Asus Eee PC 1001P review

Although netbooks were originally very-cheap laptops, recent years have seen the price of them rise severely. It's good, then, to see that the 10.1in Asus Eee PC 1001P costs just £229.

The main reason behind this lower price is that this laptop uses Windows XP Home Edition rather than Windows 7 Starter Edition. We slightly prefer Windows 7, despite Starter Edition's restrictions (you can't change the wallpaper or use multiple monitors), but XP is still a decent choice and is very familiar to many people.

Aside from that, the only difference between this and other netbooks we've seen recently is that the 1001P has a 160GB hard disk, rather than a 250GB model. Even so, 160GB is plenty of storage for most people, particularly if you're intending to use a netbook as a secondary computer.

Fortunately, there aren't any major compromises. The 1001P's hard plastic case looks fantastic and feels tough enough to protect the laptop when you're carrying it around. As a result, this netbook is a touch thicker and 100g heavier than other similar netbooks; however, 1.3kg is hardly heavy to carry around.

This is clearly a laptop that's designed to be carried around, as its stunning battery life of 9h 14m shows - this is plenty for a day's worth of work away from a power socket.

Although it uses Windows XP, Asus has used the latest technology with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor. There's the usual 1GB of RAM, too, although you can replace this stick of RAM with a 2GB module. The netbook managed an overall score of 18 in our benchmarks, which is very similar to all other netbooks. This shows that this laptop's perfect for office and internet applications, but you'll need something more powerful for more intensive tasks, such as video editing.

Graphics are powered by the processor's integrated GMA 3150 chip. It can't power games, as you'd expect for a netbook. As with the majority of other 10.1in netbooks, the 1001P's screen has a resolution of 1,024x600. It's enough for web browsing and some office applications, but larger documents could be hard to manage and some dialog boxes drop off the screen.

A glossy coating should help boost contrast and colour vibrancy, at the expense of picking up more reflections. Unfortunately, the screen's not very good. Even at full brightness it's very dark and detail gets lost in dark parts of images. Viewing angles are good and colours are otherwise accurate.

Fitting a decent keyboard into such a small laptop can be hard, but Asus does a pretty good job. Using the entire space beneath the screen, there's plenty of room for decent-sized keys. They're a little flat, so it can be hard to feel for a key. They're also a little spongy, but once used to it we managed to type quickly and accurately.

The touchpad is responsive and supports multi-touch gestures, such as pinching to zoom. Asus has implemented the functionality into Windows XP, so you don't need Windows 7 to use these gestures. The single see-saw touchpad button is responsive and easy to reach with a thumb.

It's not perfect and there are netbooks with better screens and more comfortable keyboards, such as the Toshiba NB305 or NB300; however, they're a lot more expensive. If you want a cheap netbook with decent battery life and don't mind having Windows XP, this is a great choice.