Engadget took some time to review the 1201N and overall they came away impressed.  The big key to the Asus Eee 1201N is the Nvidia ION chipset.  The idea behind the chipset is to provide the advantage of streaming 1080p video on a computer which normally wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Here is what they had to say:

Packing a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 processor typically found in nettops, NVIDIA Ion graphics, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and a 5,400rpm 250GB drive, the 1201N is hot to trot on specs. The dual-core processor provided noticeably better performance than the standard netbook’s single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU — everyday multitasking performance in Windows 7 Home Premium felt much snappier. The benchmarks back us up: the 1201N notched a Geekbench score of 1,106, higher than both the N280-powered HP Mini 5101’s 920 and the NVIDIA Ion / N270-backed Lenovo IdeaPad S12’s 826. For comparison’s sake, the Intel CULV HP dm3t we just reviewed scored a 1,602, so while the 1201N is powerful for a netbook, it doesn’t quite match up to a thin-and-light.

Speaking of Ion, the GeForce 9400-based chipset provided a pretty sweet multimedia experience on the 1201N. A series of trailers played back smoothly from an external Blu-ray drive with no pauses both on the 1201N’s screen and a 42-inch 1080p HDTV. With Adobe’s GPU-accelerated Flash Player 10.1, YouTube HD and Hulu HD were incredibly smooth on the 1201N’s screen and over HDMI, but local playback was a little rougher: a downloaded 1080p, H.264 QuickTime video of Miley Cyrus struggled a bit with a few pauses here and there, although it was still watchable.

They noted that the screen is extra glossy which may not be appealing to many, but it’s a small thing to overlook.  The biggest issue may be the price.  At $499, it’s more expensive than a lot of other computers, netbook, and full sized notebooks.  The justification is the video performance which is becoming more and more important as people flock online to watch television.  The other benefit is the size with it only being 3 lbs.

Are you waiting to get your hands on a 1201N?  If so, let me know in the comments!

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