By our count ASUS has released -- at the very least -- 20 Eee PC netbooks since 2008. Some had 8.9-inch or 10-inch displays, some ran Xandros Linux or Windows XP, and some packed hard drives instead of flash storage. But common to virtually all of them was an Intel Diamondville 1.6GHz Atom N270 or N280 processor. That all changes with the 10-inch Eee PC 1005PE -- one of the first netbooks to feature the next-generation Intel Pine Trail platform, which features a 45-nanometer Pineview Atom N450 processor that integrates both the memory controller and GMA 3150 graphics onto the CPU die. The newly compact package promises improved performance and power efficiency, but will you notice the difference? Does the $380 1005PE blow past the Diamondville Eee PCs of late? Read on to find out in our full review.
Look and feel
Though the new Intel platform's
reduced package size should enable thinner form factors, the 1005PE keeps the same compact and 2.8 pound chassis as the
1005HA. But we aren't complaining -- we still had plenty of room on our airplane tray table for a drink and a snack. Overall it's a nice-looking machine, but we've still got issues with ASUS's glossy, fingerprint-attracting lid. (Seriously, is anyone out there working on making a glossy material that repels fingerprints?) We'd also suggest going with the black version over navy: the blue lid doesn't match the black bottom, keyboard or screen bezel and the result is a bruise-like color combo. Like the
1201N, the plastic chassis feels cheap compared to aluminum-built netbooks like the
Nokia Booklet 3G and the
HP Mini 5101.
The 1005PE covers the major bases when it comes to ports, including three USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, an SD card slot, and headphone/microphone jacks. Hidden behind the battery is a SIM card slot.
Despite the matte keys feeling a bit flimsy, the typing experience on the chiclet keyboard was solid, and we rarely mistyped words while writing this review. The left shift key is full-size, and though the right one is shrunken it's placed in the correct spot to the left of the up arrow. We continue to be fans of the flush trackpad that's differentiated only by a grid of Braille-like raised dots; it was more than comfortable on our index finger and two-finger scrolling worked fairly well. But we'd love to see that stiff, clicky mouse bar replaced with two quieter dedicated right and left mouse buttons.
The 1005PE's 10-inch, 1024 x 600 resolution screen is plenty bright and watching an episode of 30 Rock on Hulu at full screen looked clean and crisp. It's a shame that it's surrounded by a thick glossy bezel which is almost as reflective as the screen itself, though.
Performance, graphics and battery life
So, what kind of difference does the new single-core 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 make? Coupled with 1GB of RAM and a 5,400rpm 250GB hard drive that boots Windows 7 Starter, the 1005PE felt slightly snappier than netbooks with Atom N270 or N280 chips, but not by much. We didn't wait around for programs to launch or have any problems running Firefox 3, TweetDeck, and iTunes simultaneously. It's possible to run Photoshop, but editing a batch of photos still requires the patience of a grade-school teacher -- just like on N270 or N280 machines. The benchmarks say the same: On Geekbench the 1005PE notched 942, while the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 powered 1008HA scored a lower 756. Either way, the performance gain isn't going to blow you away, and keeps netbooks in line with their original purpose -- light productivity and web tasks.
It's a similar story with the Intel's GMA 3150 GPU, which is now integrated into the Pineview CPU. Like previous Atom-based Eee PCs netbooks (excluding the
1201N) you aren't going to want to put a 1080p video anywhere near it, but a 720p Quicktime clip played back quite smoothly, but we had the same old choppy issues playing an HD YouTube video. 3DMark06 scores also show that graphics gain is minimal: the 1005PE notched 157, which is higher than the GMA945-based 1008HA's 102, but not by such a significant amount that you'd notice real world differences.
| |
Eee PC 1005PE
(Atom N450 - Pineview)
|
Eee PC 1008HA
(Atom N280 - Diamondville)
|
| Geekbench (higher is better) |
942 |
756 |
| WPrime 32M (lower is better) |
115.847 sec |
137.624 sec |
| 3DMark06 (higher is better) |
157 |
102 |
| Cinebench (higher is better) |
869 |
726 |
The real gain with Pine Trail comes in battery life, as the platform uses 20 percent less power than its predecessor. Outfitted with a fairly standard six-cell 5800mAH battery that juts out only slightly from the bottom of the machine, the 1005PE ran for an 8 hours and 10 minutes at 65 percent screen brightness during our grueling video rundown test. We got just over 10 and a half hours of juice when web browsing, writing in Microsoft Word and listening to streaming music -- seriously impressive
compared to 1005HA, which has the same battery and runs for about 8 hours during similar usage.
