Battery Life on ASUS Eee PC 1005PE Netbook is Truly All-Day
For all of the waiting, hype and promise of Intel’s PineTrail netbook platform, you have to wonder — did it meet expectations? One way to answer that question is to review a PineTrail-powered netbook and compare it to the ol’ N270 and N280 Atom devices. That’s exactly what Brad Linder did at Liliputing with his review of the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE. Brad ran his usual thorough barrage of tests on this $370 device and walks away with this thought:
“If you have an Asus Eee PC 1005HA or 1008HA and you’re looking for a reason to upgrade to the latest model, there’s only one here: The Asus Eee PC 1005PE gets spectacular battery life. Performance-wise, it functions like virtually every other netbook that’s been released since mid-2008.”
That’s not to say the 1005PE — or any other netbook with the N450 CPU — isn’t worth a look, but much of the PineTrail hoopla lost some of its luster for me when Intel opted for the integrated GMA 3150 graphics. Having said that, it’s worth reiterating the battery life benefit brought by the new platform. Brad had no issue getting through a full day of work on the netbook and even had a few hours of juice to spare. ASUS claims a 14 hour run-time, but 10 is a realistic number with normal use. Combining judicious power management with the Super Hybrid Engine to underclock the CPU might eke out a good 12 hours in a pinch. And that is impressive on the 63 W/hr battery. I just wish there was a little more delivered by Intel after all this waiting — maybe I’m getting too demanding in my old age? ;)
Internals aside, Brad likes what the redesigned chiclet keyboard has done for his typing skills. On the netbook, he hit a whopping 96 words per minute, which he says is about the best he can do on any keyboard — full-sized or otherwise. ASUS also reduced the size of that battery bump, making for a thinner-looking device. Not bad for an incremental upgrade.
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I don’t think you’re being too demanding Kevin. I might have picked up a next-generation netbook if there were some performance improvements but otherwise it just seems like more of yesterday’s tech. I don’t see the point of superb battery life if you just have to wait longer to get things done.
For a college kid 12 hours of battery life is a blessing. There is no need for a high performance machine for taking notes and browsing the web, what you need is something that will last during all of your daily lectures.
With this thing, you might even forget to charge it on the evening and still make it through the other day.
On the other hand (after reviewing the pictures), this thing looks hideously fat-assed :)
Fair enough although I wasn’t really thinking “high performance”. Just a slight performance increase that would make it fast enough to watch Flash video without stuttering, etc.
Also, I’m not sure that students who can’t get near a power point for 12 hours (does such a thing exist :))are the only market for netbooks.
If the Asus T91 tablet could be updated to give this kind of battery life, I’d be most interested.
The GMA 3150 solution isn’t exactly stellar, so I’ll agree with what Kevin says here. The caveat though is that there are netbooks out now with that battery-friendly N450 paired with discreet hardware video acceleration a-la Broadcom Crystal HD. As long as you are happy using the ArcSoft Total Media Theater software, this solution will accommodate multiple video codecs including 1080p.
While Pinetrail doesn’t do much more than Diamondville, the die-shrink has allowed battery times to increase by around a very noticeable 25%. As far as CPU performance goes, the new silicon should offer between 10-15% over the previous Atom. That’s just enough extra performance to ensure that the latest netbooks can run the latest OS from Microsoft, Windows 7, rather than be stuck with the long-in-the-tooth XP.
I admit I too was expecting more from Pinetrail, but it’s important to keep in mind this is an incremental upgrade that should have been released 9 months ago. Intel delayed Pinetrail, and as a result, the upcoming 32nm Medfield will also be delayed even further from 2011 to 2012.
With an ION2 or Broadcom solution, Pinetrail performs quite well. But I would strongly look for a HD display to go with that. 1024×600 screens will only give a sub-par experience.
more information review
http://design2arts.blogspot.com/2010/01/laptop-asus-eee-pc-1005pe-review.html
I have this computer, and it is great
“For a college kid 12 hours of battery life is a blessing”
Lol, I have that netbook and the battery speaking with Skype lasts for 4 hours with the economy plan activated.
There’s still people who believes the claimed 12 hours can be archived in real life? Or that a new nvidia card boosts as much as 200% performance and when you test it you just get 120fps instead of 100? LOL I CANNOT LAUGHT MORE
Usually half of announced is the real one.