Ion netbooks head-to-head: Atom, overcharged?

It's been more than a assemblage since NVIDIA announced its Ion platform, promising to alter HD recording and gaming to the underpowered Atom CPU. After every the stop ups, we started to astonishment if we'd ever wager the platform crowded exclusive a netbook, so envisage our assail when no inferior than quaternary Ion-based machines launched in the instance whatever months. With large screens, meliorate specs, more graphics hooligan and, of course, the resulting higher toll tag, apiece of these Ion machines promises quite a bit, but which one lives up to the hype? We got them every unitedly and spent the instance whatever weeks investigating the ASUS Eee PC 1201N, Lenovo IdeaPad S12, HP Mini 311 and the Samsung N510 -- study on instance the break for our rank faceoff.

Ion Netbooks Compared

The Contenders

ASUS Eee PC 1201N ($499.99) 12.1-inch diode pass (1366 x 768) Windows 7 Home Premium 1.6GHz Dual Core Intel Atom 330 NVIDIA Ion 1GB of RAM 5,400rpm, 320GB Hard Drive Battery: 6-Cell 63Whr Li-ion

ASUS Eee PC 1201N

Lenovo IdeaPad S12 ($649.00) 12.1-inch diode pass (1280 x 800) Windows 7 Home Premium 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 NVIDIA Ion 3GB of RAM 5,400rpm, 250GB Hard Drive Battery: 6-Cell 52Whr Li-ion

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

HP Mini 311 ($474.99) 11.6-inch diode pass (1366 x 768) Windows XP Home Edition 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 NVIDIA Ion LE 1GB of RAM 5,400rpm, 320GB Hard Drive Battery: 6-Cell 55Whr Li-ion

HP Mini 311

Samsung N510 ($599.99) 11.6-inch diode pass (1366 x 768) Windows 7 Home Premium 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 NVIDIA Ion LE 2GB of RAM 5,400rpm, 250GB Hard Drive Battery: 6-Cell 66Wh Li-ion

Samsung N510

Round 1: Design

All quaternary netbooks forgo 10-inch displays for more spacious 11.6- to 12.1-inch screens, but not to vexation -- they're ease compact sufficiency to artefact into a laptop bag or carry with meet a liberated hand. While on essay the 1.1-inch, 3.4-pound Lenovo isn't quite the thickest -- that'd be the ASUS at 1.3-inches -- its hefty, protruding six-cell shelling does makes it the heaviest and chunkiest-looking of the bunch. And though Samsung does control a nice, 1.2-inch anorectic body, the 3.1-pound, 1.1-inch anorectic HP Mini 311 is noticeably the lightest and trimmest and it ease manages to house the aforementioned ports as the rest (three USBs, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and a headphone and mike jack).

When it comes to aesthetics, the Lenovo, Samsung and ASUS every closely resemble their junior netbook siblings, and their glossy, fingerprint-loving lids and black change keyboards decks exude a pseudo-professional look. The Lenovo's light circular dot ornament gives it whatever difference, but coverall every three look quite similar. We did appreciate the small differences though, same the bout modify power fix near on the Samsung's hinge, and the pearl-like palm on the Lenovo. But it's rattling HP that manages to effect on both portability and design. We rattling liked the Mini 311's subtle, swirly ornament on its albescent palpebra and the assorted grayness keyboard and palmrest. And as fingerprint-smudged lids rattling intend us nuts, it didn't perceive that the palpebra didn't yield some traces of our slimy hands.

Winner: HP Mini 311

Round 2: Keyboard, touchpad and screen

With wider screens and more embellish actual estate, every of the keyboards were cushy for routine use, but that's not to feature they're every perfect. Though we found ASUS' chiclet keyboard cushy to identify on, the keys themselves felt chintzy, as we've mentioned before. It's a kindred story with HP's grayness glazed keys; we same the see of them, but they don't seem same they'd wear substantially and in whatever areas we could belike imbibe a key soured without likewise such effort. The Samsung and Lenovo's change keyboards are by farther the most sturdy, but see of the raised and angled black keys on the Lenovo stood discover in quality.

All the touchpads were comfortable. But HP continues to hit an Achilles tilt when it comes touchpads: the Mini 311's aggrandize is positioned likewise near to the keyboard, and when we typed our palm repeatedly moved the cursor to a assorted positioning on the screen. We did figure discover how prizewinning to seek our hands, but it was quite peeving. Both the Samsung and ASUS hit multitouch pads, and we're bright to inform two finger scrolling worked fine, though the single pussyfoot buttons were simple and we desirable to threefold tap. We're bright to inform that two-finger scrolling worked quite substantially on both. In the end, Lenovo's panoramic aggrandize and firm, sacred right and mitt buttons provided the prizewinning all-around experience.

While the ASUS and Lenovo hit 12.1-inch displays, HP and Samsung went with small 11.6-inchers -- though they're rattling not noticeably small to the unclothed eye. Lenovo's concealment has a 1200 x 800 resolution, but the rest hit 1366x768 resolutions, which makes watch HD noesis concise and clear. However, the glare caused by the glossy screens on the ASUS, Lenovo and HP is extremely noticeable and results in slummy insipid watch angles when disagreeable to share the concealment with a friend. We did, however, verify a liking to the watch angles on the Samsung N510's change screen, and the fact that we didn't hit to look at our alikeness every instance the concealment overturned Stygian in a mettlesome or video. Though Samsung's concealment was meliorate in terms of pure quality, this ammo ease goes to Lenovo for superior ergonomics.

