You'd think after running into ASUS's next generation
Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE over five months ago at
CeBIT, our excitement may have waned for the stylish netbooks. Oh, but it's actually the opposite, and when the brand new netbooks arrived last week, we grabbed the X-Acto knife (safely, of course) and eagerly unboxed them to see if the aluminum clad little laptops were as svelte as we'd remembered them. Sure, the $350 1018P and 1015PE have standard netbook internals (an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter), but without a doubt they're some of the best quality netbooks ASUS has made in quite a while. Hit that read more link for an in-depth look at these two, and to see if they're all we had hoped for and more.
Look and feel
Both the Eee PC 1018P and the 1015PE are members of the Eee PC Seashell family, but they look more like first cousins than siblings. The 1018P happens to be our favorite in terms of aesthetics – it's got a black aluminum lid and palmrest (it's also available in silver) while the bottom is covered in a black matte plastic. It's only right to take a second to thank ASUS for finally getting rid of the glossy lids that have been plaguing Eee PC after Eee PC! But back to the 1018P, it has an incredibly professional, uniform look, and its battery is flush with the bottom. But above all, it's one of the thinnest and lightest netbooks we've ever had in hand – it measures .7-inches at its thickest point and weighs 2.4 pounds. Seriously, this is one slender looking machine.
The 1015PE is a bit more chunky and business casual with its soft-to-the-touch maroon aluminum lid, which is also available in black, navy, and white. Actually, the chassis design and size is reminiscent of the
Eee PC 1005PE with its rounded corners and thicker base. Speaking of measurements, it's quite a bit thicker than the 1018P -- it's 1.4 inches at its thickest point and the six-cell battery does protrude slightly from the underside. You can see where we're going with this: the 2.8-pound netbook is attractive, but won't turn heads in the same way as the 1018P.
When it comes to ports, both machines have the netbook standards: three USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, headphone and mic jacks. They also have 4-in-1 card readers.
Keyboard, touchpad and screen
The chiclet keyboards on the 1018P and 1015PE are identical to each other, and in truth they're not any different from the keyboards ASUS has been using for the last year on its netbooks (see: Eee PC
1005PE and 1001PE). The matte keys are decently comfortable, but ASUS oddly continues to shrink the right Shift key. The full-sized left Shift key, however, has a total chip on its shoulder and laughs from the other side of the deck. It's not the best netbook keyboard out there – we still prefer that on the
Toshiba Mini NB305 and the
HP Mini 5102 – but we typed this entire review at a decent rate.
While the Eee PCs don't differ much in terms of keyboards, the touchpads are like night and day. (Sadly, ASUS seems to have retired the braille-like pads of the past.) We'll save the best for last, meaning we'll begin with the 1018P's incredibly stiff single mouse button. While the pad itself is wide enough to navigate the desktop and there's a dedicated scroll strip, the single metal button is a thumb's worst nightmare. We ended up double tapping on the pad to make selections to avoid having to jam our thumb on the button. We clearly prefer the 1015PE's soft aluminum-coated pad, which is flush with the palmrest and only set off with two silver lines. Thankfully, the single mouse button on the 1015PE was much easier to press. Both pads supported multitouch gestures – pinch-to-zoom and two finger scrolling worked quite well actually, and was smoother than other PC touchpads we've tested lately.
Both the 1018P and 1015PE have glossy 10.1-inch, 1,024 x 600-resolution screens. The 1018P's matte screen bezel actually makes it appear less glossy than the 1015PE. Either way, both screens were sufficiently bright, though -- as with most ASUS laptops -- viewing angles are narrow. When we watched a clip of the
Today Show on Hulu on the 1018P, tilting the screen back on made it hard to decipher where Matt Lauer's head ended and the wall behind him began. The same thing happened when we watched a clip on the 1015PE. Both the screen bezels do have VGA webcams with nifty camera covers that can be slid on and off for privacy. No shame in confessing: it made us feel very
Mission Impossible for some reason.
The 1018P's speakers are uniquely located in between the screen bezel and the keyboard, while the 1015PE's are on the front bottom lip. Both speakers aren't exceptionally loud, but were fine for listening to "Love the Way You Lie" in a small apartment. Though to Rihanna and Eminem's credit, no set of speakers could make that song sound bad.
Performance, graphics, and battery life
There's no doubt that the Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE have ripe looks, but we can't say the same of its internals. Both mini-laptops are powered by the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM and run Windows 7 Starter. It's no surprise that both netbooks functioned like most we've reviewed over the last half a year – writing this review in Microsoft Word 2010 Starter, chatting with Trillian and surfing the web in Firefox was rather peppy. Not
Core i3 peppy, but we certainly weren't waiting around when toggling between windows or tabs.
