Review Date: December 2008
The Asus Eee PC 1002HA is a strong netbook entry that improves on its predecessor (the very good 1000HA) in a number of ways. It’s slimmer, lighter, offers improved battery life, and looks great, too. Two months ago, we would have crowned this king among 10-inch netbooks, but the recent arrival of the Samsung NC10 puts the 1002HA in a very close second-place position behind the Samsung, which offers similar specs but a better keyboard and longer battery life for the same $499 price.
The 1002HA continues the company’s move toward sophisticated netbook designs (a lá the Asus N10Jc) versus the more toy-like appearance of the original Eee PC. The bronze finish on the lid and palm rest looks both rich and unique, and Asus has trimmed the weight to 2.8 pounds (versus 3.2 pounds for the 1000H) and the thickness to 1 inch (from 1.4 inches). We also appreciate the diminutive AC adapter, which ensures that you won’t be loaded down with a power brick when you do want to bring the cord along.
The glossy black bezel around the 10-inch wide-screen display gives the 1002HA the look of a (very) miniature HDTV. Colors pop and even small black text is crisp, though we noticed that smaller, colored text comes across a bit fuzzy. The screen has a native resolution of 1,024x600, which means most Web sites will be visible side-to-side without scrolling horizontally. The vertical resolution, of course, necessitates plenty of up-and-down scrolling. Fortunately, the oversize (for a netbook) ElanTech touch pad supports scrolling by dragging two fingers on the pad, so there’s no need to hunt for a dedicated scroll area. The touch pad also supports other gestures such as rotating, zooming, and selecting onscreen items.
While the touch pad is one of the best we’ve used on a netbook, the keyboard is merely good, not great. The keys have a comfortable feel but are more cramped than those on the Samsung NC10, and the size and placement of the right Shift key (at the outer edge of the keyboard) will be hard for touch typists to get used to. And as with other netbooks, there’s really no room for dedicated multimedia control keys. Audio from the front-firing stereo speakers is pretty good for a netbook, and on par with most mainstream notebooks. The sound is thin and could use more bass, but there’s plenty of volume.
The 1002HA has the usual ports for a netbook, including three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, headphone, microphone, and VGA. Although we’re happy to see a memory-card reader (SD, MMC, and Memory Stick flavors are supported), its placement on the back edge strikes us as an odd design choice. Wireless connectivity comes via 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth, and there’s a Webcam (but no fingerprint reader). The 1002HA includes a 160GB hard drive, but as with other netbooks, you’ll have to spring for an external optical drive.
The 1002HA’s Super Hybrid Engine lets you trade performance for battery life. Three modes—Super Performance, High Performance, and Power Saving—are available by simply pressing the button above the keyboard. In Super Performance mode, the 1002HA performed right in line with (or slightly better than) other Intel Atom N270-based Windows XP netbooks with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics. It scored 135 on Cinebench 9.5 (dead on the average for that group) and 844 on Cinebench 10, which is the highest score we’ve seen yet from a netbook (albeit by only 9 points). The machine needed 25 minutes and 15 seconds to complete our iTunes conversion trial, which is painfully slow compared with laptops in general but similar to other netbooks. Its time of 23 minutes and 37 seconds on our Windows Media Encoder test is slightly faster than competing netbooks (but again, not a chore you’d want to perform regularly on this type of machine).
On our video-loop battery-rundown test, the 1002HA lasted 2 hours and 53 minutes in Super Performance mode, which is 34 minutes less than the average for all netbooks tested to date—and a considerable 84 minutes less than the Samsung NC10. Switching to Power Saving mode and playing a video loop continuously, we saw the same battery life, but less-demanding chores (like Web surfing) should see a benefit. But you'll notice about an 8 percent performance drop in the tradeoff, according to our Futuremark PCMark 2005 results (1,520 in Super Performance mode versus 1,394 in Power Saving mode).
There’s a lot to like about the Asus 1002HA. It has the sophisticated good looks of the Asus N10Jc without the higher price, and all the appeal of the company’s 1000 series in a slimmer, lighter package. But although it has the Samsung NC10 beat in the looks department and it offers a better touch pad, the 1002HA loses points to the Samsung when it comes to battery life and keyboard design.
