LCD Quality

We didn't have enough time to run our full suite of LCD tests, but we did check the contrast ratios on these laptops. Sadly, none of them are great, though the ASUS 1005PE is still better than most other inexpensive options.

Laptop LCD Quality - Contrast

Laptop LCD Quality - White

Laptop LCD Quality - Black

First, contrast ratio has taken a dive relative to the 1005HA. What we don't know is whether there's a panel lottery on all the 10.1" ASUS netbooks; that would seem very likely, since they're all 1024x600 LCDs, which means you might get 1005HA with lesser LCDs or 1005PE with better LCDs. If you can look at a unit in person, the difference between the two panels is very obvious. Blacks look very much like real black on the 1005HA we tested, whereas blacks on most other panels show a lot of backlight bleed.

Maximum brightness on both the 1201N and the 1005PE is relatively limited, and unlike the 1005HA we were unable to boost brightness via EeeCTL. It's likely an updated version of EeeCTL could help, but we're not sure if the utility is still in active development as the old website is down at this time.

So in short, the panels on both the 1201N and 1005PE are a letdown. We'd also like to see ASUS push the maximum brightness up to 200+ nits; we think they limit it in order to improve battery life results, since few sites actually take the time to calibrate LCDs to 100 nits. If you just run at 50%, you might have the LCD set at anywhere from 70 nits to 170 nits, depending on the laptop. For the record, you get ~100 nits on the 1201N at 66% brightness, or 80% brightness on the 100%PE.

Much Better Battery Life Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
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  • JOEyGADGET - Friday, January 29, 2010 - link

    I bought a 100PE thinking I could use eeectl to boost the screen brightness to the ultrabright setting the way I boosted the brightness on previous ASUS netbooks. However eeectl ultrabright setting has no effect. Anyone know how to force the 1005PE to turn on or activate ultrabright setting? At its brightest setting the 1005PE is simply too dim for my eyes. Suggestions welcome and appreciated. Thanks, JOEyGADGET
  • ProDigit - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link

    I totally stopped reading after page 4, where the results became opposite of tomshardware results, and opposite of logic.
    The memory controller is on chip, and yet it's slower than a separate?
    Don't make me laugh!

    Really, for benchmarks you don't need to be with anandtech, for they just paste some stupid numbers there that won't make any sense whatsoever!
    Then again, tomshardware is only interested in running 3D mark and Crysis tests!
  • whatthehey - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link

    You, sir, are a moron if you are going to compare the THG article with this one. Unless I'm mistaken, the only Pine Trail article is this one:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...

    See the problem? One, they're testing D510, not a netbook. Two, they don't have results for old Atom N280 and new Atom N450. Three, you're trusting THG, a site known to have sold out on too many occasions to even begin to count, just like HardOCP.

    Which results in this article are wrong? PCMark is all over the map, which as they point out is pretty much par for the course. Don't trust PCMark05, and there aren't any meaningful points of comparison for Vantage. They would need to show other netbooks with Windows 7 Starter, and they don't have that here.

    In short, to be "opposite" of some other site, they actually have to compare the same sort of hardware. AnandTech has a separate D510 article, but D510 isn't a netbook. Looks to me like the N450 has no reason to be faster. Same cache instead of the desktop, where the D510 has twice the cache size compared to 330.

    Please take the THG trolling and go elsewhere. THG ceased to be relevant right around the time that Thomas Pabst stopped being the head honcho.
  • foolsgambit11 - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link

    It looks like in the next couple years, we'll see Atom-derivatives relegated to MIDs and CULV-derivatives taking it's place for netbooks/nettops. I think this was Intel's stated objective for Atom from the beginning, right?
  • geok1ng - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link

    The very simple reason that Pineview sucks soo much is that Intel want to push the crappy GMA 3150 and the sluggish 4500HD down our troats. Another point for the Asus UL80vt, Dell 14z, Ions. The consumer cant have both products:a good GPU and a good enough CPU.
  • Fanfoot - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link

    I'm surprised that Intel had the GMA 500 core available to them, yet the GPU they've paired with the N450 is still so anemic. The battery life is certainly nice, but the inability to play HD Flash is seriously questionable.
  • piroroadkill - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link

    GMA500 is a decent product with godawful driver support
  • Shadowmaster625 - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link

    Sempron M100 is lurking about out there. And I cant find much of any info on it. Can you guys try to find and review a Sempron M100 notebook with HD4200 graphics and a decent size battery? If you do can you play around with underclocking/undervolting it?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link

    I've been trying to get *any* of the 45nm AMD laptops. I'll continue working on it, as I'm quite interested in seeing what they can do for power reqs. Turion II Ultra + HD 4200 seems like it should at least be competitive with dual-core ION (i.e. ASUS 1201N), but I'm not sure AMD is going to get power requirements down low enough.
  • MamiyaOtaru - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link

    "When Intel released the Atom CPUs, netbooks received a dramatic boost in performance and battery life"

    Battery life, yes. Performance, not so much. In single threaded apps, the Celeron was faster than the Atom. Overall, having that second thread was nice, but raw performance wasn't helped so much

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