It’s clear that Baytrail-M PCs will be the low-cost options in the touch notebook and 2-in-1 space. This Medion Akoya P2212T, spotted in Austria, comes with a Celeron N2910, a Full-HD 11.6-inch screen, 64GB SSD + 500GB HDD and costs only 399 Euro, inclusive of taxes. There’s even an AC-capable WiFi module. Where’s the catch?
An 840 gram tablet seems acceptable, especially when it’s an 11.6-inch one at 399 Euros but to turn it into the laptop you’ll have to double that weight. Having said that, you do get the 500GB HDD, additional battery and keyboard which, it has to be said, is the important bit we don’t know about yet. The screen is an IPS-like one, if “Advanced Hyper Viewing Angle” does what it says, and at FullHD resolution there’s nothing to moan about there. You’ve got USB 3.0 and USB2.0 on the tablet along with audio, MicroHDMI and a microSD slot. On the base unit there are two further USB2.0 ports. (Shame those aren’t USB3.0.)
Front cam, microphone, Dolby Advanced Audio and the Intel AC 3160 WiFi module (dual-band, 433Mbps, WiDi capable) round-off the specs for this Windows 8.1 2-in-1.
The Celeron CPU does have some limitations when you consider that it’s a 1.6Ghz processor with no Turbo Boost, no Hyperthreading and no Intel Quick Sync video (video encoder/decoder – we’ll have to see how video playback performs.) Coupled with 2GB of RAM it’s obviously aimed more at home and student usage.
Medion say you’ll get 10 hours of battery life.
Sales start in Hofer, an Aldi company, in Austria and we would expect the offer to spread to Germany and possibly the UK. Given the timing, the price and the coverage (Aldi have over 9000 sales locations,) expect this to sell good numbers, in the same way that the first Aldi netbook did in 2008. Remember that Medion is a Lenovo company too so we might see a variant of this under the Ideapad Miix Brand. Miix 11 anybody?
Full specifications here.(German)
Via: TabtechTabtech
They didn’t provide any way to access the content of the HDD of the keyboard unit while not docked, did they?
Good question. One would imagine it’s only a USB3.0-connected drive anyway. I did’t see anything in the marketing though.
I’m wondering if that battery life is the tablet or with the keybaord
Battery life is with the keyboard.
Is there any word on if this thing has RAM slots? I guess not with the tablet form factor. No way I’m paying 400 Euros for a windows machine with only 2GB soldered RAM. And what is the point of Bay Trail-M if so!? Other than that it seems to really fill a nice niche– it’s nice to see Bay Trail-M offerings at a decent price, with a good screen, and it seems to have comparable battery life (but what is the Wh of the batteries?) to BT-T. Is quad core too (would have been nice to note that in the article!) so should perform about the same as a t100, right? (quicksync aside).
Some first hand details. SSD is the slow tablet “type”. ~60-70MB/s read rate, 0.5ms access time. HDTune says TRIM is not supported. On contrary to specs it’s ok in use. HDD is 60-100 MB/s SATA. Windows is 64 bit. Ubuntu 13.10 can run from USB drive. There are no RAM slots. P2212T has 4 RAM chips soldered and empty space for additional 4 (of course not user installable – but probably installed in P2211T (4GB) version). Screen is very nice though backlight is not very uniform. I really like the keyboard: better size than 10” netbooks and also better feel than T100. Conclusion: nice, but I wish it had some RAM slot (and possibly mSATA SSD).
Thanks. As Lenovo own Medion now it is no surprise that the keyboard is good. It really sounds like a good deal.