Asus Eee PC 701

The Asus Eee PC 701 is one of the last in the smaller Eee lineup, but much more powerful with specs similar to the 10-inch netbooks. For the price it’s the best netbook of its size, often much less expensive than larger models.

The 701 has the standard netbook specs of mid 2008: 1.6 GHz Intel processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, solid state hard drive (12 GB), and so on. The 701 shares a few traits with the 4G: The same amount of USB ports (3), a 3-in-1 memory card slot, and a touchpad. That’s where the similarities end.

The 701 has about 5 hours of work time on the battery, although we found with normal use and middle-of-the road power settings the number was closer to 4 hours. The 5-hour battery life claim must stem from a test in which processor speed and resolution were reduced to the bare minimum, wi-fi off, and no more than three touchpad clicks per minute.

We were happy to find that the 701 includes a Gigabit LAN port, a Wireless N modem, and Bluetooth. While we didn’t test these on actual N networks, we did find our download speeds were faster on the LAN connection.

The 12 GB solid state hard drive won’t store your YouTube clip library, but it’ll store your documents and even a few thousand pictures if need be. It’s solid state, so it definitely helps the computer remain quiet, although the heat emanating from the hard drive enclosure was a little too much to bear after an hour’s use. The webcam also received an upgrade from 0.3 megapixels to 1.3.

All told the Eee PC 701 isn’t the most awesome netbook available, but we enjoyed it, and we’re sure you will too.