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 ESTTwo More Brazos Laptops, but Only One Winner
If you feel like we’ve mentioned the HP dm1z a few too many times throughout this review, there’s a good reason for it. HP came in and set a high bar for other Brazos laptops to clear, and frankly both the MSI and Sony offerings fall short. We awarded the dm1z our Silver Editors’ Choice award, and that still stands. The only area where we really want something better on the HP is the display; put in another $50 towards a higher contrast LCD and it would go for an even $500, which would put it $100 less than the Sony YB and potentially $250 less than the MSI X370. All of the Brazos laptops we've tested are also present in Mobile Bench if you're looking for another way to compare performance. Need we say more? Probably not, but we will….
Starting with the Sony, the VAIO YB isn't necessarily a bad netbook/ultraportable/notbook (take your pick among the three terms), but it's grossly overshadowed by HP's dm1z. The dm1z is more attractive, more comfortable to use, and runs longer on the battery to boot. For all that, it's also at least $150 cheaper than the YB if you're ordering directly from the manufacturer. What do you get for your extra $150? 1GB more of DDR3 and 180GB more storage capacity. Even those benefits are dampened by Sony's choice to use 32-bit Windows 7 instead of 64-bit, a slower 5400RPM hard drive instead of the workable 7200RPM in HP's offering, and a smaller battery. We can see why AMD sent us the YB because on the whole it sends a stronger message than sending us a dm1z would; HP's been offering AMD notebooks since time immemorial and was even first on the bandwagon way back with the promising-in-theory-but-lacking-in-execution Congo platform.
If the dm1z didn't exist or at least wasn't an unusually strong design for HP, the YB would seem a lot better and could justify itself. The problem is that the dm1z does exist, the YB is not in a vacuum, and ultimately it is impossible to justify: the dm1z is directly superior on virtually every front. The only places it's lacking are in hard drive capacity and memory size, but the money you save could easily be spent to upgrade those and you would still come out ahead.
MSI’s X370 is in a different boat. As a 13.3” ultraportable, there’s certainly a case to be made for getting a slightly larger display and chassis. However, all that falls apart if the price isn’t right. We don’t have an official price on the X370, and it may never come to the North American market, but in the past MSI’s X-series has been grossly overpriced. Let’s hope MSI will listen to reason, because at $550 we’d certainly be happy to recommend the X370 as an alternative to the HP. Our engineering sample came with 4GB RAM and a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, which means you shouldn’t need to upgrade either area short of a component failure (or a desire for an SSD). If the X370 had an industrial design akin to the MacBook Air 13, then perhaps we could justify a $750 MSRP; unfortunately, it doesn’t—not even close! Difficulties with the touchpad buttons aside (again, it’s an engineering sample), the all-plastic shell with glossy exterior is on par with what we see from budget laptops from Acer. There’s nothing inherently wrong with building a budget laptop, because certainly people are going to be happier paying $500 than $800 (or $350 instead of $500), but you can’t charge champagne prices for Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Going back to the Brazos platform, AMD has delivered what we wanted from Atom about 18 months ago. The E-350 can handle movies, web browsing, office work, and even light gaming far better than any stock Atom. Even Atom with ION fails to surpass the E-350 in most regards, and the tightly integrated Brazos platform comes off a winner. We’re still working to put together a roundup of low-power/budget platforms using budget SSDs as a follow-up to our E-350 reviews, and we’ve also got a C-50 based netbook review in the works. We should have the latter soon enough, but really the only areas C-50 wins out over E-350 are in size and price (and perhaps battery life). But with a starting price of just $330, those are important metrics, so stay tuned to see just how well C-50 competes with the more expensive Brazos and Atom offerings.
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arthur449 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
One of the biggest issues I see with Anandtech.com isn't the lack of information in the bar graphs; it's the time it takes to look at the graphs and determine what you're looking at. The color coding for this review is extremely helpful in this regard.Green: Models being reviewed
Black: Models in direct competition
Blue: Other/Older models with similar performance in the database
In the future, it would be great to add the ability for users to choose from a list of pre-tested systems in their Anandtech.com account preferences. Those systems chosen would fill in the models typically listed in Blue, while the Black (chosen by author / editor) and Green would appear regardless. So, for example, users could choose a notebook, smartphone, GPU, CPU, SSD, and monitor that directly compares to what they consider a benchmark in that particular market.
Anyhow, that's just my 2 cents.
TLDR: I like what you did with the graphs.
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Agreed, it was a very easy read. Keep up the good work guys, this review (and more importantly the text discussions regarding the data) were excellent.yudhi717 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
the X370 already on sale in Indonesia at $489, there is also the U270 Light at $399, I don't know the configuration / spec.Samus - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I've had mine for two months and already noticed two design flaws. The right speaker grill is peeling off, and the screen bezel interfers with the keyboard and the keys are slowly chipping away at the bezels' plastic.A Thinkpad it is not, but flaws aside, I enjoy the laptop, but have reservations in recommending something with such build quality.
