, it is very convenient, it adds an additional degree of freedom (scrolling speed, a kind of analog input component). I won't be surprised if a game is included in the commercial version of the delivery - a racing simulator, where the wheel will act as a steering wheel. This is just a suggestion (suggestion to the developers), such a step would be logical to highlight the capabilities of the wheel.

Interestingly, during the development of the device, the wheel has undergone changes (take a look at the official photos and photos in the review). It was originally the same as Samsung phone X810 (that is, pressing required an additional action), the texture has changed - it has become ribbed for better grip with the thumb, the inscription "OK" has disappeared from the key inscribed in the wheel.

With longer use of the smartphone, one drawback of the wheel was revealed: its rotation is cumulative, that is, the system always remembers how many degrees you turned it. Let's explain with an example: suppose the action "up" or "down" is triggered by turning 30 degrees, you turned it 29 degrees (the action, of course, did not occur, the threshold value was not passed). Next, you use the wheel in joystick mode, moving in different directions, but if you accidentally turn the wheel one more degree, another action is triggered. Of course, the described shortcoming is not so significant (it is generally difficult to notice it, and once you notice it, you quickly get used to it), but in the work it results in the fact that sometimes there are unnecessary movements of the joystick (they hit the wrong field, skipped the right menu item). The solution to the problem at the program level is elementary - to reset the accumulated turn to zero when switching to the normal navigation mode.

Note: As we expected, the company has fixed this issue, it is no longer relevant.

Let's talk about the keyboard. The plastic transparent keys are located in terraces (the inscriptions are printed on the substrate), the horizontal rows are tightly pressed against each other, while the vertical rows, on the contrary, are spaced apart. The device is well balanced, the keypad is comfortable for dialing numbers and SMS, there are no problems in use. The backlight is even, it is clearly visible in the dark.

The speaker for calls and two light indicators are located above the screen, they are responsible for indicating the charge, Bluetooth operation, missed reminders and alarms, and finding the device in the GSM network.

Usually smartphones (not to mention phones) suffer from a lack of keys on the side ends. I don't remember at least one other smartphone with as many control elements as the i300 model, the side ends are literally dotted with them, which is a definite plus. They have an average pressing force, in most cases they are not accidentally pressed.

On the right side there is a key for changing profiles, holding it turns on the “on the plane” mode (that is, wireless adapters are turned off). Next is the device lock key, it must be held for a few seconds. The key of the camera stands apart. Compared to the first prototypes, it was moved lower to make it more convenient to take pictures in horizontal mode (the index finger of the right hand just rests on it). At the very bottom, we see a T-flash slot covered with a rubber plug. Cards of this standard have recently received a new commercial name - microSD (accordingly, the inscription on the cap will most likely change by the time of the commercial launch). The maximum capacity of memory cards of this type at the moment is 256 MB (the price is about 55 US dollars). Supported hot swap kart. With a built-in 3 GB drive, the size of the memory card is not so critical, but it can be used to optimize power consumption - do not use a power-hungry hard drive when it is not necessary.

On the left side is a Samsung headset jack. Next, we see the voice recorder key, holding it launches the voice dialing program. A little lower is the music key, it is responsible for calling the player, even lower are the dual volume keys. As we can see, the Samsung i300 is at an unattainable height in terms of controls - a unique wheel and an abundance of keys, which theoretically can be assigned to call several actions (it's a pity that there is no built-in ability to independently assign programs and actions to keys).

Just a few words about playing music. As we have already said, the company is positioning the model as a musical smartphone. From this point of view, it would be more logical to see a standard 3.5 mm headphone output (as is done in Nokia N91), so that you can choose headphones to your taste, not limited to standard Samsung headphones, which sound good, but are unlikely to satisfy everyone who listens to music a lot default settings Equalizer mids pulled up, the maximum volume is not enough for comfortable use in public transport. The option of soldering wires is possible - but this is for enthusiasts, not for ordinary users. The company is betting on Bluetooth stereo headphones. With branded Bluetooth headphones from Samsung problems no, the sound quality is at a high level, but we couldn't get the Samsung i300 to work with the Cellink BTST-9000D headphones that we recently got into our test lab.

