july 30 2010 review by hothardware
Most netbooks still use Atom processors with a MAX @ 1.66GHz, most still only ship with 1 or 2GB of RAM, without optical drive or USB 3.0.
This netbook is one of the more expensive on the market today. It's double the price of its competitors. It has a 12" LCD display , a much larger keyboard and a discrete GPU next to one of the fastest Atom chips. But is this enough to upgrade?
The build quality is about what we expected, it relies heavily on plastic, that should hold up well under normal travel circumstances. The trackpad itself is small, and there's no middle trackpoint controller.
Conclusion:
It's one of the best netbooks on the market. But it makes no sense whatsoever to consider an upgrade, even if you have a netbook that's well over a year old. The performance of this machine, in the middle of 2010, is barely better than machines available in the middle of 2009. That's just a fact of the slow moving netbook world, but it's one worth paying attention to if you've been bitten by the upgrade bug and are considering scratching it. All that said, there's no reason why Asus couldn't turn an Optimus enabled version of this machine around in fairly short order. We'll be waiting for that day to come, hopefully in the not so distant future.
Battery Life:
In real-world use the battery lasts up to 3-4 hours. With multimedia @full load it's closer to 3 hours. Still 35 minutes of battery life above the previous generation Asus 1201N.
Video:
The netbook could play high-definition video clips at full-screen. Video playback was silky smooth thanks to the Ion 2 is.
Benchmarks:
3D Mark 2006, PC Mark Vantage, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, SiSoft SANDRA 2009, multimedia capabilities, BatteryEater Pro.
