Three Sub-$500 AMD Brazos-Based Notebooks Rounded Up

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The Asus 1215B for $400 would be nice... E-350 in an 11.6-13.3" form for under $400 in general is what will sell... Asus i3's are getting down to $500 so they need to stand out more in the price depatment!
 
I got a Toshiba with the E-350 for $400. I never expected it to play big games or anything. The battery life in our usage is boatloads longer than the test profile. In "civilian" web use the battery life is like 5-6 hours. My brother got one too and he watched a full two hour DVD and still had %67 battery left!
This is an excellent platform for casual use without being stuck to a power socket.
As for build quality.. it's cheap. I don't like the keyboard because it's all flat, no dents, although I do like that it's full sized. the plastic in the case doesn't feel that strong either. I'd pay $50 more for a tougher case/keyboard.

nettops have their own role but I can't tolerate an 11" screen. the toshiba with E-350 offers a full size screen with excellent battery life and average performance at an excellent price. works for me :)
 
As expected from a netbook, the dm1z has smaller keys, which is going to be a problem for users with larger hands.
Click to expand...
the HP Pavilion dm1z has a chiclet keyboard, the smaller keys actually help people typing with bigger hands, not reverse!

Take it from a guy with LARGE hands!
 
You wouldn’t be able to guess from lifting it that this notebook tries to slide by with a single-core processor. Its weight leaves you expecting at least dual-core performance.
Click to expand...
Hah, like you're going to notice the 100 grams missing from a CPU core!
 
I got a Toshiba with the E-350 for $400. I never expected it to play big games or anything. The battery life in our usage is boatloads longer than the test profile. In "civilian" web use the battery life is like 5-6 hours. My brother got one too and he watched a full two hour DVD and still had %67 battery left!
This is an excellent platform for casual use without being stuck to a power socket.
As for build quality.. it's cheap. I don't like the keyboard because it's all flat, no dents, although I do like that it's full sized. the plastic in the case doesn't feel that strong either. I'd pay $50 more for a tougher case/keyboard.

nettops have their own role but I can't tolerate an 11" screen. the toshiba with E-350 offers a full size screen with excellent battery life and average performance at an excellent price. works for me :)
Click to expand...

Which Toshiba model? I suspect that it isn't the C655D. Could it be the A655? That one has a bigger battery pack. I think it costs a little more too. I wish I could have tracked that one down, but when I walked into Best Buy, these were the only models available.
 


I notice when 1 gram is missing! Just kidding. I speaking in terms of durability. It's build with a certain heft to it, and that sense in a 15.6" form factor makes me inclined to expect at least dual core processor. It's not often that you see a single core 15.6" these days.
 


Fair enough! I'll keep that in mind for the next review. As a personal with LARGE hands as you put it, I'd be interested to hear your take on chiclet vs. non-chiclet keyboard. Do you like the aggressive spacing? You can have large keys and chiclet. You can also have the reverse.
 
Poor author tried so hard to write a hit piece.

The biggest complaint for anyone that has ever bought a laptop has been the crappy graphics on the standard models. Zacate fixed that. Nobody gives two shakes about the CPU performance these days. Its more than you could ever use in any office or standard windows application. Graphics, graphics, graphics has been the single issue for a decade now in mobile laptops.

It seems pretty obvious that you understood this by the rigorous explanation on your conclusion. You know that is the problem everyone has looked to solve but there is no way you will let your bias get in the way of that. And the fact that you are bird dogging every response in the comment section just shows that you are trying way to hard to back your slanted opinion that you had when you started writing and will not let go until you have everyone feeling your way no matter how much it goes against the intentions the manufacturer put on its product.

I've been waiting on something to replace my Atom since the day I got it. Its performance blows but its the only thing that can get the job done with the right battery life. The Pentiums don't have any kind of graphical guts unless you get a third party chip and then it suffers horribly in battery life. Zacate is a brilliant Atom replacement and though not the best notebook gets a check-mark in every category. That is the end game and that IS what matters.
 
[citation][nom]acku[/nom]Fair enough! I'll keep that in mind for the next review. As a personal with LARGE hands as you put it, I'd be interested to hear your take on chiclet vs. non-chiclet keyboard. Do you like the aggressive spacing? You can have large keys and chiclet. You can also have the reverse.[/citation]
Actually I prefer chiclet keyboards over standard, because the spacing between the keys allows for one to feel which key he's striking.
On keyboards where all keys are nearly next to eachother like on my vaio, I at times mis type because my finger is touching between 2 keys and I don't even feel it.