On the upper end there is an infrared port, an eye for attaching a rope (it was not in the early prototypes). At the bottom there is a sync connector, which also serves to charge the device. The smartphone supports Plug & Play Files-to-go technology, that is, without drivers, the disk is connected via USB 2.0 to the computer as a drive, which is convenient. Two modes can be set in the menu - ActiveSync and Mass Storage. Accordingly, in the first mode, when connected to a PC, it is normal synchronization, and in the second, the computer sees the Samsung i300 as external drive, connecting it without drivers, and we get a kind of portable drive. An interesting question is what is the speed of the hard drive, but more on that in the corresponding section of the review.

We get a kind of portable drive. An interesting question is what is the speed of the hard drive, but more on that in the corresponding section of the review.

On the back wall is a camera with a flash built into a metal rim, next to it is a self-portrait mirror. The battery is at the same time the back wall of the phone, its type is Li-Ion. Below the battery is a typical mount for SIM cards. The battery capacity is not specified in the specifications, according to the code * # 9998 * 228 # the smartphone reports a capacity of 1000 mAh, this is a normal indicator. The main intrigue since the first long acquaintance with the Samsung i300 was battery life.

We spent our standard tests by battery life. When playing MP3 from the hard disk with the built-in Windows player media player With the screen turned off, the smartphone worked for exactly two hours. We must think that such a result upset us. However, we conducted another test, The Core Pocket Media Player was already the player, a 16 MB buffer was set (so that the hard drive would not work constantly), the music playback time increased to 5 hours, but this indicator can hardly be called acceptable. Book reading time (backlight at the minimum level, automatic page scrolling, the hard drive is not used) was 6 hours. In the maximum load mode, the smartphone continuously worked for an hour and a half. In general, the battery life leaves much to be desired. The comparison table shows the best smartphones / communicators in terms of battery life, as well as the results of HTC Hurricane.

With 40 minutes of calls and without using other functions in the Moscow Megafon network, the device worked for a day and a half. When using the hard drive (listening to audio for half an hour, an hour of working with photos on the hard drive) and 25 minutes of talks a day, the smartphone works for one day (it barely survives until the evening after morning exercises).

Looking at the phone from the rear, we will find two speakers (they are directed in different directions at an angle of 90 degrees), which are designed to create stereo sound. For this, the SRS WOW XT program is used, the essence of which is the creation of a stereo sound effect from nearby speakers (more details can be found on the company's website). We deliberately recorded the composition so that you can feel the stereo sound, but we did not feel the stereo effect during playback.

The Samsung i300 is one of the first smartphones with a QVGA screen (resolution 320 x 240 pixels). Gradually, this resolution will become the standard for smartphones on Windows base Mobile. The difference with the screens of past models is obvious - the picture looks more detailed, the fonts have become smoother, and surfing the Internet is more comfortable. The screen is physically capable of displaying 262 thousand colors, but more than 65 thousand are not supported at the operating system level. Let's compare the screen with competitors.

HTC Hurricane – TFT QVGA display, 262k colors, 44.5x33mm (diagonal -2.2”)
Samsung i300 – TFT QVGA display, 262k colors, 40x30mm (diagonal – 1.97”, almost 2”)
Nokia 6681 - 176x208 pixels, 262k colors, 41x34mm (diagonal - 2.13")

In all cases, statements about 262 thousand colors are a marketing ploy, improvements for the end user are not noticeable. In reality (see comparison photo), the screen of the Samsung i300 loses to the HTC Hurricane in size, but the rest of the parameters are the same - color reproduction, good viewing angles. Unlike the HTC Hurricane model, the i300 does not have automatic screen backlight adjustment depending on the conditions of sacredness, but there is a manual one (10 levels in total). The screen fades in the sun, but remains readable (behaves exactly the same as HTC Hurricane, matrix manufacturer is the same). In the sun, almost nothing is visible if the screen backlight level is set to the minimum or the battery is heavily discharged (the backlight level is automatically reset to 10% in this case). At the time of release, the i300 will not have the best screen on the market, it is relatively small.

