It’s sometimes the case that when you’re looking for a laptop within a budget price-range, you end up with a laptop that really looks like it’s from that budget price-range. Thankfully that isn’t the case with Samsung’s R730……..

You can pick up an R730 for less than £470 at the moment, which will provide you with a large, 17.3″ desktop replacement laptop that looks good, performs well and can be classed as offering a healthy – and welcome – dose of affordability.

Our version (the JA03UK) packs an Intel Pentium T4400 running at 2.2GHz and 4GB of RAM with 320GB of storage space, although you can also grab the slightly more expensive Samsung NP-R730-JB02U, which is available for around £610.

Here’s how we found it………..

DESIGN

As we mentioned before, the Samsung R730 is a fine-looking beast that defies its low price. The outer shell sports an attractive red-to-black graduated finish, with an imprinted design adding a touch of detail to the gloss. The red colouring helps to make fingerprints less obvious, although as with any glossy lid, you may want to keep a box of wipes near by to keep things polished.

Despite its large size the R730 is actually surprisingly light; weighing in at less than 2.9kg makes it just about bearable for travelling short-to-medium distances – and you won’t be able to do that with your desktop. The laptop feels sturdy, with well-designed hinges that offer a nice amount of resistance.

Connections and ports are a little thin on the ground – but you can’t expect the world for the price.There are 3 USB slots – 2 of which are a little close together for my liking – an HDMI port for linking up to your HDTV; a VGA port for video or external monitor; a memory card reader that supports SD, SDHC and MMC file formats and audio jacks for mic and headphones.

SCREEN & KEYBOARD

Flip the Samsung R730 open and you will expose the screen and keyboard. It’s fair to say that the plain stainless steel finish on the inside doesn’t quite match the sleekness of the outside – and in comparison it is actually a little dull, with quite cheap-looking plastics the order of the day.

However, if you can see beyond the blandness, there is good news; the keyboard is well laid-out and spacious, offering a very comfortable typing experience and a full number keypad. The keys react with satisfying clicks and give enough resistance to avoid mistakes, whilst underneath, the touchpad is responsive and smooth, with 2 individual mouse buttons that in my opinion, are much better than the all-in-one rocker buttons used on other laptops.

Above the keyboard, the 17.3″ screen resides in some splendour. Once you’ve hit the power switch and booted up, you’ll find some lively colours and sharp detail on the not-quite-Full-HD 1600 x 900 pixel resolution display, which makes the R730 a reasonable good option for watching movies on disc or streamed from sites like Youtube.

There is a fair amount of glare, though, so forget about working in the garden on hot, sunny days and you will also find the R730 has quite a shallow viewing angle – it will be fine for you and a friend to watch a film on the train, but any more and picture quality will decrease, which is a slight shame as the 17.3 inch screen is crying out to be shared.

PERFORMANCE

Intel’s Pentium T4400 dual core processor and the 4GB RAM will provide you with enough zip for the majority of tasks – and you should get a good deal of multi-tasking on the go without too much slowdown.

Windows 7 Home Premium is bundled in, which is very welcome considering the price (although it only uses up to 3.5GB of RAM) and the 320GB of storage space should be more than enough for most music, video and photo collections.

However, gamers beware; with an Intel GMA 4500M graphics chip, there’s no way that the Samsung R730 can handle the latest 3D titles without stutters and performance issues. Tasks such as HD video editing will also suffer, too.

Internet access is fairly quick, with connectivity provided by a 10/100 wired Ethernet and 802.11n Wi-Fi, but it certainly won’t blow you away with its speed. However, with Samsung cutting costs where they can, the R730 is missing out on Bluetooth

Audio quality is OK – light on bass and high on treble, particularly when turned up loud – but as is always the case with laptops, if you want to hear excellent sound quality, buy some decent headphones.

CONCLUSION

Often when manufacturers cut costs to provide laptops to a wider market, they get it horribly wrong. However, Samsung have got it pretty much spot on with the R730 and after those costs have been cut, you’re still left with an excellent-value device which should tick the most important boxes on most people’s wishlist. Each negative is matched with a better positive, in my opinion. OK, so the inside of the laptop is bland-looking, but the outside shell is slick; the R730 may not support 3D gaming, but it does provide excellent performance for mainstream tasks – and so on. If you are restricted by budget and are looking for a working computer that will take up less space than a desktop and also give you that extra bit of portability, you really could do a lot worse than the Samsung R730.

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