| |
Battery Life (video rundown test)
|
| Eee PC 1005PE (Atom N450, 6-cell - 5400mAH, Win7) |
8:10:00 |
| Eee PC 1008HA (Atom N280, 4-cell - 2900mAH, Win7) |
4:01:00 |
| HP Mini 5101 (Atom N280, 6-cell - 4910mAH, WinXP) |
5:45:00 |
You can launch the 1005PE's
ExpressGate instant-on OS by hitting the button on the top of the keyboard deck. The interface is attractive and it's quick to connect to WiFi, but we're still not convinced by instant-on operating systems -- particularly since it just takes an extra 40 seconds to launch Windows 7. Oh, and all of ASUS's new netbooks come preloaded with an annoying screensaver with hold-esque music that plays in the background. Seriously, you cannot switch this off fast enough.
Wrap-up
If you've been waiting for Pine Trail netbooks hoping for noticeably better performance and graphics, you're not going to get it -- and the truth is you probably won't even notice the difference between the 1005PE and older Diamondville-based Eee PCs until you start using it on battery power alone. Though we're a bit disappointed in Pine Trail's minimal performance improvement, especially in terms of streaming 720p video content, that's not to say the $380 1005PE won't be a solid, affordable choice for those looking for a 10-inch netbook with seriously impressive battery life when it goes on sale January 4th. And when it comes to netbooks, Pine Trail or not, you can't really ask for much more.
posted December 21st 2009 12:01AM
nice review, im astonished how fast you got a test unit!
though i cant share your love for the touchpad. my gf ha a 1005hah and ive always got problems "finding" it blindly. especially because the scroll-area is on the right edge. but also when draggin and dropping you can easily get over the borders without noticing.
the chiclet-keyboard is an improvement for me, i find them quite comfy and think they are lookong better, too.
as for your statement, that the gfx-power hasnt improved much, i have to ask you: isnt a 50+% improvement (according to your benchmarks: 157 vs 102) quite good for a plattform which even uses 20% less power? agreed, i dont think you will notice the 15% better cpu speed, but 50% gfx-improvement should be kinda notable.
also, i cant understand why youtube hd is choppy with this machine, at least at my gfs 1005hah its quite a breeze, even fullscreen.
im also quite happy they ditched the childish eee-logo.
as for the battery, i reaaly dig the direction where netbooks, ans asus especially, are heading. the 1005hah has 10,5h stated battery life which is a realistic number under light wireless browsing with dimmed screen. so the 1005pe's 14h should really last half an eternity.
"as for your statement, that the gfx-power hasnt improved much, i have to ask you: isnt a 50+% improvement (according to your benchmarks: 157 vs 102) quite good for a plattform which even uses 20% less power?"
Most computers can manage 3Dmark06 scores in the thousands. It's like replacing an old turtle with a new turtle that's 50% faster and trying to race it against an F-16...
The battery life looks impressive indeed.
However, graphics is still very weak. The upcoming Tegra T20 machines promise 3 parallel 1080p streams, this is only capable of playing one 720p. Looks like a serious difference.
Moreover, the Tegra machines will likely have better battery life than this since even the high power ARM cores (Cortex A9 in the Tegra 2) consume much-much less energy than the Pinetrail Atoms.
Since I am a Linux freak anyway, I think I will wait for a Tegra 2 based machine. They will be announced at CES so they should be available soon.
@sola - still, Tegra's general purpose computing power will suck compared to any Atom, and even on an Linux system the lack of x86 ISA will mean that you'll either have to recompile a ton of stuff yourself or accept a limited software selection...
@NewL
The lack of application performance compared to Atom is only true for the current gen Tegra. Tegra2 will be a dual core Cortex a9 SOC, which should easily beat the current Atoms and should be close or on-par to lower-end Pinetrail Atoms (if produced on the Globalfoundries 28nm process and clocked at 1.2Ghz - or similar).