HDD

The standard diameter of a desktop hard drive platter is 3.5”, for laptops it is 2.5”. Mobile drives start at 1.8” and smaller. At one time, the appearance of 1” disks (Microdrive in Compact Flash format) was an event, but gradually they moved away from this solution with the growth in the volume of conventional Compact Flash cards and their cost. With the advent of 0.85” discs, the drop in price and the increase in the volume of 1.8” and 1” discs, interest in them has revived. Starting this year, we will see mass embedding hard drives everything from digital cameras to cell phones.

The Samsung i300 smartphone uses a 3 GB hard drive manufactured by Cornice, the actual available capacity is 2871 MB. According to the manufacturer, the device will withstand a fall from one and a half meters, the average data transfer rate, according to the manufacturer, is 5 Mb / s. Let's check this statement with a test in the Aida32 package, the smartphone is connected as an external drive.

As we can see, the speed is not impressive - it seems that the transfer is via USB 1.1, not USB 2.0.

You can see the rest of the hard drive specifications in this file.

Bluetooth

When implementing Bluetooth, the built-in Microsoft drivers were used with an add-on for playing music through a Bluetooth stereo headset.

The Bluetooth capabilities are as follows:

Internet access from PDA or PC
OBEX - file transfer (both to and from the device)
OBEX object push
Serial port - data synchronization
Working with a Bluetooth headset

Camera

The camera in the device is 1.3 megapixel, the maximum resolution of images is 1280x1024 pixels. In addition to the image resolution, you can set the degree of compression of the resulting images - Fine, Super Fine, Normal, Economy. In terms of the number of settings, the device is at a good average level.

The screen serves as a viewfinder - point at the object and shoot. At the top of the screen, icons are displayed that indicate the current shooting parameters.

In terms of image quality, the device almost catches up with Nokia 6680/6681. The details of the shots are practically the same, but the color reproduction is inferior (look at how the sky turns out in the photos), the pictures of moving objects on the Samsung i300 are blurred. In terms of image quality, the i300 is inferior to the Nokia N90, Nokia N70, Sony Ericsson k750i, but among Windows Mobile smartphones, the pictures are the best.

All footage can be viewed in My Items.

Specifications

The device is equipped with 64 MB of RAM, of which 51.50 MB are available. The amount of available built-in flash memory is 18.38 MB, it is intended for storing user data - about the same figures as in HTC Hurricane.

The central processor is Intel XScale PXA272, the maximum standard frequency is 416 MHz. As the practice of testing PDAs with this processor has shown, it easily overclocks up to 520 MHz (the maximum that overclocking threatens is data loss). After the device enters the market, appropriate overclocking utilities will appear very soon.

The huge advantage in the video performance test in the TCPMP program compared to the HTC Hurricane is due to the processor frequency and the player's sharpness for Wireless MMX.

Software

Although the device was announced on new version OS WM 5.0, it will go on sale from old version OS, most likely there will be no upgrade. Standard software Windows Mobile 2003 SE on QVGA resolution is covered in a separate article, it can be. Let's talk about programs that are not included in the standard set.

Pixel Viewer. This office document viewer is becoming the standard for Samsung's top products. The program allows you to display documents very correctly, all formatting is preserved. Neither the built-in Office Mobile package in Window Mobile 5.0, nor Documents To Go on Palm OS can display documents as carefully as Picsel Viewer does.

file manager. Carries out basic operations with files - copying, deleting, moving. It is possible to archive to ZIP and extract from the archive.

Program Launcher. An alternative to the "start" button. A program to launch the application, the need for this utility is unclear.

SIM Manager. Everything is clear and understandable here - working with a SIM card.

Task Cleaner. Task manager, close unnecessary applications to free up memory.

time manager. Extension of the standard calendar. Alarm clocks, world time, reminders.

