Viliv N5
At first blush, the Viliv N5 would seem the perfect device for those who feel that smart phones like the Droid X and tablets like the iPad don’t offer the full PC experience of running a desktop OS with all your favorite applications, but for whom netbooks are too cumbersome to tote around. This 5-inch, 1-pound system is powerful enough to run Windows 7 with all the trimmings and even includes a Webcam and optional 3G broadband. However, with a starting price of $649, the N5 doesn’t come cheap and it’s battery life is relatively short. So is this pocket-size Windows machine more than just a novelty?
Design
The N5′s elongated form factor and incredibly rounded corners certainly have a pocketbook-look, but it’s also very clean and stylish. But you’ll forget about how it looks the moment you discover how it feels. The entire outer casing of the N5 has the softest, smoothest rubber-like finish of any device I’ve ever come across. It’s a texture that you can’t help but stroke/pet; if you let someone else hold it, good luck getting it back! Even when I hold the N5 in both hands to thumb type, I still find myself rubbing the back with my fingers. I hate to use the expression “softer than a baby’s bottom,” but it really is that silky and smooth (my 7-month-old baby girl will be thrilled by this public reference when she gets older, I’m sure).
Complementing the device’s amazing finish is its superb build quality. Viliv products are solid. Period. Everything is sturdy and strong; no creaks, warping, or flexing. It’s very nicely put together. One of the design elements that makes the N5 more unique than other handheld clamshells is that it has the kind of hinge that lets the bottom edge of the screen appear as though it’s underneath the lower half of the unit. The hinges themselves are strong and tight; the device literally snaps shut.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Despite its diminuitive size, the N5 sports a full QWERTY keyboard with fairly large keys (for its size) that provide tactile feedback that reminded us of our favorite ThinkPad keyboards. Don’t expect to do a lot of touch typing, though, because the entire device is just too narrow for an adult (or even a large child) to place one’s hands on the home row.
However, with the N5 sitting on our desktop, we were able to achieve a score of 32 words per minute on the Ten Thumbs Typing test, which is a far cry from our typical 80 word-per-minute rate, but much better than we’d do on most smart phones. Because the keys were so responsive, we had little difficulty typing when holding the N5 aloft, though our words-per-minute were in the mid-twenties when we tried the typing test in that position.
For the most part, keys appear in their typical positions, but to make them this large on a device this small, Viliv had to make a couple of compromises. The most awkward of these involve the placement of the colon/semicolon key, the bracket/braces keys, the hyphen key, the +/= key, and the question mark/slash key. The colon/semicolon characters, which normally sit to the right of the L key, share a button with the single/double quote characters. That means you have to hit the Fn key + quote to get the semicolon and Shift+Fn + quote to get the colon character. The brackets and braces characters, which normally have their own keys to the right of the P key, are available by hitting the Fn key + V, B, N, or M. The hyphen character, the +/= characters, and question mark/slash characters all have their own dedicated keys, but these are located to the right of the space bar, rather than in their typical QWERTY positions.
Display
Like the Viliv S5 Premium, the N5 is outfitted with a 4.8-inch WSVGA display. It isn’t remarkably bright, but it’s a great screen with crisp text, excellent clarity, and accurate colors. We’ve seen this screen size and resolution combination on many MIDs/UMPCs in the past, so there’s nothing new or unusual to report here. If icons and text are too small for your comfort, you can boost the size of them through Control Panel -> Appearance -> Display -> “Make it easier to read what’s on your screen.” You can also adjust the DPI through the “Set custom text size” option in the Display sidebar in the Control Panel.
Ports and Webcam
On a chassis this small, one can’t reasonably expect a lot of ports, and the N5 is notably sparse, offering only a single USB port, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. If the N5 had a way to output VGA or HDMI, it would make a great mobile presentation device, but as it stands the lack of video-out options is a huge missed opportunity. The N5 has a 1.3-megapixel webcam, but we were unable to produce an image larger than 320 x 240 either when shooting stills or videos. Worse still, the camera had real trouble handling florescent and low lighting. The low-light image we took at our cubicle looked really washed out, but when we moved next to a window with the sun shining through it, the picture quality improved a great deal.
Performance
The 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU + 1GB RAM duo housed inside the Viliv N5 isn’t new. We’ve seen it used for the past two years, since Menlow-based UMPCs were first released, with varying degrees of success depending on the operating system that went along with it. Windows 7 isn’t as trim as XP, but I think it’s a good choice for a mobile computer. Windows XP is almost 9 years old . . . and it looks it. Vista, on the other hand, looks incredibly dolled up in comparison . . . but it’s too slow. Windows 7 is the best of both words and it performs well on the N5. It’s obviously not well suited for heavy video editing or extensive multi-tasking, but for the kinds of things that most people do (web, email, Skype, video/music, casual games), it performs well. Faster processor options would certainly have been welcomed, especially since last year’s Viliv S5 shares most of the same specs, but the Z520 has a good power:battery life ratio and doesn’t cause the unit to overheat.
