The live review and Q&A with the Samsung 900X1B went well on Saturday and we got through the 2 hours without any major issues or showstoppers cropping up. Battery life during the 2 hours was good at a projected 6hrs which included constant Wi-Fi and even some high-performance mode gaming. Wi-Fi, something that’s been highlighted by others as an issue on the 900X1B was stable but in a test across a couple of walls to a remote hotspot we confirmed that the throughput was poor. That’s the only potential issue on the 900X1B, the rest of the device was perfect, as long as you don’t mind those mini and micro ports and adaptors.
The 900X1B looks great, feels solid, performs well, is surprisingly efficient, light, quiet, has an amazing screen and keyboard and with no moving parts is a real contender for an ultra-portable. Only the power adaptor annoys. At 300gm it’s heavier and bigger than it needs to be. You might find a lighter power pack that would be more useful on a day away from the mains power.
The 900X1B is also available with a Core i5 1.6Ghz CPU and 128GB storage for a more carefree user experience and the prices have come down recently although it remains a premium product.
As usual, the live review was captured on video. Quality isn’t exactly HD but if you’re close to buying a Series 9 or considering a UX21, I really recommend watching. In fact, in my opinion, the 900X1B beats the Asus UX21 and is a good contender in the ultra-portable space.
I took a step outside my usual 10”, 1KG zone today by buying an 11.6” notebook. I explain the reasons in an earlier post so I wont go over it again but suffice to say, there are good reasons for buying it.
I’ll be writing more about the device in relation to the AMD Brazos platform and its suitability for ultra mobile work and I’ll also be covering the device in a video-editing-related post. On that topic though, be aware that the video below was shot on a Nokia N8 phone and edited and rendered on the S205 in 720p
So far I’m impressed with the build quality, screen and keyboard (all very, very important) but not so impressed with the E-350 CPU performance. I expected more.
I’ll be doing more testing over the next few days so watch out for my review notes and impressions soon. In the meantime, enjoy the video.
Don’t panic. I’m not changing the scope of UMPCPortal. We remain focused on ultra mobile computing solutions of 10” and below with a target weight of 1KG and under. What I did do today though is to go out of that range to buy in an interesting platform and a potential solution for myself. The Lenovo S205 11.6” laptop.
The Lenovo S201 is available now and includes the AMD Fusion platform based on the Zacate 1.6Ghz dual-core CPU. I want to get a feel for the performance / watt ratio of the platform and to think about how small a design could be made around this solution.
I’m also taking the next step in my Ultra Mobile Video Editing project for which 1.4KG of video editing solution is actually very lightweight. If I couple this with the new features I have on the Nokia N8, we’re talking about a 1.6KG 720p recording and editing suite. That’s 400gm lighter than my previous camera and netbook solution!
The other reason I bought it is because of my changing requirements. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has taken away all the social media activity I used to do on my netbook. It’s now my first port of call for email, for news updates and even for short-form blogging, image editing and uploads. I rarely use the netbook now so I can afford to think about optimising for the things I really need out of a laptop.
Video editing – Requiring performance, battery life and screen resolution of 1366×768 minimum (for many applications)
Long-form typing
Desktop PC for day-to-day work
1.4KG is about 200gm more than the average netbook and the increased footprint isn’t going to worry me on the few occasions I am out and about with it. As I mentioned above, in my work at expo’s, conferences and events, I’ll actually be better off if I can slot the N8 in as my video camera.
The cost is interesting too. Last week I was upgrading a €299 Acer Aspire One Netbook with about 120 Euros worth of operating system and RAM enhancements that the Lenovo offers for €399 out-of-the-box!
Today I’ll be unboxing the Lenovo S201 and videoing it with the Nokia N8. I will attempt to edit the 720p video on the Lenovo and you’ll hear fairly soon if it was efficient or simply too slow. Watch out for the video and some first-thoughts later.
Update 1: Rendering out a 720p, 4Mbps video right now and it looks to be using 16.5W (screen-on 30%, wifi on. 14w with radios disabled and screen off ) and taking 4x real time to process. I’m using Windows Live Movie Maker for the first test. Importing 720p into Movie Maker required downconversion for the editing process too. That takes up a long time so i’ll be looking for an alternative software solution that doesn’t have that input conversion stage.
Thanks to Ndevil for the tip on the S201 which was available in my local Conrad Electronics Shop this morning.
The live review and Q&A with the Samsung 900X1B went well on Saturday and we got through the 2 hours without any major issues or showstoppers cropping up. Battery life during the 2 hours was good at a projected 6hrs which included constant Wi-Fi and even some high-performance mode gaming. Wi-Fi, something that’s been highlighted by others as an issue on the 900X1B was stable but in a test across a couple of walls to a remote hotspot we confirmed that the throughput was poor. That’s the only potential issue on the 900X1B, the rest of the device was perfect, as long as you don’t mind those mini and micro ports and adaptors.
