ASUS Eee PC 1002HA reviewed: looks cool but the battery stinks
By Laura June 
posted Dec 4th 2008 12:12PM
posted Dec 4th 2008 12:12PM
Laptop Magazine's reviewed the ASUS Eee PC 1002HA we've been hearing so much about lately, and they're pretty impressed with what they're seeing. They gush over its looks, design and slimness, noting the similarity to the more expensive S101, and think the keyboard's decently comfortable. The reviewer found the 10-inch screen to be pretty cool for watching My Best Friend's Wedding on, though viewing at an angle was not necessarily awesome by any means. The 1002HA is a fast booter, and pretty speedy in general, with a strong WiFi connection. Where it really fails, however is in the fact that the two-cell battery (which ASUS claimed would last for five hours) made it only a sad 3 hours and 39 minutes, and the company isn't planning on offering an extended life model either, apparently. So much for watching My Best Friend's Wedding and Notting Hill back to back, huh?
Hey BobDobalina, the 1000H got 4 hours and a half and on a 6-cell battery, you dangling nut sack!
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/asus-eee-pc-100h.aspx?page=4
3 hours and 39 minutes isn't great, but pretty damn good for 2 cells.
Wait - 3 hours and 39 minutes isn't good? I don't know of any mainstream laptops that last longer than 2.5...
I know, my damn 14" Compaq laptop's battery barely lasts me 1 hour. Of course, it's probably just time for an upgrade or new battery, but even when new it was only about 2.75-3 hours.
Im not going to buy a netbook until one charge lasts for all eternity, three hours is nothing for me. I need my netbook to run FOREVER!!!
3:39 is pretty good considering it's a 2-cell, but I guess it's still a bit disappointing compared to the 1000H/HA. But you gotta realize batteries do get worse as they get older so if you start at 3:39 once it's a little older you'll start seeing a lot less than a laptop that's starting with 6 hours to spare.
And I've been terribly spoiled by my 9-cell Dell Vostro 1400 and ASUS 1000H so at least partially it's just a matter of not wanting a newer laptop that runs less than an older one.
They should at least give people the option of putting in a larger battery though, even if it makes the laptop all bumpy.
I'd be happy with 3.5 hours battery. A nice-looking machine.
Two cell, huh?
That's really good run-time from two cells. It's pretty pathetic that they didn't drop a three cell in there, though.
Yeah, that's crazy. The 6-cell battery in my MSI Wind only lasts about 5 hours.
I'm getting between 3.5 and 4 with the 4-cell on my Dell Mini.
What kind of magic is Asus working with this battery/netbook combo?
msi wind 3 cell gets like 2.5 hrs
really theres more to a battery then just cells, not to mention asus may have improved other parts of the hardware itself
Yeah like 1234321 said, there is more to it than cell numbers.
http://www.netbooknow.net/asus/eee-pc-1002ha/ says "There is a two cell battery, but with each cell a larger 4200mAh in 2 cells."
It has a Li-Poly battery, so each cell is bigger.
Why must it have all those smudge attracting bits? I'm sure I'm not the only person who is obsessive about it staying fingerprint-free!
This ones not as bad as some. The bits around the screen are glossy fingerprint magnets, but the outer case is actually aluminum and fingerprint free!
5 hour 2 cell battery? yeah maybe in sleep mode...
Is this released yet. UK Price ?
Kris120890, This is the answer to your question
http://www.bestdealsonar.com/good-and-cheap-asus-eee-pc-1002ha-10-inch-netbook/
This model received tons of good customer feedbacks.
They should put solar cells at the back of the monitor. Then we can at least watch My Best Friend's Wedding and Notting Hill during day time in a place with plenty of sun light.
If you were watching movies that crappy, maybe the battery was just trying to do you a favor...
scooorrrreeeeeeeeeeee :-D
Hey, those are two of my wife's favorite movies. . . .
Damn Paul, sucks for you. I don't allow such things to be put on my television.
So, what exactly does the battery smell like?
Sorry mate. Didn't want to post this here, but apparently Engadget did some post deletions, in the spirit of free speech and true thought sharing.
I was talking real-world. If you want to go with their numbers the 1002HA lost almost an hour over the 1000H findings:
"On the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi) the Eee PC 1002HA lasted 3 hours and 39 minutes. This is lower than the mini-notebook average of 3:48, and 49 minutes shorter than the 1000H. The identically priced Samsung NC10 lasted 6:34 in our tests, nearly three hours longer."
This looks surprisingly like my Aspire One, who came first that chicken or this egg?
