Asus Eee PC 901

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We ran our standard set of application benchmarks on the Eee PC 901 – a series of timed sequential tests that convert a number of WAV files to MP3 using dbPowerAmp, edit a number of images in Corel Paint Shop Pro X and render some video footage in TMPGEnc. The final test runs all three programs at once in order to asses the laptop's multi-application performance.

The base score in our tests is 100% – that's what a desktop PC with an AMD Athlon 3500+ processor and 1Gb of DDR2 RAM achieves. In other words, the higher the benchmark result, the better. We’ve also included the scores for a Lenovo ThinkPad X61s (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM) for a more meaningful comparison.

The Eee PC 901 overall score in our benchmarks was 40%, compared to the Eee PC 900’s score of 36%. – not much of an improvement given the Atom's much higher clock speed. This is an aggregate score for all four tests though, and while the MP3, image-editing and video-editing tests all showed a similar incremental increase, the multi-application score was dramatically better – 37% compared to the 10% of the Eee PC 900.

We performed two battery tests, both with the screen set to 50% brightness and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled. The light use test simply pages through a text file in Internet Explorer and gives a ‘best case’ battery life; the heavy use test runs the multiple application benchmark repeatedly and is perhaps a more realistic measure of how long the battery will typically last.

The Eee PC 901 lasted for five and a half just over eight hours in the light use test and four hours 32 minutes in the heavy use test. Both figures are extremely impressive, but it's worth bearing in mind that the Intel Atom chip drops to 1200MHz/700MHz by default on battery power. This won't make much difference to web browsing, word processing and other non-demanding tasks, though.

It's also worth noting that while the Eee PC 901 is actively cooled (we suspect with the same fan as the Eee PC 900, judging by the barely audible fan noise), it doesn't get anywhere near as warm. The 900 gets toasty to the touch even when it's just sitting there doing nothing, while the underside of the 901 was barely above room temperature even when it was running our demanding multi-application test.

The Eee PC 901 is the first Intel Atom-powered device we've reviewed and we're relatively impressed. The performance gains are small (though Hyper-Threading makes a clear difference), but then raw power isn't what the netbook concept is all about. Battery life comparisons with the Eee PC 900 and its 4400mAh cell are difficult, but some rough calculations based on its battery life and battery capacity suggest that the Intel Atom in the Eee PC 901 does make a difference to power consumption, particularly when the processor is being pushed.

Given that the Eee PC 900 was only on sale for a couple of months, some owners are bound to feel a little aggrieved by the 901's slightly lower price and much higher capacity battery, but that's progress for you. To be fair, the Intel Atom hardy blows the Celeron-M away, but we must admit that the 6600mAh is nice to have, even though it adds a few hundred grammes to the weight.

[Related: See all Mobile Computer netbook reviews to date]

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