Asus Eee PC 1025 Series Cedar Trail netbook hands on (update)

By Peter Cartwright
1 Jun, 2011 6:52 pm

Update: We’ve added in our hands on video for the Eee PC 1025CE (bottom of post). Difference between the 1025CE and C? The CE is higher end with a metal finish rather than plastic on the C. The CE has a cover on the webcam with 4x zoom. It also has USB 3.0 and a sleep-and-charge USB 2.0 port. Obviously, you can expect the 1025CE to be priced higher. Again, these will be out in Q4.

Here’s a look at another of ASUS’ goodies shown over at Computex 2011. The Asus Eee PC 1025C and 1025CE. Their first Cedar Trail netbook! Freshly designed Eee PCs with a metallic-finish lid, matte screen bezel, chrome finish surrounding the ports, flush-looking trackpad with chrome single button, chiclet keyboard but sadly reverting back to glossy displays. A single access slot for RAM. Some nifty features include HDMI out (finally!) and three-week length standby time.

Specs wise between those models, we’re not exactly sure which gets what – a Cedar Trail Atom processor (N2600 or N2800), 10.1″ 1024 x 600 display (glossy here), up to 2GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 500GB HDD, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3-cell or 6-cell batteries and Windows 7 Starter. Ports include VGA, USB 2.0 / 3.0, HDMI, RJ45 Ethernet, headphone, mic jacks and card reader. The base 1025C model will be priced at $249, the higher end 1025CE model, $279. Watch out for them later in the year in Q4.

The 1025C model on display pumped out a 2.9 score on WEI with a 1.6GHz processor. Sounds like the N2600 processor (1.6GHz, 3.5W TDP) although the score is no higher than what we’ve seen with Atom N550 netbooks, which is odd.

Press shots from yesterday show bright colors of which there’ll be various shades including black and white.

ASUS Eee PC 1025C:

ASUS Eee PC 1025CE:

TAGS: Asus, cedar trail, cedar trail netbooks, Eee PC, eee pc 1025c

Springfield45

When will ASUS learn that limiting the resolution to 1024×600 is hurting sales? There is too much software out there that will not even install unless the display supports 768 that it is nearly useless. Oh well. Back to my Acer.
Fredromples

1024×600 has been really annoying me for a long long time. Its been stopping me from buying a netbook for 2 years at least
http://www.facebook.com/Fubukii Jeanick Bonjour

What is the graphics chipset score ?
Anonymous

I too won’t buy anything such low res. As such, I’m looking at the Acer Aspire One 522 and 722. I currently have an HP Mini 5101 (with HD screen), but will never purchase HP again. I was disappointed the 1005PR never came out. The samsung NF310 is “ok”. *sigh*. I just want higher resolution.
Anonymous

any words on the 12inches models?? 1225c?
Danll

When is it available in North America? I will buy one.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7ITNGYDTF247TOGEF6PMKGORFY TolE

I’m going to use my LAT2100 (945GSE/950GMA) for the next three years. It has 37.8 Gig Intel 320 G3 and 1366×768 true life display. Still very responsive. Maybe I’ll consider the N2800 if the screen is 11.6 if I win the Mega Plus lotto
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odizzido

I liked the video. 10 inch notebooks are kinda too big for me now though.
Anonymous

No graphics scores yet, they’ve yet to do any thorough benchmarking and the WEI score only tells us the score of the lowest scoring component, which is likely the CPU.

While the WEI of 2.9 may be equivalent to the what the N550 gets but the N2600 is basically the replacement for the single core N450/455 that typically gets a score of only 2.3 for WEI.

Even the AMD Fusion Ontario C-50/Z-01 has a WEI score of 2.8 for comparison, but we know it has a much better GPU than Intel’s GMA’s provide.

What we do know for now is that Cedar Trail is using the PowerVR SGX545, basically an improved version of the SGX535 used in the older GMA 500 (200MHz) and Oak Trail GMA 600 (400MHz).

The N2600 has the GMA 5600, which is clocked at 400MHz and should have at the very least twice the performance of the Pine Trail’s GMA 3150. While the N2800 has the GMA 5650, which is clocked at 640MHz.

The new GMA should excel at media handling and finally provide standard netbooks with full HD video support, along with HDMI and display port support. The Malata Cedar Trail system Nicole also looked at showed roughly just above 30% CPU usage while playing a full 1080p video for example.

Imaginations’s PowerVR has come a long way since Intel first used them for the GMA 500, now being one of the major graphic offerings for the mobile market device ranges. Used for example in all of Apple’s iPhone and iPads, and even the upcoming Sony NGP (PSP2) will be using a special quad core version of the SGX543 GPU with claims that it will rival PS3 level graphics.

So the main concern is proper driver support, which was the failing of the GMA 500, should be much better this time around and actual linux drivers are expected to come out before the end of the year for those wishing to use OS other than Windows.
Anonymous

Probably when sales actually start hurting. People have been buying netbooks with this resolution for over two years and not enough people are buying the higher res offerings to yet justify the switch.

