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Six months in the past netbooks all had 10-inch displays, fairly cramped keyboards, and could not handle to play a 1080p video even if they educated with the best of marathoners. The world's so much different now: the King of Pop has handed away, the unemployment charge has dropped, and netbook manufacturers have realized 11- and 12-inch displays present a extra snug expertise -- particularly when paired with more powerful hardware that adds multimedia prowess.

We'll stop there with the Netbook 101, but looking on the previous is critical in realizing what a sport-changer the ASUS Eee Pc 1201N actually is. The 1201N's dual-core Intel Atom processor, NVIDIA Ion graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium, and 2GB of RAM make it probably the most powerful netbook to ever grace the purchase pages of Amazon. But does the $500 machine repair all the problems. Frustrations we've ever had with netbooks when put to the check? Can it make us neglect about cramped keyboards, strained eyes and sluggish video performance? Find out in our full review.

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Score

Critics - Not yet scored

Great graphics efficiency for a netbookSpeedy dual-core Atom processorLarge display screen and keyboard

Glossy lidDisappointing battery life Not as powerful as a ULV laptop computer

Feel and look

At first sight of the 1201N we got the psychological image of ASUS engineers attempting an experiment: deep in a Taiwanese lab the Eee Pc 1005HA is placed on a machine, a change is thrown, and out of the dust seems the wider and thicker Eee Pc 1201N. We're okay with the strikingly similar design, and although the lid's glossy black end is a fingerprint magnet, overall it is a slick-wanting machine. (It could be good if ASUS included a sprucing cloth, although. If you have any questions concerning where and how you can make use of reflective sheet guide, you can contact us at our own page. ) Our only reservation in regards to the 1201N is that it would not really feel fairly sturdy sufficient -- in contrast to the aluminum Nokia Booklet 3G, the plastic chassis does not exude a toughness or have us confident that it may take a beating.

Wider than 10-inch netbooks, the 1201N is a bit harder to slip right into a small shoulder bag (or purse), but it will travel well in a laptop bag at just 1.2 inches thick and 3.2 pounds. There's also extra room for ports: three USB, an HDMI, VGA, and a headphone and mic jack surround the chassis.

Whenever you open it up, the 1201N continues to be pretty spectacular, with a brilliant-comfortable full-dimension chiclet keyboard. The matte keys have a pleasant tactile response. The wider deck accommodates two full-sized shift keys. The trackpad is definitely flush with the case. Only differentiated by a grid of raised dots that feel great on the fingertip. Two-finger scrolling was pretty clean in Firefox 3, and undoubtedly not as unpolished as recent HP laptops. ASUS's chrome rocker continues to peeve us; it's loudly clicky and the lack of dedicated right and left mouse buttons brought on a couple of mis-clicks.

The 1366x768 decision 12.1-inch LED-backlit show is not flush with the bezel, but it's nonetheless lots spacious and crisp -- we'd be remiss not to say how lovely the inexperienced timber regarded in a 1080p clip of the Amazon rainforest. A phrase of caution to those who hate glossy screens: the 1201N's screen is reflective enough to function as an efficient mirror.

Performance, graphics and battery life

Packing a twin-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 processor usually present in nettops, NVIDIA Ion graphics, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and a 5,400rpm 250GB drive, the 1201N is scorching to trot on specs. The twin-core processor supplied noticeably better performance than the usual netbook's single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU -- on a regular basis multitasking performance in Windows 7 Home Premium felt much snappier. The benchmarks back us up: the 1201N notched a Geekbench rating of 1,106, increased than each the N280-powered HP Mini 5101's 920 and the NVIDIA Ion / N270-backed Lenovo IdeaPad S12's 826. For comparison's sake, the Intel CULV HP dm3t we just reviewed scored a 1,602, so whereas the 1201N is powerful for reflective sheet guide a netbook, it does not fairly match up to a thin-and-mild.

Speaking of Ion, the GeForce 9400-based mostly chipset supplied a pretty sweet multimedia experience on the 1201N. A sequence of trailers played again easily from an exterior Blu-ray drive with no pauses each on the 1201N's display and a 42-inch 1080p HDTV. With Adobe's GPU-accelerated Flash Player 10.1, YouTube HD and Hulu HD have been incredibly smooth on the 1201N's display screen and over HDMI, however native playback was slightly rougher: a downloaded 1080p, H.264 QuickTime video of Miley Cyrus struggled a bit with a few pauses right here and there, though it was nonetheless watchable.

We've by no means bothered working games on netbooks with integrated graphics earlier than, but the 1201N dealt with lighter games like WoW just effective. Our gnome was completely satisfied to make it to stage 4 at 30fps. The more GPU-intensive Batman: Arkham Asylumn stuttered on the native res, but was surprisingly playable at 20 fps when we lowered it to 1024 x 768.

All that efficiency and graphics achieve is great till you notice that it takes a success on the 1201N's battery life. Its six-cell battery lasted 2 hours and 26 minutes with a 1080p WMV video operating on loop, and we got about three and a half hours of runtime using the laptop computer to simply surf the online and write this overview in Microsoft Word. That's not terrible battery life, however it's not so great compared to different six-cell netbooks just like the ASUS Eee Pc 1008HA, which runs for about six hours.

We did get a kick out of the bundled voice recognition software: we commanded it give us the weather in New York and it introduced up a weather map inside a few seconds. We almost wrote this paragraph without complaining about any preloaded software program at all, however that was until ASUS' preloaded display saver began up with hold-sort music within the background. Seriously -- remove this crap earlier than you do the rest with this laptop.

Wrap up

The 1201N is a new type of netbook -- though we aren't even positive it ought to be called a netbook, since it is extra like a full-fledged laptop. No matter what you name it, at $499 the Eee Pc 1201N quelled our netbook frustrations by delivering a extra comfortable computing experience and much superior multimedia performance than its 10-inch brethren. It presents neither the stamina of a netbook nor the performance of a $600 ULV laptop, but it's a solid compromise between the two, and we're extremely pleased with it. Just ensure you pack a spare battery or two.