Overview
This review is on the Asus S101 netbook. This is a top of the range EeePC , the cream of the brand, and at around £400.00 not cheap in Eee terms either. Let see what you are getting for this princely sum!
Review
The netbook comes in a stylish black box with the silver letters “EeePC” on the top, and lifting the top you are confronted with a brown metallic look lid, that Asus refer to as “Mocha Brown”. Very attractive it is too. Putting the laptop to one side, and delving into the box a bit deeper, you get a suede look case, charger, documentation, and a restore CD. You also get a 16GB SDHC card bundled in. I like the addition of the case as I like to keep things looking as new as possible. Also, you are more than likely going to want to travel with this netbook, so a case is always welcome. My scales made it 832g, so your not even going to notice it. I measured the netbook at roughly 10.3 inches by 7 inches, and just under an inch high at it’s thickest point.
Opening up the laptop, and the aesthetics are very nice. The first thing you notice is a large expanse of brushed metal that runs below the keyboard, housing the track pad. The track pad has a nice “gestures” feature, allowing you to zoom in and out of pictures and documents, and scroll about in a style not too dissimilar to the iPhone, and iPod Touch. The chrome bar that is below the track pad is the left and right mouse click button, unsurprisingly enough. Above that is the keyboard. Fairly standard stuff here, the keys are solid enough, and there is little flex to the keyboard itself. They have done a pretty good job of fitting a full keyboard in, and typing for a long time posed no real problem for me.
Above that is a thin panel that houses the power button, status lights, and a speed button that I shall get on to later. The screen is a 10.2″ wide screen, with a black bezel housing a 0.3MP camera and the microphone. The screen supports a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution. It can be pushed to 1024 x 768, but this causes you to have to scroll down to see the bottom, as the widescreen does not seem to adjust itself for that resolution. Web pages did not seem to suffer from the size of the screen. The only slight niggle was if pages had large static headers. Then the viewing screen was cut down even further, but for everyday browsing, this screen is fine.
The netbook has three USB 2.0 ports, one ethernet port, a VGA out, a 4-in-1 MMC, SD, Memory Stick and MS-PRO flash card slot, and 3.5″ headphone, and microphone jacks. Plenty for all the USB gizmo’s and whatnots that you may need. There is also a kensington lock slot to keep it tied down. On this model there was 1GB of RAM, an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and a 16 GB SSD. The laptop also boasts 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth. Bootup time was just under a minute. The battery is a 4900 mAH Li-Polymer that is supposed to last five hours, and if you are simply browsing the web, I found that not too far from the truth, give or take 30 Minutes.
The netbook came with Windows XP home. It runs perfectly well on this spec, and even better because of the solid state drive. It comes with Skype and Microsoft Office Works, and what Asus call Eee Storage, so for the first 18 months, you get 20GB of drivespace for free in the cloud. You also get a copy of Star Office, a nice addition for those who might not want to shell out for the full version of MS Office. The speed button that I referred to earlier controls the speed at which the netbook is allowed to go, Asus call this the “Super Hybrid Engine”. Pressing the button enables either, Super Performance, High Performance, Power Saving, or Auto Modes. Handy if you want to save the battery life.
My overall impression of this laptop is that it is a polished product. Everything works as advertised, and it has all the connectivity you could ever want. I do think though, that a high end Eee PC is a bit of a contradiction in terms. I had a small rant about it before. And at just under £400.00 it’s going in a bit steep. For that money you could buy yourself two basic Dell Mini 9s, or a MSI wind with 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HD. And what about an Acer Extensa EX56302Z for just under £360.00 with 2GB of RAM, a dual core CPU, and 16GB HD? And if you want to spend over £100 more, you could get a Samsung Q210, with 3GB of RAM, a 12.1″ TFT, dual core CPU, and a 250GB HD.
Having said all that I still like the Asus S101. It’s weight and dimensions make this a perfect travel partner, and there is plenty of horse power for all the basic tasks you would throw at a netbook. Although it does start to encroach on the price point of many laptops with more grunt, could you fit them in your man bag, and still have room for your copy of Personal Computer World?
The Gaj-it Verdict
Design: 9/10
Features : 8/10
Usability: 8/10
Value: 7/10
We Say
Great little netbook, but pushing the boundaries of what I would pay.
[product#154]