It's an ultraportable, it's a netbook, it's an ultraportable, it's a netbook... Judging by its size, screen real estate, and features, Asus's 3.3-pound Eee PC 1215B is an ultraportable. However, it's priced at only $450 and sold as part of Asus's netbook line. Alas, the performance of its AMD Fusion E-350 CPU just muddies the waters further; while significantly above average for a netbook, it falls well below the norm for ultraportable laptops.

To squeeze the most performance out of its last 12-inch laptop, ASUS paired a desktop Atom processor with Nvidia Ion graphics. The result was an ultraportable that had good game for its size but not the snappiest overall performance. Now here comes the Eee PC 1215B ($439), which shares the same look as the older 1215N but swaps out those components for AMD's 1.6-GHz Fusion E-350 APU...

Compared to the rest of the technology world, progress in the Intel-based netbook market can at best be described as conservative. Since the original Atom processor made its way into netbooks (with the award-winning Eee PC 901 20G), it seems very little has really changed. Atoms have gone dual-core, but still run at the same - or even a slower – clock speed, there is still no digital video output, and in general Full HD video playback is still not on the menu.

The Asus Eee PC 1215N netbook offers a bright 12.1-inch LCD display with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. That moves the Asus from netbook to entry-level ultraportable laptop, ...

Eines der ersten Netbooks auf dem Markt war der Asus Eee PC 701, bei dem an Multimedia-Fähigkeiten noch gar nicht zu denken war. Anders verhält es sich dagegen bei der aktuellen Generation von Netbooks, die den Subnotebooks und Notebooks immer näher kommen. Das Asus Eee PC 1215N gibt es beispielsweise mit viel Leistung bei Amazon in den Farben schwarz und silber für 499 Euro zu kaufen, die rote Version des Netbooks schlägt mit 508,80 Euro zu Buche.

Looks-wise, the 1215N is a much more upmarket proposition than most plasticky netbooks. For starters, the lid and wrist rest have a gorgeous brushed-aluminium finish, and the keyboard and screen surround are dressed in glossy black.

One big shortcoming of Intel based Netbooks up until now is still the for some purposes insufficient graphics power. Little has changed in this respect with the current Intel GMA 3150, compared to the Intel GMA 950 graphics processor. Especially when it comes to playing back HD content smoothly, the DXVA capability is still missing from the GPU. Nvidia's Ion chipset from the first generation could in comparison bring significantly more performance from the beginning, and did not disappoint with its full-HD performance. Ion 2 is now the next development from this train of thought, to also provide Netbooks with good graphics performance. ...

Power-Netbook. Bereits die erste Ion Generation hat dafür gesorgt, dass auch Netbooks in einigen Anwendungsbereichen mit ansprechender Grafikleistung glänzen konnten. ION 2 legt leistungstechnisch nochmals nach und bekommt im Eee PC 1215N sogar einen Dual-Core Atom zur Seite gestellt. Was man erwarten kann, haben wir getestet.

Is Intel's Pinetrail platform really all its cracked up to be? We recently took an in-depth look at the 1.8GHz processor / platform, but it's a different thing to take a look at the same thing in a shipping product that's available today to consumers. We have been longing for faster Atom processors, and particularly in recent months, we felt as if even the newer Atom chips weren't fast enough compared to their predecessors. ...

Since the start of the Intel Atom era, we've longed for one thing: a dual-core version of that otherwise impressive power-saving CPU. Standard single-core Atom netbooks are fine for basic tasks, but even when just web surfing or typing they can be bogged down by bouts of seemingly random sluggishness. ...

With each generation, 12-inch Ion netbooks are edging closer to their Pinocchio-like aspirations of becoming real notebooks. The ASUS Eee PC 1215N comes the closest yet to that ideal of a sub-$500 machine that performs like systems that cost more--yet lasts even longer on a charge...

Bei der Ausstattung hebt sich der EeePC 1215N deutlich von Einsteiger-Netbooks ab. Das Gerät im bei Asus derzeit gebräuchlichen Seashell-Design mit vielen Rundungen verfügt über einen zwölf Zoll großen Bildschirm, Intels neuem Atom-Prozessor D510 mit 1,66 Gigahertz und eine 250 Gigabyte große Festplatte.