It's a cross between a laptop, tablet and PDA. Does this portable mini-computer from Samsung live up to its intriguing design?
Review summary of the Samsung Q1 Ultra:
| Video » Gallery » |
 While Samsung has gone a long way to improve the original Q1, the role of UMPCs in-between laptops and PDAs remains questionable. The impossibly small keyboard and lack of a built-in optical drive prevent the Q1 Ultra from reaching its full potential -- however, it is possible to purchase those accessories and connect them via the USB ports. The price of the Q1U-XP ($1,150) is reasonable, but in all honesty you’re better off spending that on a real laptop until all the players involved hammer out the kinks in the UMPC category. Release: May 2007. Price: $1150.
Pros: Sleek design, bright 7-inch LED WSVGA touch screen display.
Cons: No built-in optical drive, impossibly small keyboard, still a bit pricey.
| Poor |
Mediocre |
62%
GOOD |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
Full review of the Samsung Q1 Ultra:
 |
Ultra Mobile PCs remain something of a mystery to us. Originally developed in a joint venture by Microsoft and Intel (codenamed the "Origami project"), these mini-computers are a cross between a laptop, tablet and PDA. They typically have 7-inch LCD screens, multi-gig hard drives, lack a built-in optical drive but run Windows XP Tablet or Vista on a mobile Intel processor. Too small to be useful as a laptop and too big to carry around like a PDA/smartphone, it remains to be seen whether these devices can fill any serious need in the life of a digital consumer.
Design - Very good
The Q1 Ultra has a bright LED screen housed in a glossy black plastic body, which makes this UMPC look like a prop panel ripped from the USS Enterprise or a Sony PSP on steroids. It's about 9 inches long, most of which is dominated by the 7-inch touch screen, and comes in only one color, glossy black.
The basic design of the original Q1--which Samsung debuted last year--hasn’t changed much, except that the Q1 Ultra gets a split-QWERTY 39-key keyboard on each side of the display. Weighing just 1.54 pounds, it's lighter than the smallest ultraportable laptop and four times as heavy as a Palm Treo.
The Q1 Ultra’s stylish design is probably its biggest appeal. It’s a futuristic-looking gadget that makes people on the street stop and ask, "What’s that?" Problem is, we're not sure if there’s a clear answer to that question.
Input - Mediocre
Samsung has gone a long way to address some of the early complaints with the original Q1, one of the biggest gripes being the lack of a keyboard. The new Q1 Ultra sports a split-QWERTY 39-key keyboard where the speakers used to be, and it’s a huge help when trying to accomplish even simple tasks like typing e-mails or navigating file paths.
Unfortunately, the keys are so dwarfishly small -- about 4 mm wide and 4 mm long -- they’re practically useless for any task requiring more than a few words. Unless you have elfin fingers, you’ll inevitably find yourself depressing two keys at once, backspacing, then doing it all over again. Any serious typing will require a USB keyboard accessory, which seems to defeat the purpose of having an ultramobile PC -- why not just go buy a laptop?
Luckily, the keyboard is only one of the three basic input methods. The majority of business is conducted through the 7-inch touch screen display. At the native resolution, 1024 x 600, it’s not really practical to use your fingers, but the included stylus works well. Since the Q1 Ultra comes pre-loaded with either Microsoft Windows XP Tablet or Vista, any PC user will immediately be familiar with the Windows interface, which makes using the machine a little bit easier.
The third method for commanding this UMPC is the circular directional button. Operating exactly like TrackPoint on a laptop, the button immediately reminds you why such devices were rendered obsolete by TouchPads. We wonder if Samsung would be better off removing the circular nav button altogether and using the extra room to make the keyboard keys bigger. None of the three input options on this UMPC are completely satisfying; a bigger keyboard could really help lessen the frustration of the miniature keys.
Samsung also includes Fortune Fountain’s Dial Keys, a software-based quarter-keyboard that displays a screen-based keyboard. This isn’t a bad idea, but using it requires you to press so hard that it’s not worth it. Using Dial Keys with the stylus takes longer than fiddling with the miniature keyboard.
A built-in optical drive could also go a long way to improving the Q1 Ultra experience. While CDs and DVDs may one day become obsolete, the fact remains that today optical discs are still the most common way to load software and other data onto your computer. Not having one forces you to either download everything from the internet or rely on SD/MMC memory cards. While a built-in optical drive would increase the size and cost of the machine, its absence prevents the Q1 Ultra from reaching its full potential.
Display - Very good
Most of the design of the Q1 Ultra is directed toward the 7-inch LED WSVGA display, which is significantly brighter than the original Q1 and comes with a 1024x600 native resolution, a full step up from the previous 800x480 display. The fact that it’s LED (light emitting diode) and not LCD (liquid crystal display) means it doesn’t suffer from the glare and limited viewing angle of traditional LCDs.
Windows doesn’t seem to suffer from the size reduction, as running Windows XP Tablet looks as clear as it does on a 12.1-inch tablet. The screen responds well to the stylus, but using your fingers requires an unusual amount of pressure, too much for a device that’s supposed to be simple and on-the-go.
Performance - Good
The processor that Samsung employs in the Q1 Ultra, the 800 MHz Intel Ultra Mobile A110, is not what you’d call fast. Neither is the integrated Intel 945 graphics chip. Both, however, consume very little power, extending the battery life to 4.5 hours.
