Eee by gum
Lining the machine up against the notebooks whose price it most closely matches, in the 3DMark 06 benchmark the 1215N's Nvidia graphics put it far out in front of the rest, though its integrated graphics are, conversely, the lowest score I've measured.
The usual Asus flexing keyboard
The 1215N's PCMark Vantage performance isn't so hot, with a poor TV and Movies sub-rating dragging the overall score down. I set Optimus to run Vantage on the Nvidia graphics chip, but the low TV and Movies score suggests it may have been running on Intel for that part of the test.
The other scores, however, suggest that while the 1215N's CPU is somewhat speedier than other Atoms, it's not quite up there with dual-core notebook-class processors from AMD and Intel.
It's not the best for battery life, either. But it did manage more than three hours' runtime in Reg Hardware's tough PCMark Vantage loop test, and that translates to more than six hours out in the real world. Apply Asus' battery saving options and you can probably add an hour on to that.
Verdict
The Eee PC 1215N is an impressive netbook, especially if you want something larger than the 10in, 1024 x 600 norm. You pay for the privilege, but the premium gets you a machine that can just hold its own against similar sized sub-notebooks with higher-class CPUs - and put their various GPUs all to shame. ®
More Sub-Notebook and Netbook Reviews |
|||
 Samsung
X125 |
 Dell
Inspiron M101z |
 Toshiba
NB250 |
 Acer
Aspire One D260 |
Asus Eee PC 1215N 12in netbook
COMMENTS
Re: If....
Turn your computer off, and it'd be an even greater saving.
Turn your computer off, and it'd be an even greater saving.
Ah, but the AC is right, in my books anyways.
I too wanted to know immediately what the battery life and cost was :) Not likely to buy this thing as my current Eee probably boasts better endurance than it,and quite likely runs cooler. And cost less, apart from upgrades. Slower, for sure, but ... compromises...
Nevertheless, you get an upvote from me for the snappy comeback.
Pointless
When they cost £449 there just isn't any point. Especially when the size of the device is creeping up.
The next one will have a 13 inch screen, then 15 inch and then it will just be a laptop.
Netbook
If you said that this is not a netbook due to COST - then I might be with you.
A netbook is a low cost, relatively low powered machine that can handle light web-surfing and such but cannot tear though multiple power-apps at once, like editing high res imgs whilst your vid edit encodes whist, you capture a clip of a game whist another core works on a distributed computing project. Screen size has little to do with it other than helping to reduce the cost to make them competitive against real lappies despite relatively low power and therefore useful life.
And to extend battery life
Under $500 - thats DOLLARS - is the fig usually floated for those that care about definition.
More here: http://news.cnet.com/what-is-a-netbook-computer/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
m
Netbooks came with Linux cos otherwise M$ instantly added such a whack to the price, that it became hard to keep the cost down within the range that got people excited. Linux (esp Ubuntu) is finally ready for your avg user and so should be an option here. Would make this machine more attractive to me - if I did not already have v powerful (yet efficient) lappies and custom build desktop.
Wish one could fully custom build lappies too. Building desktops is just lego. And many parts of lappies are like that too (drives, memory, CPU etc). It`s the chassis that`s the problem.
If I could pick a lappy chassis and then fill it w parts like I do w desktops, that would be great.
So much better performance/value and always all the features I want in one package.
I spend longer looking for new lappies with all the relevant card slots and specs at a decent price than it would take to fully build my own. Often you find almost everything you want but then a deal breaker like a glossy screen or a non-ATI card sends you back to square one.
