Netbook Review UK

A selection of netbook keyboards from Samsung, Gigabyte and others

There’s always a lot of discussion about netbook keyboards.   Limited by the netbook form factor, size and key layout is always noted, as is the new fangled ‘chiclet’ style as opposed to the old fashioned big block of keys style.

Brad, at Liliputing, has 4 netbooks on his desk and has done some subjective and objective tests on the keyboards of the Samsung Go, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2, Gigabyte Touchnote T1028x and Lenovo Ideapad S12.
Read on to see how they stacked up – the results may suprise you.

Subjectively, Brad notes that the chiclet style keyboard of the Samsung Go, while not the largest, has the nicest typing feel.  In comparison, the Gigabyte Touchnote, with ultra skimpy punctuation keys, feels the worst.   The regular keyboard of the IdeaPad S12 is the largest (due to that 12″ screen).

For the objective test, TypingTest.com was used to run a series of 2 minute tests on each netbook keyboard.  Somewhat predictably, he did the best on the largest keyboard (Lenovo S12).  But, it’s interesting to note that the best ‘feeling’ keyboard typed the slowest and that the Touchnote’s keyboard performed well, while feeling sub-par.

Here are Liliputing’s full results:

Samsung Go

• 81 words per minute
• 95% accuracy

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2

• 84 words per minute
• 97% accuracy

Gigabyte TouchNote T1028X (little punctuation)

• 98 words per minute
• 96% accuracy

Gigabyte TouchNote T1028X (more punctuation)

• 85 words per minute
• 96% accuracy

Lenovo Ideapad S12

• 100 words per minute
• 99% accuracy