Electronic News, Laptop Battery Review

Build and feel are a step up from the popular Eee PCs as are the specs. Feels amazing to hold in your hand as it’s so thin though it’s not as light as I expected but  still beats most netbooks. Only two things stand out as weaknesses for me: A 4 hour battery life (with one battery) and the price. It’s way more than most netbooks at $500 though once you factor in the beefier specs it’s not that bad.

Specs
Note that you get beefier specifications compared to most notebooks. 2GB RAM instead of 1GB, 320GB HDD instead of 250 or 160GB HDD, 1.3MP webcam instead of 0.3MP and Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Windows 7 Starter.

10.1” 1024 x 600 display (glossy, edge-to-edge)
Intel Atom N450 C.P.U. (1.66GHz)
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
10/100 LAN
1.3MP webcam
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
Intel GMA 3150 graphics
2GB RAM
320GB HDD (2.5” SATA)
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
2x USB, mini-USB (VGA dongle), headphone, mike jacks
2x Li-poly Asus batta1300 Battery (4 hours each, 8 total)
Multi-touch trackpad
Stereo speakers
1.15 kg / 2.5 pounds (1x battery)
260 x 180 x 18 – 26.2mm / 10.2 x 7.1 x 0.7 – 1 inch
Available in Coffee Brown (matte) and Hot Pink (glossy)

Packaging, Contents

I didn’t get the wrong box, the box has both the brown and golden models shown on opposite sides. You get 2x li-poly batteries, microfibre wipe, recovery DVD, power brick / cable and warranty booklet. No sleeve here.

Build & Designing

Once you’ve handled the 1008P-KR you’ll definitely feel let down going back to the thicker form factor of the 1005PE series. It’s not just the weight and thickness that makes the 1008P-KR impressive, it’s the unique design thanks to product designer Karim Rashid. I don’t have a clue who this person is but he has done a fabulous job on the 1008P-KR. It is a step up from all other Eee PCs.

I don’t like Brown, as a color, on my hardware but somehow it works for me here. It’s a cool brown with a subtle metal bronze type sheen all over. The whole  chassis from top to bottom is covered with this soft touch matte textured surface with has a wavy, bumpy feel and lines etched into the surface. It’s totally fingerprint resistant and so far I haven’t seen any fingermarks at all on it.

There is also the interior of the 1008P-KR which carries a better design from other Eee PCs but I will cover this in following sections.

The ports are hidden in flaps to keep the whole design ordered and not only that it keeps out dust from those ports that are commonly always exposed. When you actually have to use the ports it can be annoying to uncover the ports but I can certainly live with that. Addressing of ports there are only two USB ports instead of the usual three you get on most netbooks.

Display

The 1008P-KR has a glossy display like most Eee PC seashell notebooks, however you’ve got an edge-to-edge display meaning there’s a single piece of film covering the screen and the bezel. Looks classier than the popular glossy display.

Brightness Level of the display is decent at 196 cd/m2 in the middle of the display. That is more than sufficient for indoors. For me just under 50% brightness was ideal when I am using this laptop around the house.

I can’t comment on viewing angles, colorings or black depth because all brilliant displays look the same to me and there just would be no way to tell without seeing them side by side. One thing that I immediately noticed is despite being a glossy display there is a subtle anti-glare like texture behind the intellectual coating, which is not needed. Distracting at first but you get used to it. This isn’t unique to the 1008P-KR as I’ve noticed many glossy displays having anti-glare texturing, to varying arcdegree. For example, the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE and  had the same display with quite noticeable texturing. On the other hand, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 is pretty much texture free.

The display folds back enough that I haven’t been in any situation where I wished the screen would go back further. You can see how far the display folds back in the below above.

Keyboard

I have a Japanese keyboard, so ignore the tiny right shift key, the English keyboards don’t have this as well as a few minor differences.

The 1008P-KR has the same chiclet keyboard you find on all the other new Pinetrail Eee PC Seashell netbooks, like the 1005PE however unlike on those other models its put together much more solidly. There’s no slight clinking / rattling noise nor is there any flex. It just feels much better and higher quality. The keys have a very subtle texture to grip your fingers and have a little more travel (deeper key press) than some other laptop keys (like on the IdeaPad S10-3 or Samsung N140).

Trackpad

You’ve got the same trackpad as on all Eee PC Seashell netbooks. It’s flush with the palm rest with a slightly dimpled surface. There’s the same single rocker bar button. Feels pretty much the same as on other Eee PCs though instead of a low-priced plastic, the palm rest and trackpad has a soft touch plastic coating which feels softer and a lighter nicer.

The trackpad supports multi touch gestures with two fingered scrolling. Quite responsive scrolling and I am happy to scroll webpages with just the trackpad. (instead of resorting to keyboard arrow keys). I digged into the choices and there is support for three fingered gestures but I cannot get them to work.

