Asus has officially launched the Eee PC 1015PN netbook. You know, the one with a dual core 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 processor and NVIDIA ION graphics? It’s shipping. Now.
Amazon is selling the netbook for $425 plus free shipping, which is a pretty good price for this model.
I’ve got a review unit sitting on my desk, but I haven’t had much time to play with it yet. If you’re not going to wait for my review before pulling the trigger, here are a few caveats though:
1. The Eee PC 1015PN ships with Windows 7 Starter, which doesn’t support NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching. That means you have to manually switch from ION to GMA 3150 graphics if you want to save battery life when you’re not watching HD video or playing games.
2. There are two different versions of the next-gen NVIDIA ION chip, one with 16 cores and another with 8 graphics cores. The Eee PC 1015PN, and most other 10 inch netbooks that will ship with ION graphics the lower power version. That should be enough to watch 1080p HD video, but don’t expect the same kind of performance we’ve seen from the latest ION chips in nettops and larger notebooks.
2. There are two different versions of the next-gen NVIDIA ION chip, one with 16 cores and another with 8 graphics cores. The Eee PC 1015PN, and most other 10 inch netbooks that will ship with ION graphics the lower power version. That should be enough to watch 1080p HD video, but don’t expect the same kind of performance we’ve seen from the latest ION chips in nettops and larger notebooks.
That said, for about $50 to $100 more than a typical netbook, the Eee PC 1015PN has a dual core processor and HD video capabilities. I’ll be interested to see how it fares in the battery life department.
