Samsung N510 said to feature ION

Details of a new netbook model with the Nvidia ION chipset from Samsung called the N510, has made its way onto the web thanks to Netbook Italia and it looks like this might be the model a lot of people have been waiting for.

This is the first 11.6-inch ION based netbook we’ve heard of and although some people feel that this form factor is a bit big to be called a netbook, it makes perfect sense with the ION chipset, as the screen has a resolution of 1,366×768 which is perfect for watching 720p HD video on.

Other features include an Atom N280 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, a webcam, a memory card reader and Windows XP Home. It doesn’t seem like Samsung is going to wait on Windows 7 before it puts its first ION based netbook on the market, unlike Lenovo which seem to want to take advantage of the GPU compute features of the ION chipset that Windows 7 will offer on an OS level for some things like video transcoding.

You also get a 6-cell battery with the N510 which should hopefully last for 4-5h, even with the extra power draw of the ION chipset, although Nvidia was keen to point out that the ION chipset doesn’t draw any more power than the 945GSE, but we’ll still have to wait and see until some testing has been done on this before we believe that.

It looks as if the UK and Ireland will be the two first countries to get their hands on the N510, as the first model number that has been spotted is NP-N510-KA02UK with the UK on the end most likely meaning a UK keyboard layout. More Computer and Elara Online both had the SKU up shortly on their websites and thanks to Google cache we now know that the N510 will retail for somewhere around £450 in the UK and €560 in Ireland. In other words, the N510 isn’t coming cheap, but it might be worth it considering the features it offers.

Oh, and at least initially, it’ll come in black for those that are concerned about the colour of their netbook. The launch date seems to be set for Tuesday next week (the 30th), so it looks like we don’t have to wait for long until the N510 will be available if this is indeed correct.