In a sense, if they where only capable to get a chiclet keyboards for 9" netbooks that would be perfect!
A lot of people have typing issues, because the keyboards provided with on the 9" netbooks feel more like a flat surface, harder to type correctly. Chicklet keyboards with large spacing between the keys and smaller keys allow more precise typing, That's why you see them a lot on keyboards on cellphones.
 
[citation][nom]sandmanwn[/nom]Poor author tried so hard to write a hit piece.The biggest complaint for anyone that has ever bought a laptop has been the crappy graphics on the standard models. Zacate fixed that. Nobody gives two shakes about the CPU performance these days. Its more than you could ever use in any office or standard windows application. Graphics, graphics, graphics has been the single issue for a decade now in mobile laptops.It seems pretty obvious that you understood this by the rigorous explanation on your conclusion. You know that is the problem everyone has looked to solve but there is no way you will let your bias get in the way of that. And the fact that you are bird dogging every response in the comment section just shows that you are trying way to hard to back your slanted opinion that you had when you started writing and will not let go until you have everyone feeling your way no matter how much it goes against the intentions the manufacturer put on its product.I've been waiting on something to replace my Atom since the day I got it. Its performance blows but its the only thing that can get the job done with the right battery life. The Pentiums don't have any kind of graphical guts unless you get a third party chip and then it suffers horribly in battery life. Zacate is a brilliant Atom replacement and though not the best notebook gets a check-mark in every category. That is the end game and that IS what matters.[/citation]
I would seriously advise you to equip your netbook with an SSD!
I have one of the first netbooks ever created, the EeePc 701, it hosts a 4GB SLC SSD, and is blazing fast! Boots up pc and programs much faster than my core2duo laptop, while it only hosts a single core 630, 800, or 900Mhz processor, depending how you set the CPU frequency in eeectl.
 
[citation][nom]acku[/nom]Fair enough! I'll keep that in mind for the next review. As a personal with LARGE hands as you put it, I'd be interested to hear your take on chiclet vs. non-chiclet keyboard. Do you like the aggressive spacing? You can have large keys and chiclet. You can also have the reverse.[/citation]
Also, not much addressed, but chiclet keyboards offer superior hygiene over regular keyboards, because it's very hard to get any food stuck between the keys, there is less surface difference, and thus easier to clean; AND they are much more economical to manufacture.
Especially on netbooks and low end computers these kind of keyboards are superior in every way, I find.

You don't even want to look at my vaio's keyboard, much less see it through a germoscope (if that ever would exist) :)
 
Where is that self-cleaning keyboard when you need it? 😉

[citation][nom]sandmanwn[/nom]Nobody gives two shakes about the CPU performance these days. Its more than you could ever use in any office or standard windows application.[/citation]

I'm not sure I agree. If I'm messing with tens or hundreds of thousands of calculated cells in Excel, it's going to suck up all the limited CPU power on offer, and it's not exactly a limited case scenario.

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs, and perhaps my scenario is more of an outlier, however it's all relative in the end. Zacate moderately improves upon the CPU processing aspect but its real value is in providing good multimedia support for less power than competing solutions. I just wish there was a 2GHz variant, or, at least, the ability to overclock one slightly. Perhaps Brazos doesn't scale well past 1.6GHz.
 
I think the point thats really missing here is that the E350 is more powerful in both CPU and GPU than the Atom/Ion combo, while using less power. The D525 is a 13W TDP, while the Ion 2 is also a 13W TDP. Thats a 26W TDP for a pair thats slower than a single 18W chip. For that difference you could basically add a full C50 to the system. I would guess for that 8W you could also either add a 3rd CPU core, double the graphics processor, or some of each. Thats a pretty big difference in my book, and thats not even taking into account that Nvidia measures TDP differently than AMD and their numbers tend to be lower compared to actual power usage than AMDs. (see the 590 with a 375W TDP, using similar amount of power at load as the 450W TDP 6990 OC Switch mode.)
 
[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]I'm not sure I agree. If I'm messing with tens or hundreds of thousands of calculated cells in Excel, it's going to suck up all the limited CPU power on offer, and it's not exactly a limited case scenario.Perhaps I'm splitting hairs, and perhaps my scenario is more of an outlier, however it's all relative in the end. Zacate moderately improves upon the CPU processing aspect but its real value is in providing good multimedia support for less power than competing solutions. I just wish there was a 2GHz variant, or, at least, the ability to overclock one slightly.[/citation]
Most likely splitting hairs. I'd be willing to bet the difference between a Pentium and Zacate in Excel applications is probably on the order of seconds no matter how jacked up the spreadsheet is.