There's no change in terms of graphics, either: it's fine for playing back standard-def videos and streaming YouTube and Hulu videos, but anything high-def makes it break down and start limping. Those looking for an HD-capable 10-inch netbook should consider the AMD-powered $349
Acer Aspire One 521 – not only can it handle 1080p video and YouTube HD content, but it has an HDMI port. The 1018P and 1015PE have 250GB hard drives.
|
|
PCMark05 |
3DMark06 |
Battery Life |
|
ASUS Eee PC 1018P |
1244 |
154 |
4:40 |
|
ASUS Eee PC 1015PE |
1365 |
154 |
5:00 |
|
ASUS Eee PC 1008P |
1531 |
152 |
3:20 |
|
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE |
1431 |
157 |
8:10 |
|
Toshiba Mini NB305 |
1272 |
156 |
6:30 |
|
Acer Aspire One 521 |
2286 |
1481 |
4:02 |
Both the 1018P and 1015PE claim to get 10 hours of battery life. Uh, we're not sure how ASUS is testing these days -- perhaps with WiFi turned off and brightness turned all the way down -- considering we got about half that runtime. On our video rundown test, which loops the same standard-def video at 65 percent brightness, the 1018P's 44Wh six-cell battery lasted only 4:40 minutes. The 1015PE's 47Wh six-cell battery lasted a slightly longer five hours. No matter how you slice it, the runtimes are disappointing, especially when the Eee PC 1005PE ran for eight hours on that same test. To the 1018P's credit, it does run for about an hour longer than the
1008P, which has a similar slender design and battery integrated into the chassis design. In everyday use the Eee PC 1018P lasted about five and a half hours and the Eee PC 1015PE closer to six hours. Both would probably provide enough juice to last on a flight from San Francisco to New York, but not as much as other netbooks that could last the duration of some nine hour international flights.
Update: ASUS says its Eee PC 1015PED will have the same battery as the 1015PE so that model should last longer on a charge than our unit did.
Software
The Eee PC duo come loaded up with a fair amount of ASUS software, including its EeeDock which is locked to the top of the desktop and contains shortcuts to a few ASUS utilities. Additionally, they boot the new ExpressGate Cloud OS when you hit the button above the left side of the keyboard. The new instant-on OS is more polished, but it seems more sluggish than the previous version. We know, we sound like a broken record on these pre-boot environments, but they seem quite pointless when you can just wait 30 seconds more to get into Windows. The laptops also came with Syncables for syncing files between computers and ASUS's EeeStorage, which includes 20GB of online storage.
Wrap-up
Indeed, ASUS has done a really nice job in designing the most attractive netbooks on shelves today, and the best part is that you don't have to pay more than $350 (at least at Best Buy) for those premium designs, as the company has been known to do in the past. In the end, both the 1018P and 1015PE are very solid choices, though if you're looking for a netbook that lasts longer on a charge we have to recommend the Toshiba Mini NB305 or the Eee PC 1005PE. However, if you've got your mind set on one of these new very dapper Eees, we're more inclined to recommend the 1015PE over the 1018P because of its superior touchpad and battery life, but there's no denying the 1018P is the better choice for those that place priority on looks.
posted July 23rd 2010 12:30PM
1018p shouldve a bigger battery, high res, antiglare screen..
@eggimage
I think Joanna made a mistake. There are two different models of 1018p. The one on bestbuy.com ($350) is 1018PB-BK801 and the other one on excaliberpc.com ($430) is 1018P-PU17-BK. Joanna should share with us which one she reviewed, because the PB model has no USB 3.0 ports, fingerprint reader nor the 10-hours battery. I can't see USB 3.0 ports nor fingerprint reader on the photos above, so i guess she reviewed the model from best buy which has 4-cell battery (8-hours says ASUS).
@C72
no, in fact there's no higher capacity battery for 1018p
the cheaper 1018p model is now also sold in bestbuy
the better one will only feature USB 3.0, fingerprint reader, or maybe a bigger harddrive i dont know
but certainly no differences on the screen type, resolution or batteries
ASUS intentionally wants buyers to choose between the various models they have
and each of them only sports maybe one or two important features, there's no way you can get satisfied by buying any of them
1018p -- slim and sold, but with cheap-looking glossy display, low res, short batt life
1015p -- nothing special but may also come with larger capacity batteries
1016p -- said to be competing with HP 5101/5102, but actually built with worse materials (plastic), battery is also smaller than HP's, no high res, no optional touch screen or SSD
1015n -- dual core, HD, but ugly and with glossy display, plastic
unlike HP 5102, if you're willing to pay to get a perfect netbook that satisfy all your needs, that's an all-in-one extremely awesome loooong bettery life good looking aluminum business class high resolution(or touch screen) HD playback capable netbook
i'm hoping HP 5102 gets a dual-core refresh so that it'll be 100% invincible, for real, not exaggerating
@eggimage
1018PB-BK801 has 4-cell battery.