JGabriel - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I applaud the addition of a section on older, less intensive, games. While I doubt anyone is planning to play the latest DX11 shooters on this type of platform, it's good to know what kind of performance can be expected from slightly older eye candy like Oblivion, HL2, and Quake 4.
It might be a nice touch to add Prey and/or Portal to the list. Portal, in particular, seems like the kind of lighter weight game that might be popular on this type of platform.
duploxxx - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I found this a very strange review, for the first brazos review you compare the HP all the time against the atom, which is the target to start with.Now you drag along any culv - SNB - macbook or wathever against it most of them in a way higher price range and start complaining about performance against others?
Its OEM who define how they will build the systems, with a small margin of AMD defining the upper limit, not like Intel who hard limits all bits and pieces on there platform.
So now you have it, OEM create some designs which to my opinion are not meant to be for brazos, those are netbook cpu's.
Anything higher can soon be equiped with E2 and A4 LInao which will knock down any CULV performance wise but AMD should do some platform research and speedbinning for lower TDP bins to compete on all aspects.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
How many Atom systems do you need to see? I put in three netbook Atoms, plus the Mini 311 (Atom) where I had results, plus the nettop D525 in the 1215N. Then I added to that CULV, ULV, SNB, MBP13, and a several others for good measure. It's called perspective, and never once did I say that Brazos should be faster than Sandy Bridge. The problem for some of these systems is that we're going to start seeing dual-core Sandy Bridge priced around $700 for a decent setup (4GB RAM, 500GB HDD) and that's useful to put into the charts.My thinking here is that I wanted to include every reasonable contender in the IGP space. So that's why the MBP13 comes along (both versions), and why CULV is in there, and why Arrandale and SNB are in there. CULV and the MBP13 also compete pretty directly against Brazos in battery life, which is another good reason to bring them along. It's one thing to get two or three times the performance but 1/3 the battery life for twice the cost; it's quite another to get double the performance, similar battery life, and pay only 50% more, don't you think? But of course, I should only show Brazos against systems where it can come out ahead, because that's what it's "meant to compete against."
What's funny is that you state that the "first Brazos review compared HP to Atom". Um... did you look at the graphs? http://www.anandtech.com/show/4187/ I have over twice the number of Atom systems in this time; I just added some other points of reference. The result? In my 15-item application charts Brazos sits around the middle, compared to third from last in Dustin's HP review. In games, we already know Brazos is going to get clobbered, but it's still important to show how modern titles run on the platform. However, I added a whole page of 23 additional, older/less demanding titles (several days of work there!) just to give a clearer picture.
sebanab - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I'm very happy to hear you will also be covering the Ontario.I own one (Ao522) and there is one issue I would like to bring to your attention:
With Brazos, AMD has also introduced what they call "Dynamic contrast and brightness adjust". Problem is that the features are on all the time and can't be turned off. And they can get really annoying while surfing the web.
I think it's a bug while there are some options regarding this in CCC but they don't have any effect.
I'm also very curious for the X120e , while I have heard that the LCD is actually acceptable.
(also please check the fan speed settings)
L. - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I've personally come to hate HP for their lack of decent products, and their very efficient modern capitalist view (read : designing computers to break right after the 1-year warranty), and my guess is that should heavily influence someone's choice in a new computer/toy.On my side, every HP laptop I have seen has had issues (except one that is 12 years old), several from an outsourcing deal at a client's had their mini-fans die twice in a year, my father's hp laptop had to go in RMA even before the first year, my little sister's HP just the same, my godfather's laptop ... again.
So seriously, I don't know what everyone's perception of HP is, but from my side those people are unable to provide reliable laptops (and I would never not build a desktop).
In that sense, if anyone comes to me asking for a reference for laptops, I always start with : "Take a decent brand, like Dell, or Asus, or ..."
Also, my personal experience again, but I had two MSI motherboards and both of them lived only one year, another reason for me not to go there either.
As a summary : my point of view is surely of little interest, but a track record of actual reliability of manufacturers could be an interesting input to your reviews (as in how HP fails at delivering stuff that holds for 5 years, or how that HDD company's failure rates are unacceptable etc.) as that has some influence on customer's perception of service (like if my HP laptop is in RMA every 6 months for 2 weeks, I need a second laptop).
Also, thanks for the reviews.
olbrannon - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
It too runs the 350 brazos w/ Windows 7 @64 bitI love the size if the screen and the keyboard is -huge- paid $399 + tax. One of the game's I am not seeing here that I play is Dragon Age. It seems quite playable with only some occasional lags on loading areas and some minor frame dropping on occasion. No hdmi out thought only vga. I also have Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 haven't tried to play them yet.
I did get a chilpad for it though. thing can get kind of warm running these games.
It's my first purchase ever of an off the shelf system of any kind quite happy with it so far.
Speakers aren't bad for such a small laptop either