More of AMD’s Brazos E-350 with the MSI X370 and Sony VAIO YB
by Jarred Walton & Dustin Sklavos on March 14, 2011 4:50 PM ESTAnd Then We Have the LCDs…
We can count the number of inexpensive netbooks/ultraportables with high quality displays that we’ve tested on one hand: ASUS 1001P, ASUS 1005HA, and if you want to stretch things a bit, the MacBook Pro 13. Everything else ranges from average to poor, and the MSI and Sony laptops we’re looking at today definitely come closer to “poor” than “average”. If you’ve never felt hampered by laptop display quality, it won’t matter, but if you’re hoping for something better just move along.
MSI X370 Gamut
Sony VAIO YB Gamut
Sony actually does slightly better than the other two E-350 laptops in contrast ratio, but that’s about as good as it gets. HP wins for raw maximum brightness, still falling short of 300 nits (cd/m2); MSI is the second brightest and Sony is third, so despite the higher contrast it comes at the cost of outdoor usability. Given the portable nature of these laptops, we’d really like to see backlight intensity closer to the 400 nits posted by the MacBook Pro 13—yes, it will reduce battery life, but if you’re at a park (i.e. outdoors) that’s a fair tradeoff. Color gamut and accuracy are all poor across the three Brazos laptops: 40-43% gamut and 2.6 to 2.9 Delta E (after calibration!) will not win any fans around here. When you have companies like ASUS saying they’ll put IPS panels in $400 tablets, we’re not sure how much more it would cost to go from junk panels to something decent, but it can’t be more than $50. Please, make it happen.
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Nimiz99 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
I like your review of those games for the e-350.I agree, for certain games processor is everything ...but again I think these notebooks are for gaming on the go and shouldn't be a desktop replacement. Im sure eventually we'll get there, right now ppl buying these should know their intended purpose on-the-go/couch consumption.
ET - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
Thanks for mentioning Guild Wars and Champions Online. I've pretty much stopped gaming for the last month or two, but I will hopefully get back to it (once my 2 year old hits 18 :), and running MMO's anywhere is certainly something I'd like to do. In the past I occasionally played City of Heroes on a 1.2GHz Pentium M with GMA 500 graphics. Not much fun, but still worked okay for door missions. So an E-350 will certainly be an upgrade, and 20 FPS in Champions Online sounds decent enough.ash9 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Seems a SSD drive can add .5 to 1 hour worth of added battery life - couple that with tuned applications could mean renewed life for X86 (graphics /science)- comparing Fusion with any of the CPU offerings, including ARM - one has to realize that the Fusion platform's computing power per wattage/ battery life (mobile) has got to beat all others hands down - lest we forget price. Try and run a Monte Carlo simulation on an Ipad2.asH
DMisner - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Please don't forget to review the Thinkpad X120e!mgl888 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
+1 to this!Thanks for the gaming benchmarks.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
+1blacklist - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
until now i was expecting all the brazos netbooks to be release in order to buy the best one. i thought the x370 would be the chosen one but... well, the facts are the facts and clearly it is a mediocre ultraportable if that $700+ msrp is real. now i'm waiting for the lenovo s205 to be reviewed (please, don't forget to review it) and find if it's as good as it looks. if not, then i will have to settle for the dm1z.deputc26 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
"Contrary to what you might expect, the 64Wh battery actually more than doubles battery life, suggesting the cells may be higher quality than in the 4-cell option." I doubt that the cells are different.One characteristic of Li-Co batteries (and pretty much every other chemistry) is that energy density changes with C rate. Which means that doubling a cell's size will more than double capacity given a static load.
tipoo - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
This is true. The slower you deplete a batteries energy, the more energy you will draw out of it in total.PMing - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I bought this little beauty last week, and have a rather mixed experience with it. The battery should have been better, Sony only provide a measle less than 5 hours of usage, while the new AMD Zacate should be able to perform longer with bigger battery. The keyboard is not exactly spacious enough visually, but it's better once I got used to it. Yet even first generation of Dell Mini 10 outperforms Vaio YB in terms of keyboard ergonomics.The AMD E350 beats Intel Atom to the bottom, especially in terms of video performance. I don't play games, so I'm not sure how it will handle them.
In my region I only got a basic Windows 7 Starter 32-bit, 2 GB memory and 320GB HDD, that is for a steep USD 550. But I guess that is the price you pay if you need a VAIO logo stamped on the lid of your laptop.