Asus Eee PC X101 reviewed and appreciated – a mini bang for less than $200

The X101 is a budget netbook Asus introduced a couple of months back and which had as a main selling point the fact that it comes with an ultra low price tag, namely $199 in the US or 169 euros in Europe.

The X101 is an ultra thin 10 inch netbook, we have to give it that, but it packs rather modest hardware, namely a clocked down N435 Atom CPU, running at 1.33 GHZ and a 3 cell battery that can go on a single charge for around 4 hours.

This MeeGo running budget netbook has a plastic chassis which doesn’t feel cheap at all. It’s hard to imagine how Asus managed to build a decent netbook that costs only 199 bucks, but they deliver a sleek and solid 10 inch netbook. The lid has a textured plastic finish that should prove comfy to grab and hold and carry around and the matte finish also helps avoiding getting it dirty with smudges.

Weighing 920 grams (a solid 350-400 grams less than most competitors) and being 17.6 mm thin, the X101 is a truly portable netbook, maybe the best in its category when it comes to mobility- too bad the stock battery can only take you so far as 3-4 hours.

The keyboard is kind of cramped and keys look vintage, to say the least. The keys make me think of old school calculators, which had rigid, plastic buttons and the X101 is no stranger of this.

While there’s enough room between keys, the buttons themselves are kind of small and you might suffer from typo influenza for the first couple of days after use, but if you’re accustomed to small keys from other netbooks, you’ll get the hang of it pretty soon.

The thin body is covered in a matte plastic finish

The ultra thin profile of the X101 also means that there aren’t many ports on the edges of the machine. You’ll have to settle for 2 USB 2.0 ports, audio jack and card reader, which isn’t much less than what more expensive netbooks have to offer anyway. The screen has a standard 1024 x 600 resolution and a matte finish, which makes the X101 easily usable outside. In fact, the display on the X101 is similar (if not identical) to the ones we’ve seen on previous EEE PC entries, so expect a decent display, but nothing in the line of brilliant displays we have on tablets or more expensive netbooks.

The Atom processor is winged by 1 GB of RAM and an SSD drive, which makes the netbook surprisingly responsive and fast when booting- it needs only 10 seconds to boot up and 3 to resume from sleep. Of course, this is happening partly thanks to the lightweight OS, namely MeeGo. If you’ll want to install Windows on it, expect a significant decrease in performance, as even Windows 7 Starter would have issues with this hardware.

As for the software, the main term to define it is basic. MeeGo is a decent OS for browsing the web or checking your social media streams, but it can’t do much else and using it offline is kind of deprecating. Third party apps are scarce and modest, but hopefully the appearance of more MeeGo powered netbooks will make developers come up with significant content for this OS. The X101 is currently available in Europe for 169 euros, while US customers will have the chance to buy it soon enough for $199.

MeeGo OS is a good OS for online use

To sum things up, if you’re after a ultra light netbook for web browsing, the X101 is a good choice and will save you money, but if you’re after a more complex machine capable of more than one or two tasks, it would be better to look somewhere else.

Stay tuned for a video coverage of the X101, courtesy of eeepc.it. Enjoy.

Tags: Asus EEE PC, MeeGo, slim netbook

Last updated: March 29, 2012 | Published: September 13th, 2011 | Add the first comment!