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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bsoft16384 - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
Maybe someone can answer this for me - does the Eee PC 1201N support x86-64? The desktop Atom CPUs (Atom 330) do, but the mobile Atom CPUs have it disabled. Since this laptop apparently has a desktop Atom CPU, presumably it supports 64-bit as well?JarredWalton - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
Yes, it supports 64-bit, but the default OS is 32-bit. Since it apparently only supports up to 3GB RAM, however, it's probably not important to install a 64-bit OS. There are a few apps where 64-bit code can boost performance by ~5%, but the higher memory requirements would likely decrease performance in other apps.vavutsikarios - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
I would like to see how the 1291N compares to Acer Ferrari one.They are same size (the acer has the same 1366x768 on a 11.6 screen), exact same price, have comparable CPUs and graphics capabilities, same HDD and memory size, same OS.
They are, obviously, direct competitors.
vavutsikarios - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Correction: the Acer comes with the Win 7 Home Premium 64bit version, so it's not the exact same OS.Despite that, I still can't think of any other machine that feels so much similar, hardware-wise, with the 1291N.
I mean, the absence of intel graphics is by itself enough to differentiate those machines from the majority of netbooks out there. And then you add Win7, and they become even more different, and even more similar -with each other.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
I've already sent in a request; we'll see if Acer fulfills it.sprockkets - Thursday, December 24, 2009 - link
What is preventing someone from putting out a CULV + an nvidia 9300 chipset???MonkeyPaw - Friday, December 25, 2009 - link
I'm sure something like that may exist, but you couldn't really call it a netbook anymore, but an Ultra-portable. Once you go there, you typically end up paying 4-5 times more than you would for a netbook.JarredWalton - Friday, December 25, 2009 - link
The 9300 and 9400 are essentially the same, but regardless no one has created a CULV with NVIDIA IGP so far. There are discrete GPUs with some CULV laptops, but that's as close as we get. Anyway, 9300M is just 9400M with lower clocks.evident - Thursday, December 24, 2009 - link
This thing is almost pushing $500. If you look around you can find a nice intel pentium dual core 14" laptop for the same price. granted, the netbook is alot smaller and that itself is worth something, but i still feel that the compromise is still too great. IMO, the sweet spot for an ion netbook would be $200.Penti - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Just buy a Intel CULV (Core2 based) if you like a small notebook. Atom is great, (think embedded space), but with ION, large screen etc I don't really get it. But at least netbooks (with Ion or Broadcom Crystal HD) will be more useful when Flash 10.1 hits none beta release. GMA 4500MHD is still a pretty good fit for accelerated flash (video) though, and the faster cpu helps with a lot of things. I think it would be more interesting to shrink the atom devices to the MID size. Finishing up Moblin would also be nice. Maemo has showed you can create a pretty good consumer Linux MID already. But they become pretty pointless as stand alone internet devices though.