WAP Browser– built-in IE supports WAP sites, no need for a separate browser. Why it was necessary to install another browser for WAP is not clear.

Among the built-in programs, there is a lack of a back-up utility and a program for displaying a photo of the caller.

Conclusion

There are no complaints about the reception quality. The call is very loud, it is difficult to miss it, the vibrating alert is average in strength. You can use MMF, MIDI, WMA or MP3 songs as ringtone.

The device is expected to be available in October for about $700, which is the price at the beginning of sales, then it will drop to $550. The device will be successful due to positioning, the emphasis in advertising will be placed on the hard drive, musical capabilities.

With a minimum battery life, the model cannot be called completely successful. Possibilities of hard disk are leveled by battery life, this is by and large the only significant drawback. The advantages of the device include controls - Samsung i300 has no competitors in this parameter, and the same built-in hard drive. The screen resolution of 320x240 pixels is also a plus, but the screen size can hardly be called optimal.

When choosing a laptop that costs less than $500, the buyer most often acts at random, hoping that he will be lucky: the purchased device will have good screen, comfortable keyboard, reliable case, capacious battery. Yes, unfortunately, there are few reviews on budget laptops, since these devices are usually not of interest to reviewers. And reviews on such devices are usually left by novice users who have this first laptop, and therefore they are not able to adequately evaluate ergonomics, performance and other parameters.

Filling in the indicated gap, we want to talk about a cheap universal laptop manufactured by Samsung, a representative of the budget series 3 - 300E5. This is the simplest and most affordable model of the Korean company, leading its pedigree from the RV500 series, which in turn became the successor to the once popular budget R500 series. The characteristic features of these laptops are a neutral classic design, standard hardware (Intel platform, built-in or inexpensive discrete graphics), a standard set of ports (three USB, VGA, HDMI), a standard battery. Despite the fact that Samsung models are usually more expensive than their competitors, they enjoy some success, mainly among novice users who prefer the technology of well-known manufacturers.

Specifications

The Samsung 300E5 is a typical general purpose notebook. From analogues and other models of the same manufacturer, it differs mainly in design. In our opinion, thanks to the classic color scheme and the presence of glossy elements, this is more of a home "budget" than a truly versatile laptop for work and play. For example, Samsung is releasing a model similar in specifications and price, which has a more practical body, a larger battery and an impressive variety of configuration options. The 300E5 model considered in the review is most likely aimed at less demanding users who are primarily focused on an attractive price and pleasant appearance, a specifications do not take into account (because they are most often incomprehensible to them).

The 300E5 is based on the Intel Huron River platform. (There is a less common variant of the same AMD-powered laptop called the 305E5.) Pentium or Core i3 processors are most often installed in devices in this series, there are very cheap configurations with a Celeron processor, such as our A02RU, as well as configurations with a Core processor i5 (which we don’t see much point in purchasing). In addition to integrated graphics, some configurations install low-end video cards, but not the most budget ones, for example, NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (in the 305E5 model, respectively, similar in performance to Radeon). Thus, within the same series, you can choose a configuration for both work and entertainment. But middle-class video cards in this series of laptops, unlike the mass models of Acer () and ASUS (), are not put on principle.

The set of interfaces on a Samsung laptop is completely standard, and the location of the connectors is very good: two USBs on the right, behind the optical drive tray, the rest of the ports (USB, both audio connectors, HDMI, VGA, RJ45) are on the left side, at a sufficient distance from each other. The only thing I didn’t like was the card reader placed on the cut of the front face, which, moreover, does not have a plug. The large L-shaped cover on the bottom allows you to easily access the hard drive and RAM to replace them. Unfortunately, there is no way to clean and lubricate the cooling fan without dismantling the entire case.

Recently, Samsung laptops have been using new LCD matrices of reduced dimensions. Thanks to this, the 300E5 model turned out to be 1 cm narrower than most analogues: 368 mm versus 378-383 mm for the popular 15.6″ models of the budget class. In addition, the screen surface is semi-matte, eliminating glare from bright light sources. True, we know from experience that the new Samsung matrices have unpleasant “features” of the image, but we will talk about this in the corresponding section of the article.

