Samsung R20+

Hi everyone

Can people give me their thoughts and opinions on the Samsung R20+ please, I'm swapping for one of my PCs =)

Thanks

 

Physically, it is the same as the R20 (see link below to my review - I subsequently bought one for the family). It's a very nice lightweight 14" machine and its one drawback is the limited battery life with the supplied 4 cell battery (there is a bigger 8 cell option). There is one specific thread about the R20+ and a very long thread about the R20.

At the moment there's not a lot of choice in the 14.1" range. What specification / price are you getting?

I think the R410 is replacing the R20.

John

 

I'm getting the R20+ with Core 2 Duo T5550, 2GB RAM, Vista Home Premium and 200GB hard drive. I plan to upgrade the RAM to 4GB but I've seen that other people have had problems? I will also upgrade the hard drive and the battery probably. Does the bigger battery protrude in any way? Can the Core 2 Duo be overclocked at all and apparently the X1250 is pretty good inside it, I should be able to play Deus Ex and Age Of Empires fine shouldn't I? =)

 

The ATI chipset in the R20 can be manipulated with ClockGen. There are details somewhere. I did an overclock of +50% on the R20 I reviewed (1.73GHz -> 2.6GHz) which boosted performance somewhat (but also the fan noise!). However, what can be done depends on individual CPUs.

The R20's battery already sticks out at the back. I've never seen a photo of the 8 cell but it might be like a figure 8 profile so it is vertical higher but doesn't stick out more. I've seen third part batteries for ~£60.

Are you aware that 32-bit Windows can only address about 3.2GB, so some of 4GB won't get used?

I can't comment on the gaming performance: Solitaire is the limit of my gaming!

John

 

Was that overclock stable John? Was it on a Core 2 Duo? Yes I know about this John but I will be buying the 64-bit version of Vista so that should boost performance I hope and enable me to use the whole 4GB RAM =D

 

The overclock was with the original Core Duo T2250. It was stable (I ran a set of benchmarks) but was noisy. I much preferred the normal speed with undervolting - very quiet.

It's pot luck how much each CPU will overclock / undervolt. A bit of each is usually the best compromise.

John

 

Do you know if Clockgen will work with the T5550? Are your family happy with the R20 and do you think I'll love the R20+? =)

 

I would expect you would be able to overclock the T5550 by one or two notches (ie to 2 or 2.13GHz). However, you won't be able to notice the difference in speed in normal usage because the CPU spends much of its time on idle.

Whether you'll be happy with the R20+ depends on your needs and expectations. I've had no complaints. It replaced a 15.4" notebook which was considered to be too big.

John

 

Well it seems to fit all my expectations perfectly, it sounds like a great little laptop =) do you know if 4GB will work in it then? I don't want to buy 4GB and find out it won't work lol

 

I can't guarantee that the 4GB will work. It should do and it usually does but some people have encountered problems.

You could send a message to Samsung support asking them what memory they recommend.

John

PS: If you can consider other alternatives then the Samsung R510 is a good choice and starts at £440, but is bigger. There is the R410 (R20 successor, in the pipeline) it appears to still use the old ATI chipset. There is also an R460 which has the Montevina chipset and probably a low end nVidia GPU (as in Q210 / Q310). It's listed in Russia and I would expect it to show up soon. The P460 (business version of R460) is already listed in a few places. Perhaps we will see an R460 with Intel graphics and a nice price - effectively a smaller R510. The new models with Intel chipset will definitely have no issues with 4GB (and might support 8GB if you can afford the modules).

 

Well I've got the R20plus in front of me and its awesome, really loving it. I will take a gamble with the 4GB I think

 

Thanks for the update. First impressions count a lot.

Let us know if you can find any significant differences (CPU aside) from the original R20 (see my R20 review for specs).

See this regarding using ClockGen. However, I would start by using RMClock to see how far the CPU will undervolt when under full load. The more it will undervolt then the better it is likely to overclock when you put the voltage back up.

John