Samsung Q1P SSD

If you ever wished for a PDA with a larger screen, or wanted that three-pound ultraportable to be, well, more portable, then Samsung's novel Q1P SSD will be right up your alley. We suspect, however, that you occupy a fairly narrow alley. Although this Ultra-Mobile PC is one of the first to pack a solid-state storage drive, we are left wondering where and when we would prefer using it more than a larger or smaller alternative.
 
The Q1P SSD certainly looks and feels cool. The sleek black widescreen design seems like an oversized Sony PSP. The 1.7-pound unit is portable, to be sure, and slips into a foam-like protective sleeve. An analog controller on the left side also mimics the PSP as well. Stereo speakers are on either side of the seven-inch LCD, and a directional pad and two action buttons are on the right. It fits nicely in two hands, although that makes it tough to manage with a stylus.
  
PSP comparisons aside, this is a full-blown PC, and that is part of its wonder. Samsung opted for a solid-state storage design with 32GB of NAND flash memory instead of a miniature hard drive, consuming less power while speeding up performance. It almost goes without saying that with this technology, every program loaded instantly, and the 1GB of system RAM and 1-GHz Intel processor managed multiple windows very well. Sony's VAIO Premium UX also sports a solid-state hard drive, runs Vista, and adds a keyboard-but it costs $500 more.
 
The control scheme leaves much to be desired. The analog stick controlled tabbing through icon and menu choices, as you would with a mouse and cursor. The unit is dependent on stylus and touch control, but Samsung opts for a limited Tablet design, which uses a touchscreen rather than the more robust RF-controlled Tablet stylus and display. You can enter handwriting and print text as you would on a standard Tablet, but you lose the hover actions and gesturing.
 
You can use your finger to press buttons and manipulate windows, but even at the lowest 800 x 400-pixel setting (800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 are also available), the resolution is so tight that we found hitting the "X" box to close a window or activating an icon on the taskbar to be a challenge even with the stylus.
 
This is not to say that this UMPC doesn't have many strong points, because it does. The built-in dual array microphone was very responsive when recording voices, and even the small speakers were impressive for their size. Other conveniences include a pop-up sidebar to control screen brightness, volume, Wi-Fi, and more.

Performance was strong, and heat cast-off was minimal. The unit earned a respectable 3DMark03 score of 906-nearly twice of what the Sony VAIO UX Premium scored. Wireless strength was hit or miss, with a strong 14 Mbps from 15 feet but only 5.2 Mbps from 50 feet. Unfortunately, the battery drained in little more than two hours.
 
A couple hundred dollars more will get you an OQO model 02 with a keyboard, mobile broadband, and twice the battery life. But if you prefer a larger screen for surfing and playing media, you may prefer the Samsung Q1P SSD.