Unlike the 300V series models, this laptop uses a standard 48.8 Wh battery. Therefore, the battery life will be at the level of 5-6 hours at low or moderate load. On the other hand, due to the smaller battery, it was possible to reduce the weight of the device to a minimum - 2.24 kg, and this is the level of an average 14″ budget class laptop.

Thus, Samsung 300E5 is a modern budget-level laptop, which differs from its competitors, firstly, in the presence of an anti-glare screen, and secondly, in smaller dimensions (especially in width) and weight. A wide range of configurations are available, from very simple, with a Celeron processor, to quite powerful, with discrete graphics entry-level and Core i5 processor. What's the catch? In a cheap case, made according to the principle of maximum economy.

Case design and construction

The design of the 300E series laptops is largely inherited from the budget Samsung models the previous RV series. The general style and contours have been preserved, the changes have affected mainly the interior. The shape of the body is plump, with rounded corners, a convex bottom, a slightly raised and rounded back. At first, only one color option was produced - the classic one: a silver-black two-color cover, a banal silver wrist pad, black back side covers, black bottom. At the time of writing, it became known about the second version, in which the silver plastic is replaced with gray-steel.

The lid of the laptop, by the way, is not simple: firstly, it is divided horizontally into two parts of different colors (a rather rare solution), and secondly, it is framed using glossy plastic in a shallow deep “rib”. The inside of the lid is also glossy, but with a small checkerboard pattern of matte dots. Attention is drawn to a very narrow, only 10 mm, screen frame - the result of the use of the said LCD matrix of a special design. The lid is mounted on thin plastic hinges, which work the same as they look: the screen fixation is unreliable, with a significant backlash, the opening angle is only 130°.

The interior of the laptop is visually divided into three parts. The flat silver wrist pad has a simple, smooth matte finish. The platform goes into narrow inserts that visually indicate the side faces. The touchpad is designed in a spartan way: a flat surface to match the surrounding panel, the same flat buttons. The keyboard area is glossy black, solid, without recess or edging, the keys themselves are matte, slightly rough. The area above the keyboard is black matte, slightly grainy, decorated with a round button with a luminous blue border and fine perforations stretching along the rounded rear edge of the case. Under the perforation, as is customary, there are two speakers.

The reduced width of the case, side edges rounded along a large radius and a decent thickness by today's standards (34 mm) lead to the fact that the Samsung laptop case looks massive, thick and sloppy. The second, more significant drawback is low strength: the case is easily twisted and deflected, creaks under strong influences, the lid dangles noticeably. Painted silver panels look cheap, the quality of the plastic does not seem high. The assembly of the device and the fitting of the panels to each other is at a good level, however, there are a number of shortcomings, such as a slight backlash of the battery, a lid on the bottom that does not match in color and texture. In general, the laptop case in the hands and visually produces a characteristic "cheap" impression. He also lacks practicality: the area of \u200b\u200bthe wrists and outer part the covers almost do not get dirty, but the rest of the surfaces will have to be periodically cleaned of dust and prints.

The matte LCD matrix in a budget laptop is certainly a significant plus. Many users do not like the strong glare from glossy screens, and they are happy to choose the few models with matte screens so far. However, by betting on matte screens of its own production, Samsung did not take into account that image quality is also of great importance. And with this, the new matte matrices have a problem: unusually small viewing angles (the screen literally “shimmers”), a narrow color gamut (our copy has about 60% sRGB), and low contrast.

The colors on the screen look not bright enough and saturated, unnatural. The gamma of the image is adjusted quite accurately, but the blue curve for some reason has gone up, which exacerbates the "blueness" of dark shades. BUT White color, on the contrary, turned out to be too warm, with a noticeable yellowish tinge. I liked this screen, firstly, good visual clarity, and secondly, a normal supply of brightness and no glare. In general, working with the screen is more or less comfortable, but the image without adjustment differs significantly from the norm.

