Here’s my overview and opinion on the UMID MBook M1 in 12 points and a seven minute video. It highlights what I think are the most important things you should be thinking about if you’re looking to buy it.
Negative
- Build quality. Plastics and part fitting is poor. Some creaking and poorly fitted casing components. *1
- Table or handtop use. Neither are perfect. If the screen folded back further it would be far more comfortable to use in hands. Too light for tabletop touchscreen use.
- One shift key is awkward in handheld mode. Strange layout for some keyboard characters.
- Wifi and BT default to off after standby and can not be individually enabled.
- No direct usb or headphone port
- (Not in the video) No mouse control other than touchscreen which can be fiddly with Windows XP.
Positive
- Smallest, most powerful notebook style pocketable pc available.
- Extremely fast to boot, resume and start programs due to fast ssd
- Good quality touchscreen with stabilisation software/drivers.
- Powerful enough for Skype video capability out of the box. Good webcam.
- Excellent battery life. (I’m currently running a full start-to-finish web browsing battery life test as I write this.)
- While not perfect in every scenario, can be used successfully in every scenario. A flexible device.
- Silent, cool operation.
Overall it’s one of the best ultra mobile PC devices available on the market and a great step forward for UMPCs but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
More information, links, videos, gallery in the UMID information page.
[*1 I am told that this is a retail UMID Mbook and not a prototype as I mentioned in the video. JKK has a similar problem with the one he bought from Ebay but there’s still a question about whether I have one of the pre-recall versions here.]
