ASUS EeeBook X205. Sub 1 Kg Windows laptop for €199. Hands-on.

Posted on 03 September 2014, Last updated on 26 January 2020 by

ASUS has just launched the EeeBook X205, a n 11.6-inch Windows laptop featuring ‘long’ battery life and a full-size keyboard for just €199. It weighs just 980 grams.

 

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Running the Baytrail platform (Z3000-series as seen in the cheap tablets) it’s undercutting even ASUS’ own cheap Chromebook, the C200. In the model I got hands-on with there was only 1GB of RAM. ASUS specifications show 2GB RAM. I hope it’s the latter because 1GB RAM is not enough (as I found out in my review of the Toshiba Encore 2 WT8 at Notebookcheck

 

The keyboard isn’t the best quality but it’s big and was stress-free in my 5-line test. There’s no touch and of course it’s a sealed unit. Note that you’re likely to find soldered RAM and eMMC storage inside so don’t expect to be able to do any DIY upgrades.

 

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This isn’t the first ASUS laptop that’s retailed for this price but it’s the first that isn’t constrained by a 10-inch screen. Multiple colour options could turn this into a big seller in the next quarter.

 

ASUS Eeebook X205 (4)ASUS Eeebook X205 (6)

 

ASUS Eeebook X205 (10)

In my hands-on I saw an 18Wh battery which is really small for an 11.6-inch laptop and won’t give 12 hours battery life for the average user. It’s possible I was handling a non-final build though so let’s hope for a bigger battery in the final version.

More images from the session in this gallery.

3 Comments For This Post

  1. mark says:

    A shame if it’s only USB 2 – I realise it’s cheap, but the similar T100 manages to provide USB 3, and with only 32/64GB of storage people may want to use an external drive. Still, the same issue applies to Chromebooks, so isn’t really a problem for competing.

    Great to see the return of the netbook! Much better than their X102BA (which AFAIK had a poorer AMD processor, and not great battery life). Also good to see people putting Baytrail to good use to make ultra-light (and hopefully long battery life) laptops.

  2. mork says:

    Almost all (if not literally all) current chromebooks feature USB3.. I can’t remember the last laptop that came without it, it is a real shame for windows that this gave such an easy hardware win to chromebooks. It’s also completely dead if it doesn’t have 2GB ram.

  3. evozero says:

    fyi, spotted a new asus windows tablet
    http://www.asus.com/Tablets/ASUS_VivoTab_8_M81C/

    low-end, no stylus, and going to confuse retailers with its similar name to the existing vivotab note 8 :)

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