Asus Eee PC 1025CE Review
The Asus Eee PC 1025CE is one of the few netbooks that feature the latest, 2012 Intel Atom processors. It is also one of the few mini laptops out there to sport a 10.1 inch screen and the new dual core Atom N2800 processor at the same time. It has amazing build quality too. Read this review of 1025CE to find out more about it.
Design – The Asus 1025CE is a part of the Asus Flare family (currently include Eee PC 1225c, 1225b, 1025ce and 1025c) and looks extremely slick, unlike previous generation Asus netbooks like Asus X101h that had boring design. It is slimmer, even though it weighs same as previous generation Asus netbooks with 6 cell batteries.
Read Asus X101h review to find out more about it.
Whole body is made from plastic, which looks metallic from a distance, but after touching it you will know that it is plastic. However, it is ‘good quality’ plastic, not cheap looking like on Galaxy S3 phone.
Display – Unfortunately, we do not have impressive things to say about its display. It is a standard, ho-hum 10.1 inch screen packing 1024 x 600 (WSVGA) resolution. Fortunately, it is matte, just like the netbook-sized Lenovo X121e and X130e, which means that you can actually see what is on the screen in direct sunlight and brightly lit areas.
Keyboard, Touchpad – Asus is using silver keys, a refreshing change from white or black keys we are so much used to. The keyboard is comfortable to type on and you can easily write a novel on it.
Touchpad is bigger, wider than before and now you can finally leave that mouse at home for most tasks. It is also very comfortable when using multi touch gestures like pinch to zoom and two finger scrolling. Overall, a nice keyboard and touchpad combo.
Expandability – It is not super easy to increase the RAM to 2GB as there is no access to RAM from the bottom of this mini notebook. About the 4GB RAM support – yes, it does supports 4GB RAM, but the bottleneck are the drivers. There are no drivers for 64 bit operating system.
Performance – As said earlier, the Eee PC 1025CE comes with Atom N2800 processor. This processor is a dual core processor that runs at 1.86GHz clock speed. Coupled with 1GB DDR3 RAM and standard 320GB 5400rpm hard disk, you get so-so performance with the bundled Windows 7 Starter operating system. Our sister site, notebooksnews.com tested the Atom N2800 and it got 1960 in the PCMark Vantage benchmark test. Pretty average score, we would say.
In real world tests like watching HD content, web browsing and working on office documents, you will mostly find its performance acceptable.
Battery life - The unit comes with 6 cell 56 Wh battery and while Asus promises 12 hours of unrealistic battery life from it, we were able to get around 7 hours on a single charge while browsing the web via Wi-Fi with brightness set to 50 percent. Impressive – very.
Verdict – While this mini laptop really succeeded our expectations, we would still recommend getting any AMD Fusion 2.0 powered netbook or mini notebook over this as they clearly excel over it in terms of CPU and graphics performance. We also wish, it had HD display (1366 x 768) as 1024 x 600 is something one will struggle to work especially when working with apps that make use of ribbons.
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