Posts tagged comparison
Four model head-to-head picks the best Ion netbook
Dec 24th
Laptop Magazine is one of my favorite sources for in-depth analysis of systems, and they’ve recently completed a head-to-head comparison of four NVidia Ion-powered netbooks. Included in the review are the HP Mini 311, Lenovo s12, Samsung N510, and the Asus Eee 1201N.
Here’s a quick look at their findings:
- Best keyboard: Lenovo S12
- Best touchpad: Lenovo S12
- Best overall design and ergonomics: HP Mini 311
- Best PCMark Vantage score: Asus 1201N
- Best 3DMark 06 score: Asus 1201N
- Fastest video transcode: Lenovo S12
- Best video and gaming performance: Asus 1201N
- Best battery life: Samsung N510 (4 hours, 57 minutes)
- Best value: Hp Mini 311 and Asus 1201N
For an overall winner, Laptop Mag offers two choices. For pure power, go with the Asusn 1201N – but remember that you’re probably only going to get about 4 hours of battery life. For the best mix of performance, endurance, and value the HP Mini 311 was the clear choice.
Amazon sells the Mini 311 for $399
Ion, Dual Core Atom with Ion, and CULV go head-to-head
Dec 11th
Over at Liliputing, my good friend Brad Linder has posted some nice benchmarks he compiled using an HP Mini 311, Asus UL20A, and Asrock Ion 330 nettop. The results are definitely interesting, especially when you consider that the Asrock is using similar innards to what the Asus 1201N is packing.
As expected, the Ion excels at 3D tasks – and it’s also a champ at running encoding tasks where the application is smart enough to leverage NVidia’s CUDA technology. Near the end of his post, Brad charts the difference CUDA makes on MediaCoder results – the task completed more than four times faster on the HP Mini 311.
Brad’s results also illustrate what we already knew about the Atom: a single-core version is just not able to provide anywhere near the processing muscle of Intel’s other CPUs.
While the HP was demolished in CPU tests, its solid 3D scores show that it’s still a solid choice for netbook gaming. Head over to Liliputing to see the full results!