Btw, you can just use virtual resolutions to get most of those resolution limited software to run. Also there is the issue of finding matte HD screens…

Main problem with higher res screens for now is they cost more and netbooks are already sold with smaller profit margins than the rest of the market. so they probably won’t make the switch until higher res screens become more mainstream and it won’t cost them too much to switch then.

In the meantime, you can consider replacing the screen yourself if you really want a HD screen and can’t wait for it to go mainstream. Btw, Pixel Qi will start offering 1280×800 soon for better outdoor use and power saving.
Springfield45

The problem with using the virtual resolution is the hit that performance takes. It is a hit that Atom, and particularly the graphics portion thereof, can hardly take. I know that pricing is a bit of a bear, but there are other companies that have managed to remain competative with the 768 resolution. Acer, for example has been able to compete in that space.
Of course, ASUS continued refusal to only offer that resolution on 12″+ screens is unfortunate. Personally, 10″ screens are larger than I prefer. I own an ASUS EeePC 900HA with a 9″ screen and a Fujitsu LifeBook U2010 (imported from Taiwan) that has 1280×800 packed into a small 5.6″ screen. I am starting to drool over the U2020, and wish it was available in the US. My ASUS has been upgraded to 2gb of ram and a hybrid HDD, and only really sees use now when I am running applications that need more memory than the Fujitsu has available.I guess that the US market just is not terribly good to small, mobility focused products that are not cell phones.
Anonymous

Ah, a fellow Eee PC user. Got two 901′s myself…

US market is just not that good for UMPC’s, most netbook makers stopped making sub 10″ systems altogether world wide. So aside from the few UMPC and MID products available there isn’t much choice unless you go to tablets.

Market has been so bad that most UMPC makers have gone out of business, UMID being one of the more recent companies to cave.

The performance hit for the virtual resolution is small though and you would have some of that performance hit anyway with a 720p screen. It’s just a tiny bit more with the virtual resolution.

Asus has tried HD resolution screens before but those models didn’t sell well. So they’ll likely wait till the market for them is more mainstream and system performance averages can better support the higher resolution. Since it’s easier to justify the higher res screen if the system is powerful enough to use it and not slow down.

Also generally for Windows, because of the lack of proper scaling support, not everyone thinks going 720p on less than a 11.6″ is optimal.

The other issue is aspect ratio, netbook screens are sized optimally for the 1024×600 resolution. So it won’t scale well to 1368×768 without either changing the screen size ratio or distorting the image So more than just putting in a higher res screen.

They’ll eventually do it, especially with the push from the mobile market for higher res screens, but don’t expect it till at least next year.

While for performance Cedar Trail is raising the bar of the Intel ATOM line a bit and should be able to now easily handle the load of higher resolutions.

Since now all chips will be dual core, so even the low end N2600 will have performance approximate to the N570. The GMA 5600 is clocked at 400MHz and is suppose to give twice the performance of the GMA 3150, which is clocked at 200MHz for mobile use.

While the higher end N2800 is also dual core but clocked at 1.86GHz, and will reportedly support up to 4GB of RAM. While the GMA 5650 will be clocked at 640MHz.

The new PowerVR SGX545 GPU isn’t as good as that offered by AMD Fusion line but it’s quite a step up from Intel’s normal offerings. So full HD resolution support, video hardware acceleration, HDMI, display port, eDP, blu ray support, and Intel WiDi wireless streaming for up to 600p is what’s supported now.

TDP is significantly down as well, with the N2600 starting at 3.5W and the N2800 pushing that to 6.5W. Compared to 5.5W for the N450 to 8.5W for the N550/N570.

So for the lower end N2600 you’ll likely see it pushed for device ranges near to what Oak Trail is getting into. Since it can also go fan-less and only uses 0.5W more than Oak Trail.
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Flatblackstrat

I really like these netbooks, and netbooks in general seem to have a better build quality overall than many bigger laptops because their small size equates to excellent rigidity in the body. The one thing I couldn’t rap my head around is how this little Oak trail computer is getting only .2 points below my core i5 sandy bridge g570 in WEI score. I thought the i5 would have much higher graphics capabilities compared to the new iteration of Atom. Of course this is my first new computer in over 2 years and I have only been using windows 7 for a few weeks now and don’t know much about it.
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http://twitter.com/brewnoh brewnoh

is this dual core?
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Anonymous

Since netbooknews doesn’t allow hot links in posts, here is the link:

ai7a [dot] vk [dot] tj

To summarize: The N2800 at a TDP of 6.5W has slight better CPU performance than the 8.5W N570; its GPU is 2 to 3 times faster than the N570.
http://laptoptabletreviews.com laptoptabletreviews

The Cedar Trail CPU is marginally faster than the Pine Trail. but Intel’s Cedar Trail chips should use less platform than most older netbook chips…. can I buy extra “platform” if the include isn’t enough?
http://www.facebook.com/thewanderingjew Jason Mitchell Erbesfield

Tell me the HDMI does audio and video. I’ve been told there are HDMI outs that only do video. I assume with this being new as it is, it’s got both but just want to check. This will make a nice Hanukkah present
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nonny

m already place an order for this one type, cant w8 to reach hum )))

Asus Eee PC 1025 Series Cedar Trail netbook hands on (update)

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