Sound

In a budget laptop, the quality of the built-in sound is almost the last thing. Naturally, manufacturers implement sound on a residual basis.

The Samsung laptop has the most common audio codec - Realtek, and two small speakers are of mediocre sound quality, with a narrow range of reproducible frequencies, an unpleasant timbre, booming, but a decent volume margin.

Keyboard

In short, the keyboard of the Samsung laptop turned out to be quite successful. Both in terms of design and construction, and in terms of layout. For starters, the neat, Sony-style island design looks good and is comfortable to use at the same time. Rough keys with large gaps do not allow fingers to slip and touch adjacent keys. There is no dangling screen insert - the keys are located in a solid panel without slots and recesses. True, this panel is glossy, it will have to be constantly cleaned from dust and fingerprints. The fixation of the keyboard base is quite reliable, however, due to the general fragility of the case, the keyboard field on the left and right springs under strong pressure.

The keyboard mechanism is average - both in terms of the elasticity of the keys, and in the depth of travel, and in the noise of the click, and in the fixation of the keys. The key travel is moderately tight, uniform across the entire field, pressing is felt very clearly, there are almost no errors when typing, although the overall level of comfort is not above average. For a budget laptop, which is the Samsung 300E5, the keyboard is implemented perfectly - both externally and in terms of sensations in the process of work.

The keyboard layout is almost standard, with the usual size and position of the main keys. There is a digital field reduced in width. Cursor keys are large, not separated, marked with a gray-blue outline; because of them, the size of the right Shift is reduced. I didn’t like that the developers removed Pause/Break and ScrLock, putting an unnecessary Fn Lock key in their place; the rest of the layout is quite convenient.

It's a pity that Samsung abandoned Cyrillic color designations in new models: now it is applied in the same color and font as the Latin alphabet. Designations of "hot" combinations are applied in a pleasant gray-blue color, the icons are perfectly readable. However, many of these combinations do not lead to the desired actions, but call Samsung's proprietary Easy Setting utility. Of course, this utility is very interesting and useful, as it provides many necessary settings that most analogues do not have (speed optimization Windows boot, battery life extension mode, fan operation mode (quiet, normal, pulsing), image correction, sound correction, separate disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). However, it works quite slowly and loads with a significant delay, especially immediately after rebooting the operating system. In addition, an unpleasant “glitch” wanders from model to model - the laptop does not save the state of the wireless connection, after rebooting Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are always on and eat up battery power, even if they are not used.

Display and buttons

The system operation indicators are located under the touchpad: the LEDs are displayed on the front face, their designations are under the touch panel keys. When the lid is closed, you can tell by the color of the LEDs what they mean. No Keyboard Indicators: There are no LEDs, and the pop-up OSD is implemented only for Num-lock and Fn-lock.

touchpad

The touchpad of the Samsung laptop has become larger than in previous models, now it is quite large - 102 × 55 mm. The smooth surface is very comfortable, but is located almost flush with the wrist pad.

Accidental touch detection is inaccurate, and errors often occur. However, the software component of the Elan touchpad works with multi-finger combinations much more confidently and clearly compared to the common Synaptics touchpads. In general and Touchpad, and its buttons work very well in a Samsung laptop.

Performance

Our test sample of the Samsung 300E5 laptop had the cheapest configuration possible: a Celeron B800 processor, the youngest in its generation (a frequency of only 1.5 GHz), only 2 GB of RAM. Thanks to the use of cheap components, a significant reduction in the cost of the laptop is provided - to the level of models based on AMD processors. (However, in the case of Samsung, the price still turned out to be quite high, but the pricing policy of a particular manufacturer is to blame for this.) Therefore, devices in this configuration can successfully compete with models based on the AMD Brazos platform.

We're curious to know if a laptop with a Celeron B800 processor actually performs better than a laptop with an AMD E-450 or A4-3300M processor. And the second question to which we would like to receive an answer is whether such a laptop is suitable for professional work.

