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The Samsung N120 provides a generous keyboard and an unforeseen audio power as a member of Samsung’s 2nd generation of Netbooks.

Besides the fairly generic N110 Netbook, Samsung also provides a somewhat fine-tuned version for those who find Netbook keyboards too little and Netbook speakers too wimpy. The Samsung N120 takes the N110′s basic component sent and jams in a keyboard of the sort we would normally find on a larger 12-inch laptop, along with a 2.1-speaker sound system, that offers at least a humble amount of thump.

Both the N110 and N120 models are $469, which puts them $100-$120 above comparably equipped systems from Asus, Lenovo, Acer,  and others. Although we thought that was too hefty a premium for the N110, the N120′s keyboard and speakers at least offer a few points of differentiation from the rest of the Intel Atom/160GB HDD/1GB RAM crowd. If it was $399, we would warmly recommend it; as-is, it is worth a serious look if you crave a more traditional keyboard feel from your Netbook.

The Samsung N120 is almost half an inch broader than the N110 model, however almost identical in depth and height. This gives the system a somewhat bigger footprint than most Netbooks, closer in size to a slim 12-inch ultraportable. We often prefer the matte black finish on the N120 to the shining design of the N110, which was particularly prone to fingerprints and smudges.

The keyboard has a traditional tapered key design, with individual keys that are wider at the base, and narrower at the top, instead of the flat-key design used by many Netbook makers, including Dell, HP, and Asus. Nevertheless, the bigger footprint allows Samsung to fit in a larger keyboard, equivalent to what we would generally find on a 12-inch laptop. Using the keyboard on the N120 was a great experience, on par with our favorite, the HP Mini 1000, and arguably better, depending on your typing style. The touch pad was also first-class, and the specially demarcated scroll zone made it easy to vertically move up and down on long pages.

The system’s 2.1 speakers, a main selling point, surely provide better audio than your average Netbook, but we would still merely use them for Web video viewing or presentations–you’re not going to be DJing through the N120 at your next house party. The two main speakers are on either side of the display, whilst the subwoofer is on the left side edge of the body, and seems to add more volume than low frequencies.

The 10.1-inch LCD screen has a 1,024×600-pixel native resolution, which is standard for Netbooks. That is usually fine for most Web surfing, however long vertical pages and Word documents can require a lot of scrolling to read.

Similar to the Samsung N110, this model misses the ExpressCard readers found on several other Netbooks in that price range, but we were delighted to see 3 USB ports–many Netbooks have only two–as well as Bluetooth.

It will not come as a surprise, but with identical internal components, the Samsung N110 and N120 Netbooks has virtual identical performance scores in our benchmark tests, and were considerably similar to other Netbooks with Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM. For basic jobs such as world processing, Web surfing, and e-mail, an Atom-powered Netbook is more than adequate, as long as you keep your anticipations humble. Opening up too many browser windows at once, or running several applications at the same time, for instance, can lead to slowdown and stammering.