Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005P review
Last summer, when the netbook rush had soared to the point where £300 was considered a low price, Asus’ back-to-basics Eee PC 1005HA came as a breath of fresh air. Great looks were paired with accomplished all-round performance, and it was a comparative steal at the time; the intervening months have only seen it get cheaper. Now Asus has tweaked it a little and incorporated Intel’s latest netbook platform, codenamed Pine Trail, to produce the Eee PC 1005P.
Battery life
The Atom is still the processor of choice, but for Pine Trail Intel has combined the CPU, graphics chip and memory controller onto a single die. The result is the 1.66GHz Atom N450 and it’s an advance that hasn’t just reduced production costs, it’s also seen the processor's TDP plummet from 11W to just seven.
The obvious knock-on effect of that is improved battery life. With the same 4400mAh battery at its rear as the 1005HA, Pine Trail’s extra efficiency allows the 1005P to last for an impressive 9hrs 31mins of light use – nearly three hours longer than its predecessor.
There's no great improvement in terms of performance, though: a score of just 0.3 in our application benchmarks puts it in the same bracket as the old Intel Atom N270 processor. And while the GMA 3150 graphics might sound vastly superior to the GMA 950 graphics they replace, they’re actually just a netbook version of the already sluggish GMA X3100 chipset. There’s still no DXVA acceleration for HD content and, unlike Nvidia’s Ion chipset, the GMA 3150 still struggles with HD video from YouTube or BBC iPlayer, and even the playback of 720p or 1080p H.264 movies.
So Pine Trail doesn't improve in all areas, but it at least has some impact under the hood. Outside, though, it's initially tough to see what's changed from the old 1005HA. The Eee PC 1005P has the same curvy chassis that belies its bargain-basement price tag, and the solid plastic construction feels reassuringly stout.
It’s not until you tilt back the 10.1in display that the 1005P deviates from the original blueprint, with the excellent keyboard of the 1005HA discarded for the current chic substitute: the Scrabble-tile layout.
Questionable keys
Unfortunately, it’s a poor trade. We didn’t particularly like the feel of the short-travel keys, and the positioning of some keys is questionable. In an effort to relieve the once-cramped cursor keys, Asus has made the right Shift key impossibly small, which often had us dabbing the up cursor or the Fn key by mistake.
The display also seems to have taken a turn for the worse. The 10.1in panel still opts for the frugal netbook resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels, and the matte finish keeps distracting reflections to a minimum, but image quality is disappointing. The 1005HA’s screen was never stellar, but the 1005P fails even to live up to that: muted colours leave skintones looking lifeless and pallid, and the overall brightness is noticeably lower.
It comes as some tiny consolation that the speakers have improved. The 1005P is head and shoulders above its predecessor here, managing to sound surprisingly crisp and clear for a netbook. Don't expect miracles but if you're on a business trip they'll do for a hotel room.
Meanwhile, the old netbook OS of choice, Windows XP Home, finally makes way for Windows 7 Starter, which makes a world of difference. Applications snap into view with appreciable haste and, while it all feels a mite less nippy than XP, the sheer usability amply compensates. It even makes Asus’ instant-on ExpressGate software seem redundant, as the 1005P wakes from Windows 7’s sleep mode in under 10 seconds.
But with the initial thrill of the Windows 7 experience having worn off, netbooks are in dire need of something new to really grab the public’s attention and Intel’s Pine Trail platform simply isn’t it. It may be more efficient and cheaper to produce, but with many netbooks already achieving more than six hours of battery life it’s hardly a game-changing upgrade. The Eee PC 1005P is undoubtedly good looking, but when you factor in the unnecessary design changes Asus has made, it somehow ends up less appealing than its predecessor.
Price when reviewed: £235 (£276 inc VAT)
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