The Booklet 3G is easily among the most upscale-looking Netbooks we have seen. It experiences solid and well-built in your hands, without being too heavy. Also a good sign: the AT&T mobile broadband service connects automatically, and the process was wonderfully transparent, particularly compared with the software setup and manual log-ins required by other mobile broadband laptops. On the down side, the slower Intel Atom Z530 CPU shaves just enough performance off of the already pokey Netbook experience to be frustrating.

With a two-year AT&T contract, the Booklet 3G costs $299, and its excellent design and build quality puts it miles ahead of other $299 Netbooks. However keep in mind that you’re then tied to a monthly fee–usually around $60–for data. The Booklet is also available sans contract for $599, however that’s both largely pointless and way overpriced.

The Booklet 3G is easily one of the most upscale-looking Netbooks we’ve seen. It experiences solid and well-built in your hands, without being too heavy. The screen hinge in particular experiences pleasingly tight, while the slightly too thick keyboard tray has zero flex even when pressing down firmly on the keyboard. While color options (for the back of the lid) include black, white, and blue, our black test unit’s lid seemed particularly smudge-prone.

Different than the gently tapered sides of many other Netbooks, designed to create the illusion of slimness, the Booklet has sharp, angled edges. True to the name, there is a booklike squareness to it. The inside is devoid of quick launch or shortcut keys, and even the power button is relegated to the right side edge, next to a tiny hatch covering SD and SIM card slots.

Unfortunately, the keyboard itself is cramped, with tiny keys that are hard to hit accurately. Conceiving the strides other Netbooks have made with creating very usable keyboards, it was a letdown. The touch pad is large and easy to use, even though we’d to crank up the pointer speed in the Windows 7 options.

The 10.1-inch display has the higher 1,366×768-pixel resolution found on many high-end Netbooks, and a single sheet of glass covers the screen and much of the screen bezel, however there’s still a separate outer lip, so it is not what we call edge-to-edge.

Besides the AT&T mobile broadband (which makes use of a built-in SIM card slot), the option to manually join local Wi-Fi networks is also available. Our review unit lacked the last versions of the Nokia and Ovi networking and connectivity software, however we did fine with Windows 7′s built-in versions.

Despite an excellent design and well-integrated mobile broadband, the Booklet 3G hits a rough patch as an actual Netbook. Using the slower Z530 version of Intel’s Atom CPU (instead of the more common N270 or N280 versions) means that performance was generally sluggish, particularly with only 1GB of RAM and a slower 4,200rpm hard drive.

Opening windows and navigating around the Windows 7 environment led to some stuttering and slowdown. Even something as simple as running multiple Web browser windows and a Microsoft Office doc at the same time slowed the system much in our anecdotal hands-on testing. In our benchmark tests, scores were behind Netbooks with the faster N270 and N280 Atom processors in most of our tests. It is a shame because a zippier Booklet 3G would be hard to beat as one of our favorite Netbooks.

The Nokia Booklet 3G ran for 7 hours and 14 minutes on our video playback battery life drain test, using the included 16-cell battery life (however the real Wh rating is closer to a typical 6-cell battery life). That’s among the best scores we’ve seen, even from systems with gigantic extended batteries, so it is particularly impressive that the Booklet managed to do it without a battery life that looks like a big kickstand or carrying handle.

• Intel Atom Z530 processor
• Measures a bit more than 2 cm thin
• 3G/HSPA connectivity
• Wi-Fi networking
• Microsoft Windows
• Nokia Ovi services integration
• HDMI port for HD video output
• Front-facing webcam
• Built-in Bluetooth
• SD card reader
• 10 inch glass HD ready display
• Built-in A-GPS

Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook Pictures

Additionally, the cost and availability of new Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook is expected to be certain at Nokia World on Sept. 2nd.

For more information.