Asus 1008P review – KR

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Asus 1008P is the successor of the suave Asus 1008HA which brings the newest Intel Atom N450 processor. On paper, the Eee 1008P appears to be a typical netbook, but it offers some very interesting features which I will discuss in the review.

Design and Build

The Asus 1008P looks elegant and is slimmer than most of the netbooks out there. Karim Rashid, an industrial designer has given it a brand new look. The one I have is the brown one which the Asus is calling as the “Coffee Brown”. If you are a lady, I would recommend getting the fascinating “hot pink” color.

Like Asus products, the build quality is excellent even though the whole casing is made of plastic. It has a rubbery finish on its lid and at its bottom to make sure that it does not slip out of your hands.

Display

The Asus 1008P comes equipped with a 10.1-inch display with 1024×600 pixel resolution. Again, it is plagued with the design defects that I’ve seen in other Eee PCs as well – big bezel. There is just too much waste of screen space, about an inch from all the sides.

The display is glossy and you can used as a mirror in direct sunlight. Jokes aside, colors look vivid, provided you don’t use the netbook in Sun.

Keyboard and Touchpad

I have been waiting to get my hands on an Eee that sports chiclet keyboard. I simply heart the keyboard of my Sony Vaio P and the one found on the Eee has, undoubtedly impressed me. My only wish is that the right shift key could have bigger. The HP Mini 5102 keyboard has full size right key and I see no reason why Asus could not do that since they have much more experience in the field of netbooks than any other netbook manufacture.

I’ve been able to get around 90-100WPM on it which is about 15WPM shorter than what I get on the Asus 1201T which sports a full-size laptop keyboard. Without a doubt, I would recommend this to the college students or anybody who does a lot of typing on-the-go.

Like other Asus Seashell Eee PCs, this mini laptop too continues to have Achilles heel when it comes to touchpad. Don’t get me wrong, it is of decent size, but the gestures are awful to use. I also have an Eee 1000H on which two finger gestures work like a dream. Oh and that netbook was released nearly 1.5 years back! Also, I would really love to knife the single bar into two halves.

Performance

The pine trail does NOT brings any notable obvious speed improvements over the previous generation of Atom CPUs, but the netbook does runs a lot more cooler. Also, the processor is a tiny bit more efficient and that is the reason we were able to squeeze out around 5 hours of runtime from such a small battery!

Storage and Memory

The Asus Eee 1008P comes with 250GB hard disk and 2GB RAM.

Ports

2 USB 2.0 ports, LAN port, mini-VGA port (converter included), SD card slot, earphone and microphone jack

Battery Life

Asus has included two battery packs in the box. Both li-poly batteries have 2900mAh capacities and each delivers a runtime of around 4.5 hours while browsing the web via Wi-Fi; brightness at 50% and Super Engine Engine set at Auto Power Saving. This clearly shows how power-sipping the new Atom N450 is.

If you can carry around another slim battery, then you will be able to get 9-10 hours of runtime.

Final Verdict

A sleek, stylish netbook for the fashion conscious people that looks unique and has excellent build quality. It yields good battery life and sports an awesome keyboard.

Note – officially, Microsoft claims that it is not possible to change the Windows 7 Starter’s wallpaper. While it is still holds true, Asus is offering a free utility that easily let you change the wallpaper of your Eee 1008P. See this post for more instructions: Change Windows 7 Starter wallpaper

Also read the mini Asus 1201T review

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