Just by looking at the Mobii ION 230, you can tell it's a netbook keen on standing out from the crowd. This desire extends through its internals, which rely on NVIDIA's
Ion platform to power an Atom N230 CPU, usually a
nettop part, alongside an upgradeable 1GB of RAM and 160GB HDD. Hence, while battery life might take a comparative beating, graphical and processing ability should be appreciably superior to your run-of-the-mill netbook.
Point of View promises flawless 1080p playback and DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 support, with an HDMI-out if you don't feel the 10.2-inch display at 1024x 600 resolution does those features justice. You'd be wrong to expect anything more than a slideshow in graphically intensive games, but it's good to know the netbook market is getting a juiced-up option, and fret not, there's a conservative black paintjob available too. European prices are expected around the €349 ($495) mark and availability should hit within the next few weeks.
[Via
Netbook News]
posted Jul 21st 2009 7:56AM
would be better if they upped the resolution and downed the fluorescent colors
:/
The resolution? its not something you need to worry about too much when using a 10inch screen dude.
What needs to be worried about is both INTEL and now Nvidia are taking control of the netbook sector whilst poor old AMD who should have had there FUSION technology released eons ago cannot provide a GPU or a CPU compete with there rivals on power usage and performance....
1024 x 600 does not cut it, this needs to be higher. A high resolution is especially needed on a small screen like this so that you're able to fit more onto less. Dell's Mini 10, while being an awful Netbook, sets a great new standard with its optional screen upgrade that allows 1366x768. I personally won't settle for anything less.
@Applegadget
You're right. But there's always a group that will fight for the "MOST" and "HIGHEST" when it comes to tech. If they offered a 1080p screen on these that required a magnifying glass to use you know there's be some asses somewhere praising it for the option. I agree, though. 1024x600 is a good, legible resolution on such a small screen.
1024*600 just didn't cut it for me. Some dialog boxes didn't fully fit on the screen, though I managed to get away with "scrolling" at 1024*768 when needed.
Anyhow this netbook has pretty strange specs, why the N230 I wonder?
Good to FINALLY see an ION netbook on the market though.
Agreed, I just got the Dell Mini 10 with the 1366X768 screen and it is perfect. My only complaint is the 6 cell that sticks out. I've spent time with the aspire 1 and the eee1008HA and the Dell trumps both in keyboard and screen.
Jesus! If only these weren't so ugly!
I'd love to get a HP Mini with an ION, that'd rock!
Of course, engadget cherry picked the colors from a palette. Here's one that's a non-infringing black:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2669/3740985943_1fcbd74da8.jpg
I know, not dramatic enough AND you would have had to read the article.
nice machine.... inside, at least!
Plz have a better battery option ! let it bulge... it doesnt matter but plz ! This is the perfect netbook ever !
I still don't get the point of GeForce 9400m in a netbook. No netbook has a high enough resolution screen to put the video processing elements to good use, and any game that actually uses DX10 will choke on the Atom processor.
And I can't help but think "Vaio" when I look at this thing.
If you're watching 1080p on a netbook it's not likely to be on your netbook HDD, but streaming it from somewhere else.
I would love to be able to use my netbook as a media player, wouldn't you?
The HP Mini has 1366*768 HD Screen.
Is it wrong that I kind of like the crazy colors?
No they look fine to me also. To bad I've not seen the ION based one in Blue. Their previous model looks great in that color.
I dig the colors. I'm with you. And the video capabilities get me excited. I'd want to see one in person though.
Oh, and for you color haters. It comes in black, white, blue, etc. Just click the photo.
I HATE YOU!
"The new and improved Mobii will be available in the colors black, red and lime within a next few weeks."
Looks like blue and white are just just box art. Still have a nice black option though.
Catch the right sale and a Dell 14Z costs about the same...with a core2 processor.
Redesign that green one with a sharper look and a huge NVIDIA green logo on the back
Pacman?, is that you?
Will ION help graphics only, or will it help speed up the computer as well. I see that it's still running an Atom chipset. Also, how much more power intensive is this chip compared to the Atom+integrateed INtel graphics used in other netbooks?
It will help graphics only. There is no benefit whatsoever unless you want to use your netbook for some kind of media playback which the chip is capable of accelerating. (Which is frankly why it's bizarre that so many people seem to have fallen for the hype. Maybe just because it has a cool name?)
@Sam
Well, quite frankly I have a few reasons to want ION over GMA-anything:
1. GMA-Anything doesn't support Dx10, and won't accelerate Windows Vista/7's desktop. I'm looking for a slick, rich multimedia experience on my netbook--be it WMP, Silverlight, or anything else. ION will give me this capability, including solid drivers from nVidia.