First, let's pay attention to the results of the Windows 7 test. For comparison, let's take a laptop of a different class, but on the required platform - with an AMD E-450 processor. As you can see, the only point on which windows test rated the laptop with an AMD processor positively - this is the performance of 3D graphics. But no one doubted such a result, yet Intel still has little experience in developing good graphics accelerators. But according to the processor performance test, the AMD chip is in a deep minus.

Next, while evaluating the results of the PCMark 7 test, we will add the data of a laptop based on the AMD Sabine platform. This machine was equipped with a standard 1.9 GHz AMD A4-3300M 2-core processor. Logically, this processor should be much faster than the Celeron B800 in the Samsung laptop. However, according to PCMark 7 benchmark results, the performance difference between Lenovo laptops and Samsung is relatively small, between 3 and 7%. Only in the test for processing documents and web pages, the model with the AMD A4 processor turned out to be 20% more agile, and even that is largely due to the more expensive hard drive with 7200 RPM. But the Sony laptop, which in our review represents a large family of models with an AMD E-series processor for netbooks, turned out to be on average one third less productive than the other two devices. As you can see, the Intel platform, even with the cheapest processor, easily outperforms the AMD platform of a similar and even higher cost.

Now let's look at the results of a more serious test - BAPCo SYSmark 2012, which measures the speed of performing numerous operations in popular real-world applications (mainly Microsoft and Adobe). Instead of Sony laptop, not originally intended for office work, we will take the results for Intel platform(Core i3-2330M processor) and already mentioned on the AMD platform. That thanks to processor Core i3 Acer laptop will be ahead by a wide margin, we already know. But for what reason, in a number of scenarios, Samsung was ahead of Lenovo, we are not very clear. It turns out that the AMD A4 processor was able to outperform the cheap Celeron only in the tasks of processing audio / video / graphics and encryption / archiving. To work with documents, databases, programming, it is better to prefer a laptop on the Intel platform.

Battery life

The results of Samsung laptop tests for battery life were lower than expected. Without any significant load (slowly paging through PDF), this device lasted almost 6 hours; occasional workload (MobileMark 2007 benchmark for notebook manufacturers) or heavy use of wireless (our own test) reduced battery life to 5 hours.

Thus, the average power consumption of the Samsung 300E5 was about 9.5 W, which is quite a lot for a configuration without a discrete graphics card. However, budget laptops usually do not have good performance and autonomy.

Noise and heat

Despite the fact that our test sample was equipped with a Celeron processor, which has a low clock speed and does not support HyperThreading, the cooling system did not seem to be efficient enough. No, the laptop cannot be called noisy (of course, because it does not have integrated graphics). However, the temperature of the panels outside and the processor inside (according to monitoring data) turned out to be higher than expected. At rest, the processor heats up to 45-50°, when running 3D games - up to 70°, during stress testing it manages to warm up to 78-80°, which is quite a lot for a device with normal case sizes. The heating of the left half of the body of a Samsung laptop, like many other budget devices, can reach an unacceptable level for work - 37 ° from above and 45 ° from below. The wrist area, however, remains barely warm - 28-32 °, even when performing a stress test, which has a positive effect on ergonomics.

The Samsung laptop has a correctly working "quiet" mode: when it is activated, the processor frequency is cut to a minimum (usually 800 MHz), the fan speed is reduced. In this mode, the processor does not heat up above 50° (in our configuration), but the performance drops by more than 2 times (depending on the processor model). However, in many cases this is not critical.

conclusions

In terms of technical characteristics, the Samsung 300E5 is completely standard: a typical budget machine in a pliable plastic case with a basic capacity battery and the usual set of interfaces. However, this device is slightly smaller and lighter than its competitors, although it looks somewhat massive, even thick. It can interest the buyer with a classic neutral design, a matte screen finish, good ergonomics of the keyboard and touchpad. However, you should not delude yourself: the level of performance of this laptop as a whole corresponds to its cost.

Advantages:

more or less interesting design;
good design and keyboard mechanism;
matte screen surface;
reduced dimensions and weight;
convenient and useful proprietary utilities.

