The Samsung N128 uses an LED-backlit display panel with a native resolution of 1024 x 600 which's a defacto standard for 10" netbooks. An interesting feature not to be found on a majority of netbook displays - the N128 sports a matte screen! For a measly INR 13, 500 worth netbook, this's a blessing in disguise if you ask me - I HATE glossy displays!
The screen offers good color and contrast with sufficient readability indoors under strong lights or outdoors under direct sunlight. I'd like to see other netbook manufacturers switch to matte screens in the future revisions of their netbook lineup!
Horizontal and vertical viewing angles were brilliant. Color inversion was minimal when the screen was viewed from below and above. When viewed horizontally, the colors stayed accurate at extremely wide viewing angles.
As far as the sound department goes, Sasmsung has manged to strip down the onboard speakers from stereo to mono which essentially means just a single speaker - which should not be a let down for the average discerning user who may switch to the line-out/headphone-out for sound. Cost cutting is pretty much evident here.
The netbook uses a Realtek HD Audio sound chip. The onboard 1.5W speaker is not very loud nor does the sound crack when the volume is notched up. The SQ was good, when switched to the line-out. I managed to hook my desktop speakers Altec Lansing MX5021 to the headphone out and listened to quite a few FLACs using FOOBAR and I was quite impressed with the SQ.
Keyboard, Touchpad & Onboard Indicators:
The N128 uses a keyboard which is virtually identical to the one used onboard the NCX0 series. Surprisingly, the keyboard isn't cramped although sometimes I happened to mistype the letter 's' for 'a'. A new user may take time to get adapted to the keyboard featured onboard netbooks which in general have a smaller footprint compared to standard keyboards found on notebooks and desktops.
The typing surface does feel strong with no flex and the individual keys noy showing any signs of wobbling. Another point worth mentioning here is the dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys featured on the keyboard layout.
The shortcut keys have been integrated with the Function keys, the Escape key, the Insert key and the directional keys. The numerical keypad is integrated within the keyboard as well. The shortcut keys are enabled when the required driver is installed.
The Synaptics touchpad used on the N128 is fairly large, almost as big as the spacebar which's pretty standard for a netbook. The touchpad is gesture enabled and once the OS is installed, the touchpad demands that a driver be installed - downloaded off the web or from the supplied CD, which supports a horde of multi-touch gestures such as 'pinching' your fingers together or 'pulling' your fingers apart to zoom-in or zoom-out respectively.
The left and right touchpad keys are located beneath a single rocker-style button and the buttons sport a pretty responsive feedback so it shouldn't be be much of a problem to figure out if you've pressed the left or the right button.
The lack of a dedicated wireless on/off switch is something Samsung should've put thought to. In any case, we can turn it off by pressing the Fn key + F9. How hard is that!
Onboard Indicators:
With regard to the onboard LED indicators, you get 5 indicators for the Caps Lock On, Hard Disk Activity, Wi-Fi On, Battery Charging and Power on. The indicators are positioned adjacent to the left touchpad key adjacent to the onboard mic. The new 'intel Atom inside' logo with a partial holographic image at the top-right corner, brightly shines on the left-bottom of the netbook!
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