ASUS Eee PC 1201N: Dual-Core Atom + ION FTW?
by Jarred Walton on December 24, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Surprise: Desktop Atom 330 Hurts Battery Life
This is the big compromise on the 1201N. You get better performance than any other Atom-based netbook, but you also lose quite a bit of battery life. The question you'll need to answer for yourself is exactly how much battery life you want/need. Personally, I don't often go unplugged for more than ~4 hours; I'll do two hour plane flights with two hours in an airport, for example - or ten hours running around a trade show, but only 1/3 of the time is spent with my laptop powered up. If what you do is similar, the 1201N offers a good blend of performance and battery life… but then so do a lot of other laptops.
On the other hand, some people will go unplugged for 8+ hours; I know Anand likes to have at least that long where possible (and it's one reason he loves MacBooks). In that case, the 1201N is going to fall short - though you can always buy a second battery in a pinch. Here are the results - and keep in mind that the ASUS 1005HA, 1005PE, and 1201N all use essentially the same size 63Wh battery.
The battery life of the 1201N looks rather poor in the above charts, but remember that we're comparing it against what are predominantly long battery life options. The Gateway NV52 and NV58 represent more common entry level laptops, and the 1201N clearly surpasses those (though the NV58 ties in idle battery life). Still, compared to even a standard Core 2 P8600 with 9400M (the Dell Studio 14z), the 1201N is only better in low demand situations - the 14z wins in both the video playback results, for instance. Of course, the 14z also has a 72Wh batter compared to 63WH.
Looking at the ASUS UL80Vt, we see the potential of a CULV + 9400M design. With an overclocked CULV and a discrete GeForce G210M CPU, the UL80Vt still beats the 1201N in battery life and relative battery life. G210M with a GS45 chipset undoubtedly uses a few watts more than nForce 730i (aka ION), and the overclocked SU7300 bumps up power draw a bit as well (more depending on load). While dual-core Atom + ION does pretty well, it's clear that CULV + 9400M would do better.
Considering ASUS already went out on a limb and potentially incurred Intel's wrath by putting a desktop Atom chip into a laptop and paired it with ION, plus the aforementioned UL series, it seems like such a design is a no-brainer. Really, ASUS, we'd like to see it happen! Or just get the price a bit lower on the UL series.
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YpoCaramel - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
130cd/m2 is too dim for portable use. These levels might be useful for getting accurate color in lighting controlled rooms, but most ultra-portables don't have that luxury. Even if they are kept indoors they will encounter a variety of lighting conditions, some of which will make the screen quite difficult to see at such low brightness. What's worse, the screen is reflective. Sufficient brightness can minimize reflections, but the 1210N just doesn't have the brightness. The competition can do better - even old the eeePC 1000H.darkryft - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
I personally feel the 1201N is a great evolution for the netbook, but probably represents the limit. To go any further in size any number of other features would drive the cost to where it is no longer a netbook, it's a laptop.There are some drawbacks, yes, and there are laptops that can be had for nearly the same money the perform better, but this is a fantastic feature set in the ultra-portable class. I'm personally phasing myself out of PC gaming and desktop computing as a whole, and I will probably invest in a full-on laptop at some point, but for documents, music, and netsurfing this will easily handle the tasks.
If only it were cost-feasible to drop a Patriot Torqx in this thing.
SmCaudata - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
The ASUS 14" laptop seems like the best portable out there right now. The battery life is good enough were you really don't need to bring your charger everywhere and it's price is not much more than this dual core netbook for much better performace. There are a few select situations where one may absolutely need 11" or smaller, but for 99% of the users out there I cannot imagine that the 14" thin and light ASUS is too big. If I were in the market for a laptop it is certainly the one that I would buy.Rsaeire - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
"...video decoding and in particular gaming are too much for the 4500MHD."The Intel GMA 4500MHD supports full hardware acceleration of HD video codecs, MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
Yes, but Flash 10.1 still struggles on HD movies.LoneWolf15 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Yes, but Flash 10.1 is currently at beta 2, a full-featured release isn't available yet.JarredWalton - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Exactly, and do you buy something with GMA 4500MHD with the hope that everything gets worked out in the next couple of months as far as Flash goes, or do you wait and see first, or do you go with ION? I'm inclined to take one of the latter two approaches, as buying something with the assumption that it will work later (see GMA 500 -- no recent XP driver updates, and as far as I can tell the Acer 751h still has major issues with stability) isn't a great plan.LoneWolf15 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Alternately, I might just wait for something like this.http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/Broadcom...">http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/Broadcom...
LoneWolf15 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Actually, having seen Adobe in action, I'd probably wait. Haven't seen too many things they can't break to some degree, even sometimes after they have fixed them.Ion is cool, don't get me wrong. However, Intel's 4500 onboard video has been the first video product I've seen from them that seems to work well for almost everything except gaming. I rarely switch on my Radeon 3470 mobile graphics (I have a ThinkPad with switchable graphics) for this reason. If I was in the market, I'd rather get an SU2300 laptop than an N330 once I've seen what Flash 10.1 release looks like --and your review actually convinced me of that, as I'd have been on the fence before.
Spivonious - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
But that's not due to the 4500MHD, it's due to Flash not taking advantage of it.