Samsung describes the 15.6-inch RV510 as an affordable and powerful laptop. Priced at around £480, it's certainly affordable, but, as it uses a rather lowly dual-core Intel Pentium T4500 chip, can it really be described as powerful?

Handsome fiend

Samsung has a knack for designing good-looking laptops, and the RV510 continues the tradition. The glossy black lid, and silver and black colour scheme used on the keyboard and wrist rest, give it a more premium look than you'd perhaps expect at this price.

Like Samsung's business-focused P530, the RV510 uses a keyboard with a cross between an isolated and traditional design. It has the wide, flat keys of an isolated keyboard but they're more tightly grouped together, like on a traditional keyboard. The results are excellent. The keyboard has almost no flex in the middle and the keys have a fair amount of travel and so feel fast to type on.

The layout is good too. Pretty much all the keys are full-sized and Samsung has also found room to fit in dropped cursor keys and a full numerical keypad. The trackpad is small in comparison to that of some other 15-inch laptops, but the matte surface helps your finger glide easy across the surface and the two chrome-finished buttons are pleasingly responsive.

Samsung has gone with a screen that has a matte, rather than glossy, finish, but this is no bad thing, as the matte coating helps to cut down hugely on reflections, making it more comfortable to use for prolonged periods. Thanks to the LED backlight, the screen is very bright, which in turn helps colours to really make an impact. Viewing angles are good too by the standard of budget laptops. The resolution of 1,366x768 pixels isn't all that wonderful, although text, images and videos still look reasonably sharp.

The wide, flat keys make the RV510's keyboard comfortable to type on.

Samsung hasn't been overly generous with the selection of ports on offer. For example, you have to make do with just a VGA socket, as there's a blanking plate where the HDMI socket should be. You also only get three USB ports, and the RV510 lacks an eSATA port or an ExpressCard slot. There's no Bluetooth but 802.11n Wi-Fi is included.

On the storage front, the RV510 is more impressive. It has a massive 640GB hard drive, which provides loads of room for storing media files like movies and photos. There's also an SD card slot on the front lip and a DVD writer tucked away on the right-hand side.

No powerhouse

To keep the price of the laptop down, Samsung has used a dual-core Intel Pentium T4500 processor clocked at 2.3GHz, rather than one of Intel's higher-spec Core i3 chips. The processor is backed up by a healthy 4GB of RAM and, thanks to the fact that Samsung has gone with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, all of this memory is addressable by the OS.

Unfortunately, the laptop refused to complete our PCMark05 benchmark text. In use, it was pretty obvious that the machine lacked some oomph when faced with more demanding applications, although it was fine for day-to-day tasks like emailing, word processing, browsing the Web or watching programmes on BBC iPlayer.

Rather than opting for discreet graphics, Samsung has instead stuck with plain old integrated Intel GMA graphics. Integrated graphics never score well in the 3DMark06 benchmark test. The RV510 clocked up a meek score of just 904, which is worse than some netbooks.

That means you should throw any ideas you have of being able to play newer games out of the window, although you may be able to play much older 3D titles. The graphics processor works perfectly well, however, when it comes to more mundane tasks, like high-definition video decoding. We had no problems playing HD streams from BBC iPlayer, for example, or high-definition movies in the MKV format.

The less powerful processor and graphics also help the laptop put in a decent performance when it comes to battery life. In the most intensive Battery Eater test, it kept chugging away for 1 hour and 26 minutes, which isn't bad for a 15.6-inch machine. The Battery Eater test simulates the worst-case scenario for battery life, so, under real-world conditions, the laptop should last much longer away from the mains.

Conclusion

The Samsung RV510 is a good-looking machine, with an impressive screen and keyboard. Its processor lacks grunt, though, and its 3D performance is very poor. Its asking price initially makes it seem like a pretty good deal, but it starts to look less tempting next to the likes of the cheaper and faster Acer Aspire 5741.

By Nial Magennis

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If the Dell Adamo XPS is designed for the CEO trying to make a statement, and the Latitude Z600 is for the junior executive trying to impress his superiors, then the Dell Vostro V13 is for the entrepreneur trying to rake in venture capital. Like those earlier Vostro models, the V13  lends the appearance of a businessperson who’s a master of the universe, or about to become one. Unfortunately, just like those first two systems, the V13 offers more style than substance.

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Design

Measuring a thin 13 x 9.1 x 0.7 inches and weighing a mere 3.4 pounds, this ultraportable practically disappears into a messenger bag. Not that you’d want to hide it. For a small business notebook, the V13 is quite stylish. The lid and underside are made of brushed aluminum, and the inside is a matte black plastic; neither surface shows fingerprints, and the entire look is quite classy. Combined with reinforced zinc hinges, the V13 feels like it can survive the rigors of business travel. Similar to the Inspiron Mini 10 and the Adamo, the V13’s lid is hinged about half an inch forward of the back edge of the notebook.

Heat

For a system as thin as it is, the V13 stayed fairly cool during our testing. After playing a Hulu video at full screen for 15 minutes, the touchpad registered 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the space between the G and H keys was 92 degrees, and the middle of the underside reached 100 degrees. The only area of concern was the back edge, which got up to an uncomfortable 105 degrees.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The V13’s keyboard is a mixed bag. The keys abut each other at the base, and the top of each is terraced, much like the HP EliteBook 2540p. The layout is certainly large enough, but the keys made a fair amount of noise while typing. The keyboard also isn’t as comfortable to use as the one found on the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13.

Considering it’s such a small system, we were pleased with the size of the 3.2 x 1.7-inch touchpad. While the same color and material as the keyboard deck, it’s slightly recessed, making it easy to find by feel alone. The touchpad itself offered little to no friction, and the discrete mouse buttons offered just the right amount of resistance.

Display and Audio

The antiglare display on the Vostro V13 had very good viewing angles from the sides to nearly 180 degrees, and it was also easy to see when tilted back as far as it would go; however, it became washed out as we tilted it forward. While watching videos streamed from Hulu, colors were very good, and contrast was acceptable. Its resolution of 1366 x 768 is standard for a 13.3-inch screen, and we were able to comfortably view two open windows side by side.

Despite the fact that this notebook is not geared towards the entertainment crowd, the audio on the V13 was quite loud, offering excellent fidelity. When streamed from Pandora, Jay-Z’s “03 Bonnie & Clyde” had plenty of bass, and it filled a small room at max volume.

Ports and Webcam

Owing to its thinness, all of the V13’s ports are on the back, and are limited in variety. There is one USB, a combo eSATA/USB, Ethernet, and VGA, and that’s it. On the right side are a ExpressCard/34 slot and a 5-in-1 memory card reader. The front right lip has microphone and headphone jacks.

The 1.3-megapixel webcam offered fairly good images during a Skype video call; it was able to accurately record our skin tones as well as an orange shirt we were wearing. We like Dell’s Webcam Central software, which allowed us to tweak the image quality. Also, the face tracking feature was quick and responsive when we moved our head around.

Earlier in the year, Acer was one of the first companies to take advantage of Intel's new CULV processors in creating affordable ultra-portables. Delivering good performance and outstanding battery life, we were delighted by the Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T and gave it a Recommended Award. However, one thing that struck us about the range, was that it was very conservative - almost business like - in its appearance. Now Acer has translated the formula to a genuine business laptop, it's time to see whether it works just as well.

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The good: Extremely customizable; good keyboard; solid construction.

The bad: Add-ons can get expensive; lack of extra ports.

The bottom line: As a highly configurable budget-range black box, Dell's Inspiron 1545 laptop line can be a good value--as long as you don't pile on the upgrades.

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