ASUS Eee PC 1201N: Dual-Core Atom + ION FTW?

ASUS 1201N: A Potent Media Netbook

When you're dealing with laptops and netbooks, there's a lot more subjective opinion on the matter than if you're going out and purchasing the latest video card. If you're doing the latter, performance and price are pretty much the major metrics. With a laptop, you need to balance battery life, features, size and weight, design, and other aspects - along with price and performance. That means that one person might love a certain laptop while a bunch of others hate it, or vice versa.

The Eee PC line from ASUS is a great example of this. It's probably no surprise that I'm not a huge fan of 10.1" and smaller netbooks - I've said as much in the intro. My reasons are my own, and if you personally like such netbooks that's fine. I've heard some say that a 10" (or smaller) netbook will fit easily in a purse while 12" (and especially 13.3" and larger) designs are too bulky. That may be true, but I never use a purse so it doesn't matter to me. For me, the features and performance are a bigger issue, with size being a little less of a concern, so a 12" netbook like the 1201N fits my style far better than the 1005PE.

The rundown of the 1201N is that it provides good battery life, great multimedia aspects, adequate overall system performance, and borderline gaming. It does this in a package that's slightly larger than your typical netbook, but it's comparable to the 11.6" offerings. The larger size makes for a more comfortable keyboard, at least in my experience; those with less beefy hands might be fine with 10.1" and smaller netbooks. The 1201N keyboard also has a better feel compared to the 1005PE I tested, where the keys felt loose.

The 1201N is clearly superior to the 1005PE when it comes to multimedia capabilities, as it can handle anything up to and including 1080p H.264 content - be that x264, Blu-ray, or even Flash video. This capability is backed up with an HDMI port that can output such content to a suitable display, so if you've ever wanted to bring a movie over to a friend's house and play it on their HDTV, all you'll need is the 1201N and an HDMI cable (and an external Blu-ray drive if that's what you intend to watch).

On the other side of the equation, the 1005PE - and presumably most Pine Trail netbooks - will offer great battery life, but only decent multimedia capabilities, barely adequate performance, and no chance at running anything beyond the least demanding games. (Including a Broadcom chip could help matters in the multimedia area; we'll test that if/when we receive such a netbook.) The 1005PE clearly wins in the size/weight and battery life departments, but the drop to a 1024x600 LCD can be very annoying at times.

Finally, the other option continues to be CULV. As shown in this review, inexpensive CULV designs are clearly superior in terms of CPU power, and they often come with 4GB RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Despite having significantly more CPU power, multimedia capabilities are a bit weak. x264 playback wasn't a problem, but Flash video continues to tax 4500MHD + CULV, particularly for HD content. The final version of Flash 10.1 will hopefully provide better support of 4500MHD - or possibly updated Intel drivers will accomplish that task - but for now NVIDIA's drivers provide the best support for Flash 10.1. Regardless, there's no getting around the lack of 3D performance on current Intel laptop IGPs, unfortunately (for Intel).

Considering a Pentium SU4100 and the Atom 330 appear to use similar amounts of power, plus CULV enables SpeedStep, it should be possible to pair a CULV with a 9400M and get something faster/better than the 1201N in virtually every area. It might end up costing $50-$100 more than the Eee PC 1201N, but we'd be willing to pay a small premium to get a better low power CPU than Atom. Maybe CULV versions of Arrandale will change the status quo a bit, but we'll take a wait and see approach on that. Dell's Inspiron 14z is the cheapest GeForce 9400M laptop we can find right now, but it's paired up with a regular Core 2 CPU rather than an LV or ULV version and it starts at $750. At that price, the 11z runs smack into ASUS' own UL80Vt, which is my favorite laptop right now; it has great battery life and the ability to run games and other applications.

As far as Atom netbooks go, the ASUS Eee PC 1201N is currently my favorite of the bunch. If I only had around $500 to spend, it would definitely be in the running for my next laptop purchase, but it does come with some caveats. The fact that the Atom 330 targets the desktop and doesn't support any lower power states means battery life is lower than other CPUs. We would expect CULV processors to actually use less power at idle as well as providing better performance under load. But without better IGPs in current CULV laptops, ION tips the scales more in the 1201N's favor. You get a thin and light netbook that excels at being a portable multimedia station.

$500 is a decent chunk of change, opening up the 1201N to competition from a lot of other laptops. For good battery life, dual-core CULV laptops like Acer's Timeline series (and the Aspire 1410) and Gateway's EC series compete directly with the 1201N. The EC1435u and EC1436u both have a $400 MSRP like the Aspire 1410 and include a Celeron SU2300 and 2GB RAM, but searching online turns up modified specs and higher prices; the EC1430u and EC1437u move to a Pentium SU4100 with 3GB RAM and twice the HDD capacity for $550 MSRP, but they're also listed as "out of stock" at most places. Either most of the SU2300 CULV laptops are being discontinued, or they're in shortage due to high demand - hopefully the latter. Those designs are all faster than the ASUS 1201N in many areas, but the 1201N is still better for multimedia and games.

If you forget about battery life and size, there are plenty of $400 to $550 laptops that provide better performance than Atom + ION. Dual-core AMD-based laptops with HD 3200 or HD 4200 fall into that category, predominantly from Acer, Gateway, and HP. Our pick for such a laptop would be the Gateway NV5302u, which gets you a 15.6" laptop with a 45nm Athlon II M300 (2.0GHz) and 4GB RAM for just $450. It only delivers "up to 3.5 hours of battery life", so there's a big gap in mobility and size. If you're after more performance, there's also Arrandale to look forward to, but we don't expect that to be competitive in battery life at this point.

Ultimately, what laptop is best is going to come down to priorities; we can list off many good options but few laptops are going to please everyone. The ASUS UL80Vt is the closest we've come, garnering our Silver Editors' Choice award, but gaming performance is still a big step down from faster GPUs. The ASUS 1201N boosts battery life but drops graphics performance even further. It also comes in a smaller, lighter package, which is really where it stands apart. At present, you just can't get the same level of multimedia capabilities and performance in any other 12.1" or 11.6" netbook. We think it's a good design but it won't please everyone; hopefully this review helped you determine whether it's the right laptop for you.