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Samsung's Q1 ultra mobile PC unveiled
Samsung swung by our office this morning bearing the first Ultra Mobile PC - its Q1. This is the Origami device pushed by Microsoft, and the easiest ways of describing it are as an ultra ultra-portable notebook, or a large PDA.
It's a fully functioning PC, but weighs only 779g and costs £799, which is not too bad.
It's an attractive device, but one that will need a bag, as it's too big for your pocket. We liked the touch screen, which was clear and bright, but were disappointed by the battery life, which at 3.5 hours is not enough when being used out and about. And worse this drops to one hour 40 minutes if used to watch a DVD.
Bigger batteries can be bought, but that adds to the weight, and we'd have prefered to see longer battery life as standard.
The 900MHz CPU is not powerful enough to make it your main device - you certainly won't be dumping your laptop in favour on the Q1. UMPCs can run Pentium Ms and we'll see faster devices in the future, especially when Intel updates its CPUs later this year.
Quite who will buy this is tough to say. Microsoft pushed UMPCs as entertainment devices. But the battery is a bit of a let down here. Equally, we can see it attracting business people, except the CPU needs more grunt. The touch screen makes it good for certain types of business - warehouses and hospitals for instance - and it could be a good student device.
There's mileage in the concept, and once we see slightly more powerful versions with better battery life it will attract more consumers and professionals, and certainly be an in-car entertainment product - Samsung is already in talks with sat nav companies.
The speakers were good enough for a GPS, although not music. It has an inbuilt mic with noise suppression, so will also be a good for voice over IP, although obviously this would be a supplemental reason for buying one.
We'll get a full review up in the coming days and you can read more about the Q1 and get fuller specifications in our news story.
UPDATE: Our indepth review of the Samsung Q1 is now online.
Initially I thought this to be an award winning device...
However certain aspects have now made me think otherwise and effect any purchase for the immediate future.
First we have the poor battery life ~ which lets face it, not being able to watch a movie greater than 1hr 40mins length does severly restrict it's portability somewhat.
Then there is the price..
I thought this was going to be around the £600 mark?
Now we are told it's more likely an additional £200 ~ that's a 33% hike... Hardly a friendly price, which lets face it, for this kind of money you can very nearly purchase a fully fledged Tablet PC complete with keyboard.
Finally, it may look cutting edge but some of the components are really letting this device down and obviously contribute towards it's general usage.
These devices have so much going for them but with so much at present against, it's going to be a rich and confused consumer who believes he/she needs one.
Posted by Mike Paterson | April 26, 2006 6:34 PM
Mike, in PC... page you said: In our initial tests (full benchmark results will follow later) we watched a half hour DivX video and the battery went down by just 20 per cent. Here you say that it last 1.40 min watching a DVD. Can you explain this?
Posted by ctitanic | April 28, 2006 1:19 PM
BTW, I do not consider myself rich neither confused and I'm getting an eo V7110! :D
Posted by frank j | April 28, 2006 2:40 PM
Hi,
Mike posted a comment as a reader - he has nothing to do with the review.
If you were to watch a DVD movie, via a computer DVD drive attached to the Q1, the Q1's battery lasts 1hr 40mins.
If you encode a movie in DivX and have it running on your Q1, it uses less battery power.
Posted by Rob Jones, Test Bed | April 28, 2006 3:55 PM
Sorry, my mistake. Now I got it. Thanks!
The battery life is not that bad in this unit then because 3 hours playing video is not that bad at all. So if you get 3 hours playing video you should get more than 3.5~4 editing documents (wifi off). Could you verify that?
Posted by ctitanic | April 29, 2006 1:01 AM
Hi Ctitanic,
You won't get three hours playing video. Samsung says the battery life is 3.5hours. We played a 90min DivX movie, starting on full charge, and it drained 70% of the battery.
Using it for mixed tasks, we got 2.5hrs out of the Q1, so I reckon the 3.5hrs is when using it for Office type tasks, as that isn't such a strain on the unit.
We've now posted an indepth review, which you'll find at www.pcw.co.uk/2155011
Posted by Rob Jones, Test Bed | April 29, 2006 10:11 AM