It's like ASUS is cheating--in a good way. With now dual-core mobile Atom processors on the horizon, the netbook piooner is truly pushing the envelope with the Eee PC 1201N, the first netbook to pair a dual core Atom N330 CPU (normally reserved for desktop PCs) with Nvidia Ion graphics. The result is the best performance we’ve seen in this category at a very reasonable price. Just don't leave the charger at home.
Design
The 1201N sports the same glossy black plastic chassis and thin curves as other Eee PCs with ASUS’s Seashell design, including the 1101HA and 1008HA. At 11.6 x 8.2 x 1.3 inches and 3.2 pounds, the 1201N is smaller and lighter than the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with Ion (11.5 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches, 3.4 pounds), and about on par with the HP Mini 311 (11.5 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches, 3.4 pounds). The overall look is attractive, but beware of fingerprint smudges.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The 1201N’s island style keyboard offers strong tactile feedback that allowed us to get our typical 80 words per minute and a 2 percent error rate on the ten thumbs typing test. However, we did notice a little flex under the keys.
The small, but accurate touchpad sits flush with the palm rest. A textured surface filled with dozens of tiny indentations, reminiscent of artist Roy Lichtenstein’s ben-day dots, makes the pad extremely accurate and pleasant to use. It also supports multitouch gestures such as pinching to zoom, rotating fingers to rotate an image, and using two fingers to scroll. Unfortunately, the 1201N uses a single mouse bar that presses left or right, rather than two distinct buttons, so the clicking experience isn’t as good as it should be.
Heat
The ASUS 1201N stayed cool throughout our testing. After 15 minutes of streaming HD video from Hulu, the touchpad never exceeded 83 degrees, the keyboard (between G and H) registered a pleasant temperature of 85 degrees, and the even the bottom of the system chilled at 87 degrees. We consider temperatures below 90 degrees to be very pleasant, temps between 90 and 95 to be acceptable, and those above 95 to be unpleasant with temps above 100 being very unpleasant.
