Netbook Reviews

Asus was very busy at this years CES announcing a few new netbooks, and a whole lot of ultrabooks / laptops. But they did hold one back. The Asus B23E is a 12.5-inch notebook which is aimed towards business users.

While it’s not an ultrabook by true classification, it does has a Magnesium-Aluminum Alloy case which gives it a very attractive, professional and solid finish.

One of the business features that Asus has focused on with the B23E is its durability and its strength, making sure it is up to the task of been used a lot and carried around all over the place.

Asus has been a longtime supporter of Netbook, and while other companies are pulling away from them and investing their time on hopes in the new Ultrabook market, Asus are staying true to their netbook line and have just announced three new netbooks at CES 2012 for 2012.

I feel that just as netbooks are getting to a good standard with higher quality and faster processors, people are loosing attention as tablets and ultrabooks are stealing the spotlight. Either way, these there new netbooks from Asus look very nice, and consist of the Asus Eee PC 1025C (& 1025CE), 1225B and the X101CH.

Asus have just announced the brand new Asus Eee PC 1225B 11.6-inch netbook to the market. We can already tell a lot just from the name, the bump in digits indicate that it’s an updated version of the 1215, and the B at the end tells us that it makes use of AMD hardware.

The Asus 1225B (Eee PC 1225B) is an 11.6-inch netbook which is powered by AMD’s new Brazos chipset.

It will be available with two CPU options, either the AMD C60 dual core 1GHz (turbo-boost to 1.2GHz), or the dual core 1.65Hz AMD E450 APU. It supports upto 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but will probably ship with 2GB. Hard drive options start at a very healthy 320GB and go up to 500GB and 750GB capacities.

Acer have just pushed out a press release ahead of CES 2012, announcing that their Tegra 2 tablet computer, the Acer Iconia Tab A200 will go on sale in the U.S from January 15th from the very attractive price of $329.

The 10-inch Acer Tab A200 has a 1280 x 800 pixel display and is powered by the 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor. While the tablet will initially start to ship on the 15th running Google Android 3.2 Honey comb, tech heads won’t have to worry about being behind the game, as Acer has already said that they will offer a free upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the Acer A200.

While Lenovo seem moving away from the “Netbook” tag with their S110 mini notebook, MSI are still fully supporting the netbook scene, and have just announced a new 10.1-inch netbook based on the new Intel Atom N2800 Cedar Trail processor.

This is the very first netbook we have seen to make use of the latest Cedar Trail processor. The Itel Atom N2800 CPU is a dual core processor running at 1.86GHz giving the MSI Wind U180 some decent power. It also makes use of the new Intel GMA 3650 graphics, which are reportedly 2x faster than the previous version, all while reducing the over all power consumption, and in turn extending the battery life.

Although not yet officially announced, Lenovo have released a promo video for the Lenovo Ideapad S110, their latest 10.1-inch laptop.

It’s interesting to note that they are calling it the “Lenovo S110 mini notebook”, rather than using the “netbook” term. We feel that Lenovo might want to move away from the netbook name as many people associate them with slow machines, where as the new S110 mini-notebook makes use of the new faster and efficient Intel Atom 2600 processor on the Cedar Trail platform.

It looks like a little more information on the upcoming Acer Iconica Tab A700 is coming our way very soon. According to a Russian website Acer are going to bring the Acer Tab A700 with them to this years CES and officially announce it to the world.

We have heard about the Acer A700 for a while now, but this is the first time we have gotten some real specifications on the A700, along with a number of photos. While the Iconica Tab A200 is a 10.1-inch model powered by the NVIDIA’s 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, the A700 makes use of the more powerful Tegra 3 hardware.

If the rumors are true, it looks like Acer could be the first manufacturer to offer a larger 15-inch Ultrabook at a price lower than $1000, much lower.

Reliable source DigiTimes are reporting that after successful sales of their 11-inch and 13-inch ultrabooks they are now going to release a larger 15-inch ultrabook. If we are lucky we will see this 15-inch Acer Ultrabook announced at CES 2012 which is just week away now.

Netbooks have evolved quite someway since they were first introduced. Starting out with small low resolution screen, and seriously under powered, they have slowly become larger and more powerful.

While the most common form factor for a netbook is still 10.1-inches with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, many people find this size a little too cramped and limiting.

When Acer first introduced their 11.6-inch Aspire One AO722 netbook, it was an immediate hit, and it has constantly grown in popularity to become the proud owner of the number one spot.

LG have just announced an new ultra slim 13.3-inch notebook over in Korea. It’s part of the X-note range and has the slender frame and specifications for it to be classed as an ultrabook.

The thin and light LG Z330 Ultrabook is based on Intel next generation platform ultrabook specifications and and powered by the Intel Core i7 2637M or Core i5 2467M processor with 4GB of RAM.