10. Samsung N230 - £298
Portability mixed with usability is still the absolute cornerstone of a netbook's existence, and it's here that Samsung has hit the nail firmly on the head with the N230.
At the most fundamental level it succeeds in that the battery life is awesome, and it is a very easy machine to use, with a fantastic screen and near-flawless typing experience.
An Intel Atom N450 provides the N230's processing power, alongside 1GB of DDR2 memory. Performance here is very standard for a netbook. The N230 will happily run office applications and your web browser, but as soon as you start multitasking you'll witness quite a bit of lag.
The plus side to having such low-powered components is portability, and here the N230 shines. Samsung claim the netbook will run for just short of 14-hours before needing a charge. During benchmarking we managed just over 10 hours (628 minutes), but this was under intensive use.
To achieve this figure, a small concession to design has had to be made and the large six-cell battery does stick out of the base of the machine. However, the N230 boasts a webcam for video conferences across the web, and also USB 3.0. All-in-all, it's a great little netbook.
