With a slew of new netbooks powered by the Intel Atom N450 about to launch, I’d be hard pressed to recommend buying an older netbook right now. But if you’re feeling put off by lack of visual horsepower in an all Intel netbook, you might want to look into those with the Nvidia Ion platform. These devices pair a GeForce 9400M with the Atom CPU and simply blow away the Intel integrated graphics solution.
So although new devices are around the corner, Laptop Magazine placed four of today’s Ion-based netbook models into the ring to see which would be the last netbook standing. I won’t spoil the surprise, but if you’re still sold on today’s netbooks and want support for gaming and 1080p video playback, you’ll want to see which netbook won this prize fight. It’s noteworthy that when similarly spec’d out, these little laptops can run north of $550, although a bare-bones system with Ion can be had for $400. And don’t forget that next year’s netbooks will work with both the Nvidia Ion2 as well as Broadcom’s Crystal HD accelerator.
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