ASUS Eee PC 1005PR
When we associate media playback and computers, netbooks don’t come to mind as the ideal merging of the two. On many netbooks, 720p videos play like slide shows, and you can forget about 1,080p. Even Flash-based media can stutter or look jerky, which is pretty serious, since Flash is one of the Web’s most pervasive formats. While Nvidia’s Ion technology, found in some netbook models, accelerates netbook graphics and video, including it usually means a much higher price for the netbook. So far this year, we haven’t seen a single netbook that offered a better media experience at a competitive price. All that is about to change, however. ASUS has introduced its latest Eee PC netbook, the 1005PR with up to 11 hours of battery life and the ability play HD content. Smooth YouTube HD and other HD content playback is enabled courtesy of Broadcom’s Crystal HD Accelerator chip and ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software.
Design
As the newest member of ASUS’ Seashell line, the 1005PR shares the same tapered lines, rounded edges, and slim chassis as the 1005HA and 1001P, among other recent Eee PC models. Available in four colors—black, white, pink and dark blue—this 10.3 x 7 x 1.4 inch netbook benefits from a matte outer shell and a fingerprint-resistant checkered pattern on the lid. This adds a touch of style to an already elegant design, making the 1005PR fashionable without being loud. To go along with its sleek look, the 1005PR is also lighter than the average netbook, weighing just 2.4 pounds. The inside of the system is glossy black, and the deck picked up its share of fingerprints.
Keyboard & Touchpad
Under the lid, the screen and keyboard are both embedded into a glossy black bezel, and glossy palm rests flank a flush-mounted touch pad. Also, the six-cell battery sits almost flush with the bottom of the system, something we wish we saw more often. Typing is a mixed bag, since the Chiclet-style keys are responsive and well-spaced, yet tiny overall. The right Shift key, for instance, is smaller than it would be on a full-size keyboard. Furthermore, the keyboard flexes slightly during typing, which makes it feel a bit cheap. Although the keyboard lacks any dedicated multimedia keys, function keys are present aplenty, including an easy screen-resolution manager that lets you toggle between display settings (either 1,366×768 or 1,024×768 pixels) with the press of a button. Located below the keyboard, the textured touch pad responds well to taps and multi-touch input (that is, navigation using two fingers on the touch pad simultaneously). However, its small size makes the pinch-zoom action (in which you pinch or pull two fingers together or apart to zoom in on text or photos) a challenge. On the other hand, we were exceedingly pleased with the shiny seesaw mouse button. It has deep plunge and satisfying feedback.
Display
The 10.1-inch wide-screen display offers a 1,366×768-pixel native resolution, which is much more practical than the 1,024×600 pixels found on most 10-inch Netbooks. That higher resolution is standard on 11-inch Netbooks, but found on only a handful (but a growing one) of 10-inch models. The built-in Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator is the same as we’ve tested on Netbooks from Dell and HP. As in those cases, once the latest Flash player release candidate software and Broadcom drivers are installed (be sure to uninstall the old drivers first), HD video playback, even at 1080p, is very good–from files on your local hard drive. Playing HD versions of Flash video content from YouTube or Hulu, however, is more of a mixed bag: it’s watchable, especially in a windowed viewing mode, but choppy to varying degrees when played full-screen (full-screen WMV and MOV files play fine from the hard drive). Even with special hardware, Netbooks are not quite full-fledged video playback machines yet.
Ports and Webcam
On the left side of the 1005PR is a USB and VGA port. On the right are a memory card reader, an Ethernet port, two USB ports, and headphone and microphone jacks. Above the display, a 1.3-megapixel webcam provided decent images in a Skype video chat. Once we adjusted brightness, contrast, and a few other advanced settings, the camera picked up accurate skin tones and clothing colors. A friend saw little motion blur when we waved quickly and made out details on our face.
Performance
Configured with a 1.66-GHz Atom N450 processor, the 1005PR offered similar performance to netbooks equipped with Atom’s last-generation processors. This Windows 7 Starter Edition system scored 1,319 on PCMark05, more than 100 points below the category average (1,439). When compared to similar netbooks, the 1005PR is a bit behind the curve, coming in under the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD (1,412), MSI Wind U160 (1,406), Samsung N210 (1,362) and the $299 Eee PC 1001P (1,384). The 1005PR scored 891 on Geekbench, just a few points higher than the netbook average (867). On our LAPTOP Transfer Test, in which we copy a 4.97GB mixed-media folder, the Eee PC 1005PR’s 5,400-rpm, 250GB hard drive notched a score of 21.1 MBps, which is more than 4 MBps faster than the category average (17.2). Though not quite as fast as the Wind U160 or Samsung N210 (24.8 and 22.7), it does beat the Eee PC 1001P (17.5). Overall, we noticed that the Eee PC 1005PR struggled a bit when we had too many tabs open in Google Chrome or when running more than four programs at once. We also noticed that playing HD video with multiple programs running taxed the CPU so much there was noticeable hitching.