I'm thinking Zacate will eventually top out at 2Ghz or thereabouts. Llano and whatever the other CPU name was will probably split the mid level and high end respectively.

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]Perhaps Brazos doesn't scale well past 1.6GHz.[/citation]
It is a fairly recognized pattern that AMD never starts a CPU line out with the top model. AMD's last generation started out with 1.8Ghz Opterons if I recall and ended up in the mid 3Ghz range. Not sure why it would be a surprise to anyone to see a faster Zacate next 3-4 months.
 
Well, the E-350 was known about for a good period of time before it was releaded; I do wonder how long it'll take to get a faster model to market. Perhaps AMD don't want to break that 18W ceiling.

However, it certainly does overclock. I found a particularly nice thread about it here.
 
Why no no media comparisons and PLEASE don't be using any software we have to buy. How does this notebook/netbook fair when running multimedia application like VLC, streaming HD content form youtube, netflix, Vudu etc??? a number of use on the go use the laptop for media viewing and relaxing but this review feels slighted and not really giving AMD a true review of the APU/GPU and benefits for end users.
 


This review is probably the most realistic you'll ever see. Our benchmark isn't synthetic like other sites that use batterymark or mobilemark. Read our benchmark pages. This involves actually playing back a (2 hours) Divx video and (30 minutes) browsing youtube websites. The UVD3 overhead on the Brazos platform doesn't actually bring CPU usage down to 0%. That's why our real-world benchmark shows how this fares in real-world use. Other sites are often using extended batteries to bulk up their battery results. The notebooks in this review come from Best Buy. We physically pulled them off a retail shelf.
 


Seriously, I'm not bird dogging. Brazos is meant to give sufficient performance on a netbook. I stated that its not sufficient for bigger form factors. That is established. AMD tried to enter into bigger form factors. It's not working. When it comes to netbooks it is better, but, it's still not a great contender for price. 399 brazos and 249 atom isn't hyper competitive. When AMD is priced well on the desktop side, that should carry over.

CPU performance continues to matter. As my friend Anand stated, the idea is to give up some CPU for GPU. You are not suppose to give a huge chunk up. That's the attraction of Brazos. It does that. Unfortunately, at the system level, when system vendors continue to equip low density batteries and overprice their products they will get trashed.

People are taking the reviews of mini-ITX brazos performance and trying to apply that to this review. A notebook review is more than just price and performance. You buy for design, asthetics, and battery life. Take Sandy Bridge as an example. If a SB notebook had poor battery life, shouldn't I fault that model for the problem? I would never expect a Sandy to be put in a netbook. Nor would I think that a Brazos should be in a full DTR notebook.

There are technology reviews, and there are system reviews. This is a system review. I'm talking not specifically about Brazos alone. I'm talking about the dm1z, NB51B, and C655D and Brazos when it's inside a system that you're shopping for.
 
I think people need to visit AMDs Radeon Mobility site to check out what is to come as far as graphics on a chip. I think HP has a winner with the dm1z with that 11.6 screen size, and HDMI out. I also think down the road there will be apple knock off tablets with the E350 APU that wthem. I have my computer with the 5770 hooked to a 42" Plasma screen, and the videos I stream to it are awesome. To be able to do that in the future with a super small notebook ,and the 6900M will be great.
 
I think you guys missed what the real success of zacate was. Built on a higher nm process than atom, the CPU is smaller in size, more powerful, and consumes less battery. Plus add a very good gpu to go along with it, for a excellent first crack at fusion. I personally would have liked to see a lower power gpu option since the the one there is CPU bound anyways but I'm not complaining.

As far as the laptops are concerned, I think the dm1 is spot on. The other to seem more like what atom was when it first came out and are just shooting for the lowest cost laptops rather than balance. My lil bro got the original dm1 with the neo turion x2. It was an excellent computer with more than enough power to do what we wanted (team fortress 2!) The only main problems I saw with that one were the heat and excessive noise. From what I've read fusion fixes all of the problems on the old dm1. If that's true hp may have the perfect laptop in their hands.

Good job Amd.
 


I don't mind giving AMD props for the tech. It's the laptops I have beef with here.
 
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