Samsung could upgrade the CPU and graphics, but that would likely kill the 4.5-hour battery life, so it’s a tradeoff potential users will have to live with. The Q1’s miniature size precludes it from ever realistically playing intense retail games or editing large video clips, so you’re probably better off with the extra battery life.
Ports - Good
There are six ports on the Q1 Ultra: USB 2.0 (2), Ethernet, VGA out, stereo out and an SD/MMC memory card slot. Those cover all the basics, although it would be nice to see Samsung splurge for at least one higher-end I/O, like FireWire b or a DVI port.
One unlikely addition is an integrated fingerprint reader. Since the keyboard is practically unusable and there’s no built-in optical drive, it’s hard to imagine you’d ever store sensitive data on the Q1 Ultra. Is it meant to deter thieves? What could you possibly keep on this device that’s not better off on a laptop or a PDA?
Software - Mediocre
The default operating system on the Q1 Ultra is Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition, which for all intents and purposes is XP with a superset of features designed to take advantage of the touch screen interface.
The only other software of note included is Samsung’s AVStation Now 5.0, a clone of Microsoft’s XP Media Center. It uses a simplified interface to collect and manage your photos, music and videos from one central database. Like Media Center, casual users will likely appreciate offloading media managing responsibility to an all-in-one-program like this, while professional users will likely steer toward more format-specific programs.
Entertainment - Good
The lack of a built-in optical drive prevents the Q1 Ultra from acting as a DVD player out of the box, but it’s not all bad news -- it can function as a portable movie player. Using CinemaNow, we downloaded a full copy of the movie "300," and playback was smooth and uninterrupted. We thought it might be a little choppy, with the not-so-powerful specs of the CPU and graphics cards, but we were pleasantly surprised to watch as the movie played without any problems.
In terms of quality, it was easy to notice some blocky pixilation, so the Q1 Ultra won’t fool anyone as a high-caliber DVD decoder, but it is refreshing to know it can double as a portable movie player if necessary -- although without the built-in optical drive, you’re probably stuck downloading movies to this machine.
It’s possible to use the 60 GB hard drive as a repository for your digital music collection, although it’s hard to see how carting around a 9-inch, 1.5-pound machine like this is more convenient than your average $100 MP3 player.
Gaming - Poor
While 3Dmark06 isn’t designed for this type of machine at all and it’s not entirely fair to measure the performance of this system on a synthetic benchmark that’s meant for the most powerful gaming computers, we ran it anyway. Predictably, it received a near-invisible score of 70. Just don’t buy the Q1 Ultra expecting to play serious games.
Web browsing - Very good
The most logical use of the Q1 Ultra is as a mobile web-surfing device. The big screen makes noodling around the internet much more satisfying than on any smartphone or PDA, freeing you from the shackles of proprietary phone browsers that always seem to lack even basic plugins. Firefox, Safari and Opera fans can install their alternative browser and customize the experience as much as they want.
Beyond the standard RJ-45 Ethernet connection, the Q1 Ultra comes from the factory with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, although customers can upgrade to a version with HSDPA.
As a web device, the Q1 Ultra can be fun to use. Even with the limited 1024x600 resolution, Web sites come up at their normal size. This is one of the main advantages of this device over smartphones, which often require an endless amount of scrolling in all directions to view a normal size Web page. That being said, using a mobile device to surf the internet isn’t exactly a novel idea, and you have to ask yourself whether you want to spend $1,150 on a mini-computer whose best function is something probably adequately covered by other electronics in your life.
Samsung includes a front-facing video chat camera for videoconferencing and a 1.3 megapixel still camera in the rear. Unfortunately, the quality of both was mediocre at best, and isn’t a serious option, either as a webcam or a camera because of its choppy, jerky nature, in addition to its low overall quality.
Productivity - Mediocre
You could compose documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, and perform other work-related tasks on this machine. After using the device, though, we don’t think that composing new documents would be practical without external accessories, due to the miniature size of the keyboard. It’s easy to open and read documents, just not compose them. Ditto for e-mailing.
On the positive side, as a bona fide computer running Windows XP Tablet, you have access to the full versions of productivity software, not the feature-limited mobile editions you’ll find a smartphone/PDA -- although none of that software comes pre-loaded from Samsung.
Battery life - Good
Using the Q1 Ultra unplugged for activities that were not processor-intensive net us over four hours of battery life, although we get about half that watching a movie. Still, at two hours, that’s at least enough to watch a movie on full charge.
Value - Good
When it comes to price, the Q1 Ultra falls somewhere in the middle. More powerful UMPC’s like OQO’s model e2 retail for $500 more, although you can get a tabletkiosk eo i7210 with similar specs for $800.
The question isn’t so much whether the $1,150 price tag of the Q1 Ultra-XP is a good value -- you’re getting a mini-computer with a 7-inch touch screen and internet capability for roughly the same cost as your average entry-level laptop -- it’s whether the UMPC is more valuable to certain customers than the laptop that costs the same.
Comparison
Compare the Samsung Q1 Ultra with similar products
Who is the Samsung Q1 Ultra for?
Internet addictsTouch screen addicts
Price and availability
The Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC is currently available and retails for about $1150.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive