Battle of the Netbooks : Asus Eee PC 1002HA
3. Asus Eee PC 1002HA
The Screen
The 1002HA inherits a screen from the 1000HE and has the same reasonable colors, response time and viewing angles, without overtaking the competition by any wide margin.
The only real difference is the brightness of this screen, which now only reaches half the maximum brightness of its predecessor at 95 cd/m². This obviously holds it back in a bright environment.
Asus has added yet another netbook to its collection with this Eee PC 1002HA. It's essentially another updated version of the 1000H, with both hardware improvements and a few aesthetic refinements too.
The basic configuration remains the same though: Windows XP running on an Intel Atom processor, a magnetic hard drive and 1 GB of RAM.
Given that this is now something of a standard set of options for a netbook, and that the 1002HA will be on sale alongside the 1000HE, we're left wondering how Asus plans to differentiate itself in the marketplace.
Handling & Connectivity
Asus' ten inch netbooks are really a notch above the competition's when it comes to ergonomics and handling, with a big, comfortable keyboard. The noise problem with the 1000H has been corrected here, and typing is no longer so loud.
Asus has clearly made an effort with the case, and the whole thing now looks a lot more professional thanks to a gray frame with metal trim. The only letdown is the cheap-looking black trim around the glossy screen.
There's plenty of room on the touchpad, which nicely fills the space that's left for it under the keyboard. Just in front is a single metal bar that offers a left or a right click, depending on which end you press.
The built-in webcam can give a pretty blurry image, which is due to the refresh rate being too low. As on the 1000H--and on most of Asus' netbooks, in fact--video tends to be slightly reddish. Frustratingly, it's hard to correct this problem as the screen itself is dominated by blues.
The 1002HA comes with thee USB ports, one Ethernet port, a VGA output, a pair of mini-jacks and a memory card reader. The 1002 also comes equipped with Bluetooth.
The speakers are fairly powerful, and are as good as those on the new version of MSI's U100. Having said that, though, you'll still want some headphones.
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| 2 USB | USB, 2 mini Jack |
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| VGA, RJ45 | Webcam |
Processor Power
The hardware is identical to the original 1000H: 160 GB hard drive, 1.6 GHz Intel Atom, 1 GB RAM. Because of this, the benchmark results do not distinguish the 1002HA from the 1000H.
Once again, Asus can boast an excellent boot time of 35 seconds, and the hard drive manages read speeds of up 70 MB/sec, although this figure gradually slows down to 35 MB/sec as the disk fills up.
The upshot of all this is that programs launch very quickly, and even large files can be copied at around 21 MB/sec.
The one problem faced by the Intel Atom/945 Chipset hardware configuration is that it just can't handle HD video. You wouldn't get a lot out of high resolution stuff on such a small screen though, and other videos work fine.
Battery Life & Portability
The 1002HA is significantly lighter than the 1000H, weighing just 2.64 pounds instead of 3.2.
Unfortunately, the extra weight doesn't seem to have gone into the battery. In fact, in our battery life test--looping video with the screen brightness at 100 cd/m² and sound playing through the headphones--saw a fairly spectacular collapse, falling to just 2 hours and 50 minutes.
| Asus Eee PC 1002HA | |
|---|---|
| Pros | Cons |
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This new, better-looking version of the 1000H is lighter than its predecessor, but has less battery life--it's up to you to decide whether or not this is a reasonable trade-off.
why is it that tom's always leave out the acer aspire one?
Hmmm, this just reinforces my decision to buy an eepc 901a.
Some of the articles pages are cut off.
the article is linked from DigitalVersus so goin there you can read the pages that were cut off
Shouldn't the last page have a CHART that shows Score, battery life, HD size, etc. Obviously, they all have 3 USBs, Audio and video ports.
Many of the reviews are cut off. Please fix this.
You need a chart at the end of the article, and you need to fix, as mentionned by ddelrio, some of the reviews that have been cut off
A chart with all the netbooks side by side would be nice.
It would then, for example, be easier to compare weight with batterly life.
Yeah I'm clicking around trying to find the conclusion, where's the end of the article?
Acer Aspire One... how could you leave this out?
As others have mentioned, some kind of chart or summary is needed. I've noticed that recent multiple-product reviews have been lacking in that area. Being able to jump to the summary, then backtrack to individual reviews would be much better.
Jeez, has it only been 18 months?
gateway LT31XX series at about 399US leave all these in the dust,1366*768 hi-def led display,athlon64 1.26ghz,sturdy noiseless keyboard,Hd dolby surround sound,250gb hd,ati mr1270 gpu,2Gb ram,Atheros wifi,multicard reader,home vista(yuck :-P )but is still snappy and runs great,flyes with linux(tested with pclinuxos,ubuntu and mandriva 2009 kde 4,....still to try win xp though....70sec to boot to desktop on vista....esxp index on vista...proc=2.7,mem=4.5,graph=2.7,games=3.0,disk transfer rate=5.6
just my 0.02.....
Why, why does Intel tie the hands of manufacturers?!?!?!
I'll wait till AMD comes up with some sort of ATOM alla style product, but Dual Core. When that will happened only then I'll consider a NetBook.