1018P-PU17-BK has 6-cell battery.
So either they screw up the specs or you got it wrong. :)
@C72
oh wow
well i do hope i got it wrong lol
it'll be great if it really is gonna have a 6cell
but i hope it's not just 44wh...
it has to be at least 60wh to be called sufficient
@eggimage
i wonder which one Joanna used in the review?
I think it's the one with 4-cell battery...
@C72
@C72
given the similar specs as what NB305 has
I've tested NB305 myself and with a 6cell 61wh battery it lasted around 11 hours when i turned the brightness down to 25% and had the wifi on, did just some typing and light surfing.
in regular use, 75% brightness + wifi, I'd say 8 hours is the longest we might get
there's no way a 6cell 44 or 48wh (i just checked online) could last for more than that on 1018p
ASUS is bluffing on this for sure
the info of specs on the internet is all messed up, it's said differently everywhere,
ASUS always confuses people by their ridiculously large variety of similar models, and the specs are never clear until we really get one in our hands and look into every detail ourselves
even the 6cell batts on the same model can have 2 different capacities, 44wh and 63wh for example,
they burn so much cash doing this messy job in order to confuse buyers, and often times we don't see the actual machines in physical store in the US
@C72
i'm from Taiwan myself and I've gotten pixxed of by our own company in this miserable way
like i mentioned in the previous comment, below 60wh it's not gonna be sufficient for many people, whats the point getting an ultra thin laptop when you still have to carry your adapter always while you can get a slightly heavier model and use it outdoor freely without having worry about the battery, and it's actually lighter than carry both the and the adapter.
why wouldn't they just drop the idea of making 1016p as it's got nothing to compete with HP 5102 in any perspective and transplant all the nice features (non-glare screen, larger battery, anti-theft tech..etc) to 1018p and make it actually nicer for users, i know it's gonna cost, but since asus is already making like 100 different similar models, why couldn't they just have a wider range of 1018p series, it's still way cheaper than developing extra designs of products.
@C72
and, where's the promised N475/N470 processor?
win7 starter again?? on a high end netbook product? oh come on
a three year old kid knows win XP performs better and takes up less resource on a netbook
it's stupid that 800MB of RAM goes away as soon as system boots up when you are only allowed to have 2GB of it on the netbook
IT'S NOT ENOUGH
win7 starter is sluggish and come with lots unnecessarily pathetic limitations
it looks even more ironic on a higher end product like this
no high capacity battery, no high resolution, no anti-glare display, no SSD
why, ASUS, WHY??
Three USB ports for a netbook is pretty good! My Vaio F only has 2 ports.
@pple is poo What is the point of this post, other than to be first?
Thanks for the review, Joanna.
maybe my next hackintosh?
@Mr Hett
The GMA 3150 on Pinetrail Atoms don't support GPU acceleration under OS X due to no available drivers.
@pple is poo
Thats gross.
@pple is poo
Damn Joanna seems to do more work around here than anyone with all these netbook reviews and posts
It's good to see they've got rid of the shiny lids and the webcam covers are a nice touch too.
@pple is poo
they already did, it's called the iPad and they're selling a million a month
It's Sooooo Satin-y!
The Asus 1018p looks nice and I'm considering a netbook to replace my 2008 Toshiba laptop which gets about 1 1/2 hours of battery life... I'm actually leaning more towards the Aspire 521 since I'm returning to my second college semester this fall I need something with good battery life. Thanks for this review.
My jailbroken ipad tops this garbage.
I can do pre like multitasking. Whatever the hell I want.
And not only does my ipad look way more attractive. The battery lasts me through out the freaking day.
Netbooks are just a bag of hurt.
@FrankDTank
How much more expensive is that iPad though?
@FrankDTank
Can I have Firefox? Do I have to void my warranty? Can I have several applications open side by side without switching between them for when I'm writing articles and need to reference things?
Also, how do I hold it?
@Brother Unit No 4
Mine was cheaper than most netbooks, and certainly these.
@FrankDTank
Can I run full Office Suit on the iPad?
Can I connect via USB or card readers, or do I need iTunes for everything?
Can I run Matlab?
Call of Duty 5?
So basically the iPad is only good for media consumption (watch videos, listen to songs and browse Web). The netbook can do all of that PLUS work, study and play serious games.
@FrankDTank
.
your ipad has 320GB hard drive?
.
your ipad can install a full suite of real software for productivity?
