Samsung RC520 15.6 inch Laptop (Intel Core i5 2410M 2.3GHz, 4Gb, 500Gb, DVD SuperMulti DL, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit) - Black/Silver

Before purchasing the Samsung RC520 I spent weeks looking online and instore for the perfect laptop, and I'm really glad I decided on this one. I have had it for about a week now, and am very impressed with it. (bought from Amazon.co.uk) To start with, my main concern for this laptop was the battery life. There didn't seem to be much information online about how long the battery life actually was, all I found was "a long battery life." However on several sites it suggested only "2-3 hours." In actuality, the battery life on this laptop is very good. With light usage (browsing internet, word processing, etc) it has been 6-8 hours. Watching a video etc is about 3-4 hours. It also doesn't take very long to charge- about an hour. When stationary with a plug socket around, the battery can be taken out and the laptop run directly off the mains, preserving the battery. I couldn't do this with my previous laptop. As for the outer look, this laptop appears to be very well built, although not too heavy. It doesn't have the cheap plastic look that some (even more expensive laptops) have. It is black on the outer and dark grey on the inner. It is made of hard plastic- but it has a shiny new look, and is very smart and attractive. Although the outer is black, I've found it doesn't collect too many fingerprints, though obviously they can't be avoided entirely. The screen is the standard 15.6" glossy. It is LED, the quality is excellent and sharp, and it has a nice colour output. The size fits most videos too so there are no annoying black bars. And for the inner features- it comes with the new Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 2410M 2.3GHz processor. My impressions of it so far are excellent. Having had a laptop with a Celeron, the i5 is very fast in comparison. It has yet to really struggle with anything- though I haven't tried it yet with a processor heavy game I admit. Speaking of games, this laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M 1gb dedicated graphics card as well as the onboard intel which it uses in ordinary applications to conserve energy. Other things to note: It is completely silent! Only noise I've heard from this laptop is audio that I'm playing and a few clicks when it's turned off/on. No fan noise at all... and after hours of use it doesn't even feel very hot, awesome. Very fast start-up from sleep, literally just takes about 2 seconds. Fast start on boot too. It has bluetooth, which is apparently high speed although I never use it so can't comment. Webcam + mic: 1.3mp HD, decent quality for video and photo. Comes with a cool program that's fun to play around with. You can get £50 cashback from Samsung (until 1st Nov 2011) when buying this model of laptop. My only complaint about the RC520 is the keyboard. While having raised keys and space between them to avoid crumbs/dust/etc, I find they are spaced a little too far. Compared to using the keyboard on my desktop, it feels slightly uncomfortable to type on the laptop. This may just be a matter of getting used to it, but I find I make far more mistakes when typing on the RC520 keyboard and prefer my desktop keyboard. But overall, this is a wonderful laptop and I highly recommend it.

Ordered this two weeks ago. It was dispatched quickly BUT the delivery company (Yodel) dumped it outside the side of my house - a £600 laptop left out in full view of passers-by and with no consideration for the weather or when we would return home to find the parcel! This level of service is not acceptable and when I Googled the company, I find long lists of complaints of lost parcels, late parcels and parcels dumped in gardens and sides of houses. This brings shame on Amazon as well as the delivery company. I have waited a couple of weeks as I wasn't sure whether the laptop had been dropped or damaged in some way. Fortunately, it appears to be OK. The laptop was a good choice. It is fast and has a good clear screen. Lots of memory for storage which we have only just started to fill. It stays cool in use unlike the Sony machine which we replaced. It also has a much better battery life. The keyboard has raised keys and is a good size for typing. All in all a good choice.

Some other reviews are complaining about the screen, but I have no idea what they could possibly mean. I've had several laptops over the years: Dell, Sony, Toshiba and HP and they all had their own foibles and problems, but this laptop is so super-smooth and a pleasure to use. The fact that I've had it over a week and it's done nothing to do annoy me speaks volumes. The screen is sharp and a decent resolution and can be very bright if you turn it up all the way. The keyboard feels very nice to use--just the right amount of give on the keys and they make a soft but satisfying noise when you use them. I normally don't like touchpads but this one works really well. It's fast enough to play HD movies perfectly via an HDMI cable. The only game I've tried is Half Life 2 and that ran at maximum settings, but I get the impression from the specs it would probably struggle with modern games. I never used to use the sleep function on my other laptops because they would always have a minor heart attack whenever they were woken up, but this one wakes up in seconds and is ready to rock again. There is a little bit of bloatware installed but it only took me about 10 minutes to remove it. The worst offender was the ubiquitous Norton which was the first to go. The others were fairly inoffensive and inobtrusive Samsung media programmes which didn't really bother me, I just don't like having stuff installed that I never wanted in the first place! It never seems to heat up. I've sat with it on my lap literally all day and it remained cool as a cucumber the whole time. My old laptops used to get so hot that my pants would get sweaty! Sorry for the unpleasant image there, but it's a huge bonus to me and a big selling point. If the specs look good to you, get this laptop now! I really can't recommend it enough.

This laptop , in one word , is amazing. It has the latest i5 processor , which is very fast , and a decent graphics card. I've even played the game cyrsis , a game known to have amazing graphics , at a decent resolution with this graphics card.At a technical standpoint , this laptop can do all that you need and more. Put it this way : for £500 (you get £50 cashback) you get a laptop with the same processor , more RAM and more memory than some £1000 macbook pros!Don't worry about the looks though. This laptop looks fabulous and has a nice grey/black colour scheme.The keys are great , there isn't any trapped dirt and the only people who would find the keys too spaced out are toddlers. The screen is also excellent , clear and can be turned to a very high brightness. Dont let those reviews about this laptops's keys or screen out you off , this laptop is probably the best you can get in this price range. In fact a friend of mine recently brought an £800 pound laptop and even he says he thinks this samsung is better!