Noise
While you can easily hear the fan running all the time, on the 1008P-KR, it is comparatively quiet, for most tasks, certainly for web browsing at least. At this fan level (lowest), it is not as quite as the Eee PC 1005PE or the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 for example. Compared to those just a tad louder. The noise is a constant whirring of air and it doesn’t waver or ramp up to draw your attention. I have no problems using this in a quiet room with my head right up near the display. It’s very much within my noise allowance range.

If you start following a movie or some other task that  will stress the CPU harder you will notice the fan ramp up to a noisier level. I’ve got it functioning in my small living room and it was overpowering the noise from my computer. It lasted a couple of minutes but now it’s on a lower level fan and is not stressful now.

Heat
The 1008P-KR gets pretty warm connected the bottom on most affairs and the top remains cool, with a tad of warmth. I left the 1008P-KR running for an hour with 720p video on a hard woody surface and here are the succeeding temperatures I recorded:

Sound, Webcam and Mike

Sound quality is very decent coming through the stereo speakers located at the bottom front. The sound can get slightly muffled if you place it on a carpet or a soft surface. Volume at 100% hardware / Windows global setting and 50% in Windows Culture Media Player is enough for my whole small flat. I would probably rate sound quality as above average for a netbook.

Microphone quality is okay. There are 2 mikes on top so you can get stereo output. Like all netbooks, good enough for chat and phone calls with Skype. (I tested out the microphone with Audacity).

HD Video

Out of the box, you’ll be able to play 480p or DVD supreme videos at most. You can download CoreAVC codecs (not free) to enable 720p H.264 video playback which makes okay provided you set the theme to Windows Basic. Playback seemed to slightly stutter, even on super performance setting, with Aero theme turned on.

YouTube will struggle with 720p and 1080p video and higher bitrate SD content. For the most part there shouldn’t be a problem with most YouTube videos.

There is not enough serving power to smoothly run HD content on an external display at a higher resolve. I cannot run simple video at 1680 x 1050 for example (standard resolution for many 22-inch monitors).

Laptop Battery Life
The 1008P-KR comes with two Li polymer batteries with 31Wh, 2900mAh, 10.95V ratings. Basically level to having two high capacity 3-cell batteries. I managed to squeeze out 4 hours of battery life doing light web browsing with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on from one  . In total that gives you 8 hours of battery life which is very good. Of course that means changing out the battery half way and having to carry around the extra battery.

Let’s take a look at some battery life figures (which take into account both batteries. Half these scores to get figures for a single battery):

Laptop Notebook Computer Battery Life Test Settings

* Windows hibernates by default at 7% remaining battery life. Results don’t include that leftover figure. There’s potentially 14% of battery life that goes unused! (two batteries)

Now let’s compare that to other netbooks (add at half an hour to the below figures to get a realistic figure for light web browsing). A single battery can’t compare to any netbook with a 6-cell battery but if you carry around the extra battery, there’s more battery life to go around than many netbooks.

Performance
To match the premium quality of this netbook, the specs also get a nice break. Instead of 1GB RAM and 250GB HDD, Windows 7 Starter on pretty much all netbooks, here you have 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD and Windows 7 Home Premium. That lends itself to better performance overall. If you’re just web browsing or just have a couple of apps open at any one time there won’t be much noticeable dispute but if you work with large files in a graphic editor or have tons of web browser apps open the extra memory helps keep the netbook from slowing down.

Here’s a performance comparison between other notebook and netbooks I have reviewed previously. It easily tops all netbooks thanks to 2GB RAM. The HDD may be slightly faster I do not know.

Upgrades

Taking a look at the back I am startled to find out that you can really access the RAM, via a screw hidden in the VGA dongle compartment. Since there is already 2GB RAM established there’s not much point there unless you want to slip in faster RAM, not that that will make much of a difference.

And that’s it. You can’t admission the hard drive or Wi-Fi and knowing  they will have a warranty void seal inside so you’ll have to void your guarantee to get to those goodies. That is if you contend to open it up in the first place. Luckily you’ve got a large 320GB HDD and 2GB RAM.

Size, Weight

The 1008P-KR is one of the thinnest and lightest 10-inch netbooks on the commercialise right now. It weighs 1.15 kg / 2.5 pounds and reaches 24 mm / 0.9 inches at the highest point (at the back, at a small portion of that goes into the rubber feet). Liken that to my Samsung N140 which weighs 1.2 kg / 2.7 pounds and reaches 34 mm / 1.3 inches at the highest point (at the back). It is amazing to hold this in your hands over general sized netbooks, not so lots for the weight but for the thinness. Most other netbooks are about the same size and weight as the Samsung N140 because they all need to carry a large lithium ion 6-cell battery unlike the 2 or 3-cell lithium polymer battery on this 1008P-KR.

The catch is, when you actually carry the excess battery the total weight is actually more than the classical netbook. The total weight comes to 1.38 kg / 3.1 pounds with both batteries and the netbook (not including power cable / brick). With one battery the 1008P-KR you’re carrying around one of the lightest 10-inch netbooks. Carry two batteries, and the weight is the same as carrying around an 11.6” Acer Aspire 1410. You’ll get twice as much battery life with the 1008P-KR however.