2. ION will make light gaming a reality. Quake 3, UT, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, even Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat are viable on this hardware. This means I can take this to my friend's place on the weekends to check email, play DotA, etc.
3. HDMI/HD playback. Pretty self-explanatory; I can hook this up to my TV to stream Hulu and watch other media. And, with the understand that GPU-based acceleration is gaining momentum (especially in formats such as Silverlight, HTML5, etc.) this should only improve for ION.
4. Development. Visual Studio 2008/2010 and the use of Windows Presentation Forms (WPF) can be taxing on cruddy hardware, especially when I'm trying to do something intensive. Add photoshop, eclipse, and other development tools, and the last thing I want is the graphics stuttering and wrecking the party. I know a single-core Atom 1.6/1.83 won't run the show for development incredibly well, but it'll certainly be bottle-necked by garbage GMA graphics.
@Justin,
The Z-series Atom GPU, the GMA500 has a PowerVR core and drivers for Vista/Windows 7 are available from Intel:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=3001&DwnldID=16943&lang=eng&iid=dc_rss
and supports Windows Vista/Windows 7 desktop transparency effects/Direct X 10.0.
ION with Atom will *not* play HD Flash smoothly. Flash does *not* support GPU offload so the GPU will make virtually no difference to your HD Flash/Fullscreen Flash playback experience. Yes we all hope this improves sometime soon with an update from Adobe.
Like others I find the choice of the Atom 230 to be odd. This thing is going to suck battery life like nobody's business.
@Justin: Most of your points are fair enough but the development one is misplaced (unless you are developing 3D graphics software, of course). Eclipse for example, which I use, won't benefit one iota from a better graphics chip - it runs perfectly fine on 2GHz Core 2 Duos with shitty Intel integrated graphics, there is absolutely never going to be a graphics bottleneck.
Similarly, it will run like a dog on an Atom even if you somehow put the latest $1,000 graphics card in there. Eclipse eats memory for breakfast and likes CPU too - graphics? It won't care. (By the way, I have an old PC that's about Atom-level, Eclipse is actually perfectly bearable really for Java... probably not for PHP though.)
If you do ever see Eclipse repainting slowly, that's because you have a memory, I/O, or CPU bottleneck - nothing to do with graphics. So if you want a netbook that runs well with Eclipse, look for one with lots of RAM and with an SSD that has good no-stutter random read and random write performance (and, yeah, good luck with that) rather than one with a fancy graphics chip. Of course the fancy graphics chip won't hurt but it won't help either.
I suspect the same's largely true for the other apps you list in this section (possible exception for Photoshop, I'm not sure if that supports the relevant Nvidia chip for some of the accelerated processing it has).
I absolutely take your point re Windows 7 though. Hadn't realised that that couldn't even do the pretty-looking desktop without DX10.
Also, Intel integrated graphics is indeed embarrassingly shit given its high (not quite as high as Ion, but still high) power consumption, so competition is badly needed in this area. I'd personally rather it was competition as in, still crappy graphics but with dramatically reduced power usage, rather than competition for better graphics in similar or slightly higher power usage, but obviously there is room for both.
Close but no cigar, come with a model that has 2gb of ram 9 cell battery, and better screen res and we have a deal
Microsoft won't give them a discount on XP if more than 1 GB of RAM is installed.
Slowly but surely, we're getting there...
I would buy a netbook in a heartbeat if it had the Ion platform and a dual core Atom (yes, I know, not yet existent for the mobile market). HP's new Mini 5101 looks amazing -- if it had the Ion I'd be all over it.
Getting where? Notebook categorizing is a ridiculous subject. For me at least, it's not worth it anymore when a "netbook" reaches this price point. Of course technology will continue advancing and we will eventually be able to fit much more into a device as small as this, but people seem to be forgetting that netbooks are supposed to be cheaper than laptops.
And -- last I checked -- they are cheaper than laptops, unless you want to buy a beyond crappy laptop.
I don't own a netbook, but got my mother one for her birthday. It really is an amazing little thing, and after using it I was changed in how I thought about them. They're nowhere near as bad as you'd think, and the portability is great. If you already have a desktop but do some traveling, there's no point in buying a laptop instead of a netbook. The last two laptops I had both crapped out in roughly a year and a half's (or less) time -- right out of the warranty time. So, instead of getting a $2,000 paperweight, I'd rather pay $500 to get something that's going to be more replaceable and work just as fine for the majority of tasks.
Ion does not accelerate flash so you are still out of luck if you are trying to view hulu or something. Either the problem gets solved on the software end (Adobe) or the hardware end (Nvidia). That said, I love my mini 9.
There seems to be an important bit of information missing: Is the LCD glossy or matte?