Asus Eee PC 1018P review, a 10 inch business netbook!

In April, Asus Eee PC 1018P appeared on the Flikr page of a publication and impressed us because of it’s look and equipments. It seams that the manufacturer wants to create a ultra portable  niche on the market, and the model we are talking about right now might be the first of this niche.

The question we are going to ask ourselves now is if the new Asus 1018P can be considered a business netbook.

Construction

Asus almost outdid themselves with this ultra portable netbook regarding construction. We have aluminum on the case of the screen and probably the same material is used for the keyboard support and restpad. Around the screen we can see a plastic frame that has a similar look with the case we previously mentioned! It is pretty wide and it was probably used to allow the installation of a better keyboard. The touchpad buttons are integrated in its surface and, weirdly enough, we have a scroll bar on the right side. Almost all Eee models released lately came with multi touch support, but this model suggests that we can also use a classical scrolling method.

The Asus 1018P is a thin laptop. It’s thickness varies between 18 mm and 22 mm. Compared to other Seashell netbooks, this stands out having approximately the same thickness all over the place. The plastic on the inferior side of the portable has an interesting texture. The battery is perfectly integrated and doesn’t pop-up in the exterior at all. To maintain the thickness and the unitary design, the LAN slot was modified. Those you want to use it have to remove a cover, a solution we have already seen at the Sony Vaio X model. The Connectors of Asus Eee PC 1018P can be found only in the left and right sides of the netbook.

USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0 and more

One out of the three USB slots of the portable is located on the left side. The other two on the right side, with a blue interior color, color that indicates the fact that they are USB 3.0 compatible. The advantages of this compatibility is very high, but the number of compatible peripheral devices is still low. For example, the transfer speeds from an external 3.5” hard drive can easily go over 100 MB/s, being influenced by other factors as well. The peripheral devices with USB 3.0 support have begun to appear more and more, the same can’t be said about the Bluetooth 3.0 ones.

We thought that Asus would position the speakers of the 1018P from the front site to the inferior side. They can be found however at the base of the screen, under a grid that looks like a metallic one. The quality of the sound is not that bad, considering that the dimensions of the speakers might be suitable for a mobile phone as well. I think that some of the readers have already noticed a construction element integrated in the touchpad. Near the right side, under the keyboard, we can find a fingerprint reader. This authentication device is used by business portables, however we haven’t seen it on a netbook until now. Another feature offered by the Asus Eee PC 1018P is the possibility to load different devices through the help of the USB ports.

Configuration

- Screen: 10.1” inch, 1024 x 600, LED, glare

- CPU: Intel Atom N475, 1.83 GHZ, 512 KB cache, HT, TDP, 6.5 W

- GPU: Intel GMA 3150

- RAM: 2 GB DDR3

- HDD: 320 GB, 5400 RPM

- Network: LAN 802,11 b/g/n, BlueTooth 3.0

- Connectors: 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, VGA, 2 x audio

- Others: fingerprint reader, SD / SDHC card reader, web camera

- Battery: Li-Polimer, 4 cells, 6.000 mAh, 44 Wh.

- Dimensions: 262 x 179 x 18-22 mm

- Weight: 1.1 kg

Asus Eee PC 1018P is a latest generation netbook based on Pine Trail and a very advanced one. With 2 GB RAM memory, Windows 7 Home Premium does very well, however don’t have too much expectations.  The Intel Atom processor and it’s performances don’t get close to the one of a T4400 or to the ones of a Core i3 processor. Because of this perspective, the “business applications” of this portable are limited. If all you need it for is to edit documents, do presentations or to browse the Internet, then the Asus 1018P will do the job perfectly.

You don’t need more than 2 GB ram and you will not be able to extend the memory because of the processor’s limitations. The integrated video card allows you to view 720p movies with the right codecs and video players. The full HD movies require a bit too much from the Asus Eee PC 1018P. The processor has the HyperThreading feature, offering a slight increase of performance for certain applications.  From the equipments point of view, only the fingerprint reader and related technologies might integrated Asus 1018P in the business portable family.

Autonomy

If the Power Saver profile is used, the battery offers a 5 hours and a half autonomy. All this time we have browsed the Internet using the wireless Ethernet card, listened to music using a headset and edited documents, the luminosity of the screen was 50%. For the multimedia autonomy test we have used a 700 MB video file, DivX compressed. The battery ran out in 4 hours and 35 minutes, using a headset and the luminosity was set at 75%. These performances of the Asus 1018P can be considered very good, keeping in mind the fact that the battery is very compact.

Asus 1018P, The White Version

Asus also provides a white version of this portable, with less equipments however. Compared to the black one, the white version, named 1018PB, comes with the Intel Atom N455 1,66 processor, only 1 GB of Ram memory and 250 GB HD. Also, the operating system is Windows 7 Starter and not Home Premium as the black model. We can also notice the lack of USB 3.0 ports and fingerprint reader. The screen case is not made from aluminum, but from plastic, but the quality of the plastic is very good.

Conclusion

Asus Eee PC 1018P is surely one of the most beautiful, advanced and well built netbooks on the market. To say that this netbook is a business netbook is a bit exaggerated, but I am sure that a lot of people will be pleased with the performance and security levels offered by this model. The price of the Asus Eee PC 1018P is a bit too high for a netbook, but the performances and equipments are worth it.

Pluses and Minuses!

+ excellent construction

+ state of the art configuration

+ USB 3.0, BlueTooth 3.0, fingerprint reader

+ thin and light

+ decent autonomy.