.
your, wait, you're a troll.
@shishi
Lol@ matlab running on this garbage
@FrankDTank
Yeah, right. My HP 210 mini HD netbook:
-10.1" 1366x768 display (vs. 9.7" 1024x768)
-1.66mhz Atom + Broadcom HD decoder (vs. 1ghz mobile CPU/GPU that probably couldn't handle HD flash video even if it was available)
-40GB Intel SSD driver (definitely better than the crap flash memory on the iPad)
-2GB RAM (vs. 256MB, huh? WTF was Apple thinking?)
-Chiclet keyboard (vs. a awkward on screen keyboard)
-Webcam (vs. Nothing)
Price: $375 (base) + $90 (ssd) + $30 (ram) = $495, still cheaper than the crappiest iPad.
On top of that, I have Office 2010, Adobe Master Collection, dev tools so I can make money off of people who can realize that mobile apps are a waste of time and money, and a bunch of real tools and better, faster browsers.
My arsenal: Mini 210 HD, 2010 15" Macbook Pro (8GB, SSD, 1060x1050, i7), EVO 4G.
@shishi
the dumbpad is barely useful for media consumption. most of us have a lot more than 64gb worth of music. and thats just music not even including movies!!!
@detusueno
I have great respect for the variety of your arsenal.
wish it handled hd video better. i might have to give up on this netbook dream and go with a nice ultra-portable notebook.
I think she meant "...no set of speakers could make that song sound good."
Asus clearly makes too many models of netbooks. There's nary a difference between these two except aesthetics battery life really.
@pple is poo
Does that even make sense?
@TomSawyer
As an iPad 64/WiFi/3g owner, you're sorely misguided in that 'belief', since I still have to sync my iPad to either one of my netbooks/laptops/Macs to fully utilize it. Not to mention that my iPad lacks the integrated video conferencing, UBS hosting, media-card reading, and FLASH playback ability of even my lowliest netbook.
Nice try, but serious iFAIL (on your part).
@TomSawyer
no they didn't... the ipad doesn't have hinges in the middle to fold like a book, so it's not a netbook.. It's just a tablet
Wow that netbook's exterior is very sexy indeed.
@ruby
what DaHarder said
Am I the only one who has never in my entire life hit the right shift key? Engadget editors seem to be obsessed with it.
And another thing that really ticks me off in these reviews is using "we" instead of "I". How many of you were typing on this keyboard? Or do you just use We out of respect for yourself, on behalf of the people?
Otherwise informative review, but the performance part was pretty skimpy.
@blakove
The use of "We": it's for the same reason an eBay 'store' will use "We" when communicating with you. It lends credibility and makes them appear to be a large corporation with dozens of employees, when in fact it's just one clown selling junk--or reviewing products--out of their basement...
@blakove
I actually almost exclusive use the right shift key... lol. Not sure why, it's just how I learned to type.
Why does simply having an aluminum enclosure equal a "best quality netbook"? The quality, both in reliability and performance, of all the internals is far more interesting and important. Just 'cause it's made of metal doesn't make it better than a plastic version.
Secondly, now that the Acer 521 is available, any standard-spec netbook is HIGHLY uninteresting, IMO. Unless you specifically desire far lower performance, need 8 hr batt. runtime, or maybe you find the Acer keyboard or display unusable. Apart from those things, I think there's no reason to even consider any other 10" netbook.
@Beckler
Because here aesthetic value EVERYTHING
@Beckler What about Acer's extremely sketchy reliability record?
there are a couple of things that just totally turn me off netbooks:
1. crappy screen resolution
2. awful touchpads
3. bad with HD video
the small form factor is great, but nah, i think i'd rather carry my 13.3" around.
@keyrol My HP Mini 2010:
10.1" 1366x766
Broadcom HD Decoder + Flash 10.1
Multitouch clickpad (entire area is used for pointing like a Macbook) with latest drivers = amazing trackpad.
@detusueno HP Mini 210 HD*
@detusueno I just ordered an HP Mini 210 HD hope it serves my college needs well!
I'm ready for the Asus tablets now. Gimmie!
The one positive that I hope laptop and netbook designers take from this is: Stop making the external shell of your machines glossy. Seriously, glossy as a design feature went out in the late 1980s when laminate furniture's mirror finish was used to find all your cocaine.
I have two gripes with these: 1) Windows 7 Starter???? It would be more of use to people if it had Ubuntu Netbook Edition on or something. And that would also be 20-30$ cheaper to make. 2) Vertical screen resolution - after getting used to 1080p on the regular PCs and larger notebooks 600 px is just .. horrible. I feel like a Cylon looking at life trough a slit. 720 at least would be the way to go.