Last week, we covered the ASUS EeePC Touch T101MT in one of our unboxing jobs and found it to be an intriguing contender to Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 3T and to a certain extent, the emerging Pad computers that are set to appear in the following months. It may sound like an apples vs. oranges comparison, but if it's going against the iPad, it's going by a long shot in some aspects. But that comparison's not our primary concern here. We'll examine the EeePC Touch to see how it fares as a tablet computer – if its tablet functionality is merely just another frill, or if it offers enhanced usability as a whole.
The ASUS EeePC Touch T101MT tablet netbook
Design: Classy Masculine Appeal
The design of the ASUS EeePC Touch T101MT actually reminds us of previous subnotebook molds that appeared at least a decade ago. These were squarish, rectangular computers that in themselves, were appealing, considering their small form factor. This EeePC Touch is made classy by the touch of brushed chrome-like accent on the hinge edge while the softened corners and matte black finish rounds up the final effect of the EeePC. That's what the T101MT is all about – playing with an all black design with varying finishes and chrome-like accents.
Opening the netbook, we're greeted by a chiclet keyboard similarly found in other recent EeePC models, a 10.1-inch touchscreen LCD, chrome accents on various parts of the EeePC like the stylus, the power pull switch, the Touch Gate hotkey, the webcam outline, and the trackpad keys. If you look closely, there's almost if not any hard corners to be found on any of the notebook's main parts. We like the added effect of the status lights on the chrome material on the top cover of the EeePC, which makes us say these are faux yet convincing classy finishing touches.
Like other EeePC models, there's no clip for the lid, and the top lid's only held in place by the snapping hinge neck and the two rubber nubs on the keyboard side that fit with their female partners on the lid side. The lid's only designed to twist clockwise and counterclockwise to transform to tablet mode and back. And since it uses a single hinge, the screen can actually lean back just a bit more than 180 degrees.
We like how the interface ports are laid out on the T101MT, having most of them at the rear and leaving only the most useful ones, namely the audio jacks, the card reader, and a single USB port on the left and right sides.
The battery's also located at the front side by the palm rest underneath, which is a tad unconventional to the typical rear slot-in design.
Highlights: A Netbook With A Twist
The EeePC Touch T101MT isn't too different compared to other netbooks around. In fact, if we take out the touch screen, it's but a typical netbook of the 2010 era, using defacto standard netbook components like the Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor and the integrated Intel HD Graphics on-chip graphics processor, the NM10 chipset. It comes with only 1GB of memory (which is still expandable as we'll see later), 160GB of hard disk space, Atheros AR9285 Wi-Fi b/g/n wireless networking, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, and no built-in Bluetooth module. A built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam and microphone's also installed.
As we've mentioned earlier, the set up of the ports is different, in that only the most useful ones are kept on the left and right profiles while the rest of the ports are on the rear. There's a total of 3 USB ports, a VGA output port, an Ethernet port, a power port, a kensington lock port, two standard I/O audio ports, and a multi card reader on the unit. The card reader can read SDXC capable by the way, supporting up to 2TB cards. Stereo speakers are situated on the front profile, and only the audio ports and a card reader are set on the left profile, while a single USB port is present on the right.
The T101MT is multi touch ready, coming with a multitouch trackpad and a multitouch ready touchscreen. We say multitouch ready for the latter because this can only be used with Windows 7 Home Premium and above. Only Windows 7 Starter Edition comes pre-installed.
Usability: Touch Panel Ease
The T101MT is still technically a netbook no matter how we look at it, so you can expect it to perform and work like one. Likewise, the chiclet keyboard and touchpad feels like those of seashell EeePC designs. The keyboard's comfortable enough to work with despite the cramped dimensions of the form factor. The touchpad's generously sized, enough to be comfortable enough to use. The choice of setting up the interfaces also enhance the user friendliness of the netbook, especially in tablet mode. The multi touch features of the screen and the trackpad are among the key selling points of this unit, and while the multitouch trackpad works as expected, the touchscreen, as earlier mentioned, is handicapped by Windows 7 Starter Edition. Again, an upgrade is necessary for the multitouch features to be enabled. Even with a single touch functionality, it's still responsive to use. To fully appreciate the touch functionality offered, you may want to resort to using applications or add ons that supports hand grabbing, like the hand tool for Internet Explorer 8 and Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.
We like how easy it is to just twist and snap the screen from netbook to tablet mode and vice versa, and we like how the metallicstylus is designed to be easily accessible. The Touch Gate shortcut's a good way to access some of the most useful features of the computer in tablet mode, but it's limited in that you can't put your own shortcuts into the application. The time to hold the button to toggle screen rotation's also a tad too long for us as we see it as a useful function that will be frequently used. We also like the added function shortcuts added to access the Task Manager and cycle through the Eee Super Hybrid Engine modes.
If 1GB isn't enough, there's an empty SODIMM slot for easily upgrading this netbook's memory to 3GB using a 2GB stick.
