Asus Eee PC X101CH - Finally, a Cedar Trail netbook worth buying

The main benefit of the new Cedar Trail Atoms is not power. Sure they can play HD video, but they are a lot slower than their AMD Fusion E-450 and C-60 counterparts in terms of video performance. The Atom N2800 processor runs almost as fast as that of an AMD Fusion E-450, but lags far behind in graphics power. Similarly, the Atom N2600 runs about as fast as an AMD Fusion C-60 in terms of pure processing, but lags far behind in the graphics department.

The main advantage of the Cedar Trail as against the AMD Fusion is they run cooler and hence can be placed in devices with smaller form factors:

• AMD Fusion E-450 - 18 W Thermal design point
• AMD Fusion C-60 - 9 W TDP
• Intel Atom N2800 - 6.5 W TDP
• Intel Atom N2600 - 3.5 W TDP

When the new Atom netbooks came out, they came in the same old netbook chassis capable of running the hotter old dual core Atom Pineview processors. Well, Asus has changed this with the new Asus Eee PC X101CH.

The Asus Eee PC X101 is not new. It was offered last year running single core Atoms. Thanks to the Cedar Trail, it now has dual core power. 

Quick Specs:

Display: 10.1-inch (1024 x 600 pixel resolution)

Processor: Intel Atom N2600 (dual core 1.6 GHz)

RAM: 1 GB (not upgradeable)

Storage: 320GB hard drive

Wireless: WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0

Notable Ports: USB 2.0 and HDMI out

Card Reader: Yes

Webcam: Yes

Battery: 3-cell rated at 5 hours (3-4 hours real world use).

Price:

With Windows 7 Starter - Php15,990

With DOS - Php13,990

Why buy this device? Portability. This device is a small 10.3″ x 7.1″ x 0.86″ and weighs in at just 2.2 pounds.

Personally, on the small low cost laptops, I have taken a preference to the Lenovo ThinkPad EDGE e125. Best keyboard in the 11.6-inch world. But the ThinkPad EDGE e125 costs 6K more and weighs all of 0.9 pounds more.