Don't you mean that egg this chicken?
Hey! Don't you remember when Apple claimed we could get the full internet experience with the iPhone and then they omitted Flash and Engadget called them out on it and said the iPhone stinks?
Oh wait.
As much as I love my iPhone, I wish Apple would just swallow their pride/open their wallets for the license fee/whatever the hell they're waiting for and give us Flash support already. I'm not a huge fan of Flash or anything, but let's face it - Flash has been a very crucial part of internet browsing for the past several years.
The thing is, I don't think it has anything to do with their pride or license fees (although I'm sure arrogance played a part in watering down the internet browsing experience on the iPhone...I swear it's almost like Apple is seeing how much they can get away with before their fanboys call them out on it)...
...I don't think the iPhone is powerful enough to handle Flash and still have the same fluidity as it did before. Maybe if it had some Tegra and OMAP 3 goodness, but you can't exactly package those into a firmware update :p
And from the looks of it in the picture you get a slew of pre-installed applications on it with just about every single one running in the notification area.
From my experience that adds to the performance greatly.
/sarcasm
Looks like your post didn't work correctly. Should have been:
[sarcasm]From my experience that adds to the performance greatly.[/sarcasm]
just saw the pricing on the 2nd Android phone. ~$400! wtf! might as well put a cell phone in a net PC rather than a net pc in a cell phone.
Stupid ASUS.
I love my NC10, 5 and half hours easily with a 6 cell battery.
Stupid ASUS? Or you're an idiot? This laptop gets 3 hours and 40 minutes, out of a 2 cell battery. That's amply more then half of what you are getting with 3 times the amount of battery.
Surely battery capacity in mAh would be better than cell count for comparison, as different cells can have different capacities can't they?
Why put underpowered battery when you can get more juice with a
better one?
"On the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi) the
Eee PC 1002HA lasted 3 hours and 39 minutes. This is lower than the
mini-notebook average of 3:48, and 49 minutes shorter than the 1000H.
The identically priced Samsung NC10 lasted 6:34 in our tests, nearly
three hours longer."
Someone will say maybe the cells are bigger, but to make things
worse:
"Note that the 1002HA's battery doesn't slide into the back edge of
the system; rather, it is buried on the bottom, so users won't be
able to use a standard Eee PC battery."
Seriously, they had to screw it up. I guess the guy who design these
got bored and wanted to make this identical than their
every-day-new-eeepc netbook.
They wanted to make it thinner. Which is a great idea. And I think the default battery life out of a 2-cell is great honestly. But given that the battery ended up on the bottom. And a lot of connectors ended up on the back. And ASUS doesn't plan to offer a bigger battery. And given the location there may not even be a possibility for one...
I agree. This is great for the battery. But you know they have to find something wrong with every review.
Thats amazing for a 2 cell battery, i mean come on i have a standard sized asus laptop that comes with your average 6 cell battery and in power save mode, which honestly kind of sucks i get around 3 and a half hours of battery life, if i try to turn up the settings higher to say something just like a standard setting my batter life drops to under 3 hours, so if this was a real world test, i wonder what kind of power settings they where using.
The old 1000H got 7+ hours out of the box! If this is "progress" then call me a luddite.
Anyway, the post is just summarizing the review, which made an issue of battery life, so go yell at Laptop Mag.
Fraudulent Foes with the strength of hercules, the way you on my **** must really hurt your knees.
Ok, didn't know that one. Damn, 7 hours! Makes me wanna exchange my 17" brick for one of those
7 hours is on paper. In real life, it's more like 4 to 5 hours tops, which is not bad, but not great. I expect better for a low power Atom machine.
So the HP not only has a bigger screen, but is lighter and in a smaller form factor?
ASUS Eee PC 1002HA
10"
10.4 x 7.1 x 1.1 2.6
HP Mini 1000
10.2"
10.3 x 6.6 x 1.0 2.4
They're all 10.2" screens. And all the 9" laptops have 8.9" screens. And all the 11" laptops have 11.1" screens.
One of the main reasons I've liked the eee series is because of their awesome battery life (ever since the asus 901 and 1000 came out at least). If they continue o screw with us like this, they're not going to have many more people buying their netbooks. I got the Asus N10 netbook for a few reasons, one including batery life. With a 'rated' 6 hour (maybe 5, idk) battery, it gets about 4-4.5 hours. And that's AFER I replaced the 160gb hdd for a 60gb ssd!
Is the battery embedded in the laptop, or it can be upgraded if a newer, bigger model comes out?
This is Asus we're talking about, not Apple.