It's also slightly heavier by a few hundred grams compared to a seashell EeePC by the way, weighing at about 1.3 kilos. It does feel heftier, and in a good way, you feel assured that it's not a cheap lightweight plastic product. On the other hand, it's added weight may affect the way you use it as a tablet.
Performance: A Typical 2010 Netbook
As expected, performance of this notebook closely follows other Atom N450-based netbook designs. PCMark Vantage gave it an overall rating of 1165 marks, while it obtained 290 3DMarks for 2005, and 153 3DMarks for 2006. Nothing too surprising these figures. Practically speaking, we didn't sense anything sluggish about the T101MT with regular use. When playing videos, expect it to be able to play 720p HD content without problems unless your bitrate's set to very high. As for 1080p full HD videos, it was able to play them, but we noticed the video playback stuttered for a couple of seconds, skipping every 15 to 25 second of smooth playback.
Windows Experience Index
PCMark Vantage scores
3DMark 2005 scores
3DMark 2006 scores
Battery life performance was pretty good, though not the longest lasting of the EeePC family. On idle and power saving mode with the display set with the lowest brightness and to not to turn off automatically, it lasted us 6 hours and 25 minutes before the critical battery alarm set off. If you're reading eBooks with such settings, you can reasonably expect it to last this long. When we set the notebook to high performance and playback 720p HD videos off the hard drive, it lasted us 3 hours and 14 minutes, again, before the alarm set off and the netbook had to hibernate. This should be enough for sitting through the God Father or two relatively short movies while on a plane ride.
Costs: Competitive Offering
This netbook's priced at about PhP 26,900, which is a few thousand bucks cheaper than the Lenovo S10 3T tablet netbook. It's a netbook at the mid range level, slightly leaning towards the higher end of the scale. Looking down at the price chain, we've got PhP 20,000 to PhP 25,000 netbooks with very similar specs and performance from the likes of Acer, HP, and Samsung, with perhaps the only serious competitor in terms speed is MSI's Wind12 U230. Looking up the price ladder, there's the likes of the Lenovo, Sony, and maybe even a grey market iPad. How does it fare? It's priced just about right, and we don't expect touchscreen netbooks to come cheaper in products of known brands like ASUS anyway.
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Specifications
| ASUS Eee PC Touch T101MT tablet netbook | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz |
| Graphics | Intel GMA 3150 |
| Display | 10.1″ LED Backlight WSVGA (1024×600) LCD |
| Memory | 1GB (2GB with Home Premium version) DDR2 SO-DIMM |
| Storage | 2.5″ 160GB SATA2 HDD 5400rpm (320GB with Home Premium version) + 500GB ASUS WebStorage |
| Wireless Connectivity | WLAN 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Optional) |
| Battery | Slim and eco-friendly Li-polymer battery, up to 6 hours |
| Webcam | Yes, 0.3 megapixels |
| Audio Codec | Hi-Definition Audio CODEC |
| Audio Output | Headphone-out, Stereo Speakers |
| Microphone | Mic-in, Built-in Digital Array Mic |
| Interface | 1 x VGA Connector, 3 x USB 2.0, 1 x LAN RJ-45, 2 x Audio Jack (Headphone / Mic-in), MMC/SD/SDHC/SDXC Card Reader |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Starter Edition (Home Premium comes as another version) |
| Dimensions / Weight | 264 x 181 x 31mm / 1.3kg |
| Colors | Black and White |
Overall: 8.0
A well built and hefty tablet EeePC that features multi-touch capabilities. You may want to upgrade the OS to take full advantage of it.Design: 8.5
Boxy all black design with chrome accents gives this netbook a classy appeal.Highlights: 8.0
It's a typical netbook inside in an EeePC package with a multitouch twist.Usability: 8.0
Good placement of ports, up to par experience with the Seashell models, and nice added touch of a multitouch screen and trackpad. The touchscreen's only hindered by the bundled Windows 7 Starter Edition.Performance: 8.0
Typical netbook N450 performance. Barely enough to play 1080p videos smoothly. Good lengthy battery life.Cost: 8.0
Priced at a slight premium due to the tablet format, but is still just about right for what it offers.Conclusion
Take an EeePC, and give it a multi touchscreen panel and a mutitouch capable trackpad, and we've got the ASUS EeePC Touch T101MT. It's the same great EeePC experience with the added touch capabilities. Is it worth the price? For a little more than a Seashell EeePC, if you're looking for such functionality to read your e-books or just use your netbook differently and are willing to use a slightly heavier, heftier netbook, why not? For the full multi touchscreen experience, you'd probably want to spend a little more for the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade, which in turn, will raise the overall price closer to Lenovo's ready-to-experience multi-touchscreen netbook. At least in this case, ASUS is giving you a cheaper netbook tablet to consider.
If you're looking at it as an alternative to the iPad, you'll find you can experience some of the activities like web browsing and multimedia playback to be similar enough between the two, but obviously not the entire experience brought to you by the tight integration between the iPhone OS, the third party apps specifically tailored to this OS, and the superb physique and design of the iPad hardware. What you don't get with a total pad-like experience, you get in terms of flexibility and power brought to you by a lightweight netbook computer that can transform into a tablet.