It is possible that the ARM Linux software selection will be limited first, (especially, if the first devices come with Android). But, this will quickly get better, as soon as someone makes the official ARM port of Ubuntu run on the Tegra2. The Ubuntu ARM repos contain loads of software and modern base libraries.
The ICD Ultra prototype tablet should be based on a Tegra2 SOC (T20 in the article) and Engadget writes about blazingly fast browsing.
@sola Okay, but this approach already failed when manufacturers tried to get the public to accept Linux on netbooks in the first place, and really nothing has changed. You're making the wrong argument.
The way linux will get into the game is in the Chrome OS fashion, on low-end netbooks and tablets that don't claim to run all the software in the world--just your web browser. The whole cloud computing thing.
In this environment the performance won't matter that much, but battery life still will. And price. That's where Tegra may catch on.
As a linux bigot you may be unhappy with these boxes though since they'll probably restrict access to the command line, ability to download arbitrary programs, etc etc.
"Next Gen" with all the same...everything really as the first gen.
Sorry, I've got my Ion something else. ;)
I recently purchased a netbook and i rejected the asus eee because:
a) This feature a mini vga connector (meh!).
b) Heat issues (at least a way better than previous models).
c) Short battery life (in comparison with other n280)
d) Hidden usb connectors.
@magallanes You were looking at the 1008HA, most of the other Eees don't have those hidden USB or VGA adapters.
@cherryboom
If there's any cherryboom I want, it's sexy Joanna's!
Is it a 5800mAh battery or 5400mAh? At $380, I'd say that the extra two hours of juice is almost worth the reasonable premium tagged on. At least for now.
But then the newer 14-hour MSI Wind U110 (which no site has reviewed) is the same price, comes with a 9-cell battery, and can reportedly run for 16 hours before dying from exhaustion (according to a reviewer on newegg).
Hopefully we'll see larger steps forward at CES -- lol!
@ARM vs Intel
The MSI uses a z530 which is significantly slow than the Pinetrail used in this Asus. Also, it uses a 9 cell battery which protrudes outside of the netbook.
Well done ASUS. Great products as always!
@Dusty just picked up a similar spec asus last month @ best buy and really like it ; )
tjwarumzer@live.com
Tim Warumzer
I really like this Netbook. I have the 1008HA. I will wait for the 1008PE. Its much thinner.
When are we going to get netbooks that are actually decent powerful machines that can do HD video and multitask with decent applications? The iPhone 3GS has more processing power than this thing does. Netbooks need to go with RISC CPUS, especially CorText A8 or A9...OMAP4 or Tegra2 PLEASE, NOT ATOM.
@Nilay Patel
Zing!
This is exactly why we need to be able to rank authors......
I'd still exchange 2 hours of that battery life for a 11.2' screen with 1280x800 resolution. With such a huge bezel I'm sure they could pretty much almost fit it there as is.
Or even better, a Pixel Qi screen so we can get even more battery like even with the bigger size.
@(Unverified) You can. For $399 you can buy an Acer AS1410 with an 11.6" screen, 1366x768 resolution, 2GB of RAM, a bigger drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, HDMI, eSata, etc etc. $380 for an Atom-based netbook is too much money, sorry.
A bit more of a spec bump would have been nice, say offering higher speed Atom N450's at a small price increase...
The improved battery performance is certainly nice, though netbooks are already getting battery life (> 8 hours) that is entirely good enough in my opinion. Maybe we'll see 8 hour netbooks that are cheaper and lighter as a result of smaller batteries though.
I'm wildly unimpressed the new GPU doesn't address Flash 10.1 acceleration. The Z-series Atom with its GMA 500 could do this, I mean COME ON! So if you buy a 1366x768 netbook you won't be able to watch 480p flash video full screen without dropping frames. Jeez.
Quick question on the sim card slot. Do you have to use a data only sim, or can i simply pull the one out of my iPhone and use my unlimited data plan on an actual laptop?
Awesome review. This made me choose 1005PE instead of MSI Wind 135. Can't wait for this to be retailed !
Which is the best value netbook now?
http://1005pe.us