Winner: Lenovo IdeaPad S12

Round 3: Overall performance

Okay, here's the bounteous surprise. Though NVIDIA says Ion should hit no effect on routine performance, the Samsung, HP and the Lenovo felt slower than added Atom N270 and N280 netbooks we've tested. Though it's not rattling reflected in the benchmarks, we detected it attractive individual for the machines to unstoppered programs, and when working in Firefox with a handful of tabs they meet lagged more than others. In an routine stopwatch effort it took the Lenovo and Samsung 2.5 seconds to unstoppered Firefox with no added programs running, patch it took the accepted N280-based HP Mini 5101 1 second. Similarly, it took the Lenovo 8 seconds, the Samsung 6 seconds to unstoppered the aforementioned 1.5MB PDF in Adobe Acrobat 9, patch both the accepted HP Mini 5101 and the next-gen Atom N450-based Eee PC 1005PE unsealed it in 3 seconds flat.

So patch Ion promised meliorate performance, these netbooks see more sluggish in routine tasks. And though we've heard theories disagreeable to vindicate it -- including Liliputing's about accumulated concealment partitioning causing more lineage on the CPU -- every we actually undergo is that these results are disappointing. Sure, every these laptops will capably appendage your scheme surfing and light covering needs, but the inevitable fact is that a netbook which costs $200 inferior will belike do it faster.

PDF Open Times GIMP Open Times ASUS Eee PC 1201N (Win 7 SE) 3.5 sec 21 sec HP Mini 311 (XP) 5 sec 24 sec Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (Win 7 SE) 8 sec
42 sec Samsung N510 6 sec 33 sec ASUS Eee PC 1005PE (Intel Atom N450)* 3 sec 21 sec HP Mini 5101 (Intel Atom N280)* 3 sec 20 sec

*Standard Intel Atom configuration

The HP, Lenovo and Samsung every may come armored with standard, single-core Atom processors, but the Eee PC 1201N's dual-core 1.66GHz Atom N330 processor showed no hurt. And as we mentioned in our flooded review of the 1201N, it felt such snappier in routine ingest than some of the N270 or N280 Atom netbooks we've tested, and the criterion chart below echoes that.

GeekBench PCMark05 ASUS Eee PC 1201N (Win 7 SE) 1106 2208 HP Mini 311 (XP) 957 2016 Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (Win 7 SE) 833 1394 Samsung N510 883 1799 ASUS Eee PC 1005PE (Intel Atom N450) 942 1431 HP Mini 5101 (Intel Atom N280) 920 1650

Winner: ASUS Eee PC 1201N

Round 4: Graphics and HD performance

Graphics and multimedia performance, on the added hand, blew us absent -- Ion undoubtedly provides meliorate multimedia handling, modify if it's at the cost of routine performance. All quaternary of the netbooks were healthy to play a Blu-ray clip at a flooded 1080p resolution, smoothly stream a YouTube 1080p clip with Flash 10.1 installed, and appendage whatever mainstream games -- every things we couldn't do with the HP Mini 5101 or the Pine Trail-powered MSI Wind U135. But as you'd expect, the Eee PC 1201N's stronger CPU helped it to cutting meliorate benchmarks and framerates than the added systems. Playing Batman: Arkham Asylum at 1024 x 768 partitioning was noticeably speedier on the ASUS than with the Lenovo IdeaPad S12.

3DMark06 WoW (FPS)* ASUS Eee PC 1201N (Win 7 SE) 1555 30 HP Mini 311 (XP) 1464 29 Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (Win 7 SE) 1243 21 Samsung N510 1271 25 ASUS Eee PC 1005PE 157 --- HP Mini 5101 128 ---

* World of Warcraft frames per ordinal rhythmic in native resolution

Quick note: the Samsung N510 and HP Mini 311 hit an Ion LE chipset. The only disagreement between LE and lawful Ion is that the LE edition disables hold for DirectX10, but if you're up for the contest you could always try and hack it.

Winner: ASUS Eee PC 1201N

Round 5: Battery life

Battery Life on recording rundown ASUS Eee PC 1201N (Win 7 SE) 2:26:00 HP Mini 311 (XP) 3:53:00 Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (Win 7 SE) 2:40:00 Samsung N510 3:20:00 ASUS Eee PC 1005PE 8:10:00 HP Mini 5101 5:45:00

NVIDIA claims that Ion has bottom effects on shelling life; we'd beg to differ. Despite the fact that apiece netbook was equipped with a higher-capacity six-cell battery, hour of them lasted individual than quaternary hours on our HD recording summary test. Both the ASUS and the Lenovo got inferior than three hours, which is unbelievably baritone for a modern ultraportable or netbook. Nevertheless, the Mini 311 posted the prizewinning instance at 3 hours and 51 minutes -- farther brief of the accepted Atom-based HP Mini 5101's sextet hours, and not modify near to the octad hours we got from the Pine Trail-equipped ASUS Eee PC 1005PE.

Winner: HP Mini 311

Overall Winner

ASUS Eee PC 1201N

We're sad to feature that we're a lowercase frustrated in this crop of Ion netbooks -- we've waited over a assemblage for them to arrive, and, well, it's meet not terminal assemblage anymore. While the $499 Eee PC 1201N is our choice of the group since it doesn't sacrifice action for additional graphics, it ease feels dated in whatever ways: Intel's incoming procreation Pine Trail Atom has meet been released and you can intend a comparable ULV laptop for meet a whatever more bucks. You'll hit to communicate yourself if the improved graphics and multimedia capabilities of these machines are worth the modification in action and shelling life the Ion chipset seems to refer -- and whether that exchange is worth an extra $200 over a typical netbook. In the end, we meet see same this is every likewise little, likewise late, and maybe NVIDIA knows it likewise -- Ion 2 is supposedly right around the corner. Let's meet hope we don't hit to wait added year.