Flaws:

screen image quality is below average;
short battery life;
overpriced;
low body strength, inexpensive materials.

Only the most necessary functions. Exceptional quality

The Samsung 3 Series 300E Notebook has powerful battery, rugged chassis and durable, reliable components, yet at an affordable price. Samsung's smart charging technology delivers up to three times longer battery life and extends battery life, and with Duracase's special scratch- and fingerprint-resistant design, your laptop always looks great. And with a narrow bezel anti-glare display, images are crisp and bright even in direct sunlight. Lightweight and compact with up to 7 hours* of battery life (5.6 hours of DVD playback), you can take it anywhere!

* Battery life based on MobileMark test and may vary by laptop configuration.

Narrow bezel, anti-reflective screen

The notebook's 15.6-inch anti-glare LED display is HD-enabled and delivers unrivaled detail and color vibrancy. Matte display does not work specular reflection. Even on the street, you can work with a laptop for longer, because your eyes will be much less tired. Thanks to the narrow finger-thick bezel, the laptop is smaller and therefore lighter and more mobile.

Fingerprint-resistant material finishes the case for a long-lasting pristine look

Life at a fast pace is unpredictable, so the laptop can be scratched even after a short period of use. Durable and durable, the Samsung Duracase case with a special anti-scratch and fingerprint-resistant coating protects your notebook from shocks and bumps, keeping it looking stylish and flawless for a long time.

BatteryLife Plus - battery saver technology

Samsung's smart battery saver technology retains 80% of its original capacity in the battery even after 1,000 charges - nearly 3 times more than a conventional battery that only lasts for 300+ cycles. Samsung batteries are not only much more economical, but also more environmentally friendly because you don't have to change batteries as often.

Samsung NP300E5C is a 15.6-inch laptop with a powerful graphics card and a dual-core processor at a very affordable price. Manufacturer positions this model as a multimedia laptop with high autonomy.

Specifications Samsung NP300E5C

Display - 15.6 inches HD resolution 1366×768
Processor - dual-core Intel Pentium B960 with a frequency of 2.2 GHz
RAM - 4 GB DDR3 format, expandable up to 8 GB
Video card - discrete nVidia GeForce 610M, memory capacity - 1 GB

Performance Analysis

Samsung NP300E5C has good technical specifications, despite the fact that the model itself has already been discontinued.

dual core Intel processor quite enough for web surfing and working with documents, as well as launching multimedia applications and games, while multitasking is possible.

The advantage of the laptop is a discrete graphics card - it is enough to run most of the majority of games, not to mention the releases released in 2012-2014. For example, the notorious GTA V and The Witcher 3 run on this laptop at minimum-medium settings without any freezes. It should be understood that the laptop was released almost 4 years ago, so it may not be enough for subsequent releases.

The Samsung NP300E5C has 4 GB of RAM, while it is possible to deliver an additional slot, increasing the volume to 8 GB, which is enough for any everyday tasks. Also, the processor architecture allows you to install not only those that need at least 4 GB of memory, but for which almost all modern games and applications are “sharpened”.

User reviews and opinions

Samsung NP300E5C has quite positive user reviews on the Internet. Among the shortcomings, there is a lack of keyboard backlighting and strong heating, which, nevertheless, does not affect performance.

Many praise the laptop for its powerful battery, thanks to which the laptop boasts excellent autonomy.

Some users had a problem due to the video card. The principle of such laptops is that during normal use, the Intel video adapter built into the processor works, and when running resource-intensive applications, it switches to a discrete nVidia. But later certain time use, this switch starts to “fail” periodically and you have to switch video cards manually through special application NVIDIA.

Some advanced users complain about this model, because it is very different from that installed in other models. But this is more likely not a drawback, but a feature of this particular laptop.

General impressions

pros:

good filling;
discrete video card;
the presence of an additional numeric keypad;
powerful battery;
low cost;
anti-reflective matte screen.

Minuses:

possible strong heating;
switching between video cards.