ASUS EeePC 1215N: Bringing NG-ION to the 1201

Conclusion: A Decent Netbook, but Atom Remains Slow

The 1215 is difficult to classify, and thus even more difficult to conclude on. While most people label it a netbook, I wouldn’t strictly call it so—I tend to define netbooks as anything with a 10” screen running Atom at a sub-$400 price point. The 1215N has more power, a larger screen, and a higher price tag, but it’s still running Atom so it’s not an ultraportable laptop either. CULV will eat the dual-core Atom for lunch and not even bother spitting the bones out. You don’t even need to ask about Core i3 or its ULV equivalent.

So what is the 1215N, actually? It’s something...different. I’d classify it as a hybrid, something completely unique and in a class of its own. The problem is that it really gets caught in a lurch between the netbook and ultraportable classes, but I’d actually argue that with the release of the N550 dual-core Atom for netbooks, the whole reason for the existence of the 1201N/1215N is somewhat diluted.

Initially, the 1201N was basically a method to get a dual-core Atom into a netbook along with the ION platform, and the 1215N just continued that into Pine Trail and NG-ION. But with the release of the N550, we finally have a dual-core Atom meant specifically for netbooks. In a system like the ASUS 1015PN, you’re looking at significantly more battery life without much of a performance hit. This is mostly due to the voltage stepping that Intel’s mobile processors have, but it really does make a big difference—the 1015PN is quoted at a very believable 9.5 hours of battery life. Obviously, it has the stripped down version of the NG-ION core with 8 CUDA cores instead of 16, but given how much of a CPU bottleneck there is in gaming performance, I don’t think it should make too much of a difference. Either way, you’re not going to be able to game at native res, so you’re going to have to turn the settings down a few notches regardless of whether you’ve got the full 16 SPs or not (and plenty of games simply require more than any current Atom CPU can provide).

The 1215N is a very niche product, and I think ASUS knows that. It’s easy to recommend alternatives like the 1015PN if you’re looking for just a dual-core netbook with ION, since it has roughly double the battery life and not terribly different performance in a smaller chassis. And on the ultraportable side, there are many EOL (end of line) CULV notebooks floating around for around the same $499 pricetag as the 1215N, and more than a few AMD Nile systems in that range as well. For example, there's the $485 Acer AS1551, which comes with a dual-core Athlon II Neo and the ATI HD 4225. You lose some gaming prowess, but you get a much more liveable system from the computing performance side of things.

So it really comes down to priorities—if you're looking for a gaming netbook or a real ultraportable notebook, the 1215N won’t really be your cup of tea. But if you’re looking for the highest gaming performance you can find in a $500 super-portable notebook, the 1215N should be your system of choice. Like the predecessor, know the limitations and you should be fine.