The Asus Eee PC 1000he is a 10-inch screen mini laptop, or so called netbook, that sports an amazing potential for up to 9-hours of battery life.  While earlier version netbooks released in 2008 featured smaller 8-inch screens, weak battery life and poor build the Asus 1000he really ups the bar and makes the netbook category more functional and worth considering for a greater audience.

Above is the Eee PC 1000he and everything you get in the box with it

First let’s go over the specifications for the Asus Eee PC 1000he:

• Screen: 10-inch WSVGA (1024 x 600) LED Backlit
• Processor: Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz
• Storage: 160GB (5400RPM spinning Seagate 5400.5)
• Memory: 1GB RAM (DDR2 667MHz)
• OS: Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0, 1 monitor out, headphone jack, microphone jack, SD card reader (SDHC compliant for high capacity cards), Ethernet 10/100
• Wireless: 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0
• Dimensions: 10.47” x 7.3” x 1.12 – 1.50 (width x depth x thickness)
• Weight:
• Price: $399 retail, $374 after discounts
• Warranty: 1-year

Asus 1000he Construction Quality

One of the more important aspects of a laptop is how well it is built and how long it can be expected to last.  With the very first 7-inch Eee PC that Asus released the plastic body used was noticeably flimsy and unconvincing.  Those days are gone, the Asus 1000he has a very sturdy feel and the plastic casing is rigid, with no flex to be found on the body.  I feel very confident carrying the Eee PC in my backpack around campus and know it won’t get crushed under pressure from books.  To add to that, Asus provides a free sleeve with the 1000he that can be used to protect the laptop from scratches and offer a little extra padding in the event of a drop.

The Asus 1000he is certainly one of the best constructed netbooks on the market.

Asus 1000he Weight

When it comes to netbooks weight is an all important factor as the point is to keep things as light as possible.  Weighing the Asus 1000he on a scale shows it to be about 3.2lbs with the battery in, if you add in the weight of the power cord and brick then the total travel weight comes to about 3.7 pounds.  Certainly this is a better weight than the average 15” screen 6lb laptop you can buy.

Looks

While I always put utility ahead of looks, it’s certainly important a laptop doesn’t just look like a brick.  A netbook is made to be taken around and thereby seen by others, and you won’t be embarrassed to whip out the 1000he in a class, coffee shop or wherever your studies might take you.  The Asus 1000he comes in either blue or black, the device being reviewed is black, the finish is a glossy style with an “Eee” logo on the front right corner.  The glossy finish carries over to the inside keyboard area and is both attractive and high quality with its looks.  Asus provides a cloth for wiping fingerprints off the glossy surface, which is of course a downside to this styling.

I especially like the hinge, it is barrel style and used to make the device a little more muscular.  At the ends of the hinge are silver caps to add an accent to the design.

Asus 1000he Screen

My one beef with netbooks has always been you just can’t see enough on the screen to be very productive.  This is somewhat alleviated with the larger 10-inch screen size relative to an 8-inch screen, but the low resolution 1024 x 600 WSVGA still means you’ll be doing a lot of vertical scrolling to see a web page or document.  If you’re just using the 1000he as a companion PC for on the go or while sitting on the couch, this is an acceptable trade off.  I would not accept this problem on my main work machine though.  You can always plug the Asus 1000he into a monitor when at your desk to overcome this limitation of course, and if you’re willing to invest in a monitor to deal with this issue then you could well use the Asus 1000he as a main laptop.  Bottom line, if you’re paying $400 for a netbook you want it for certain uses and not to be doing hours of work, so it’s not really a con for the 1000he.

Screen size aside, the display on the Asus 1000he is very good.  It’s bright and the LED backlit panel provides very even lighting.  Viewing angles are also good, horizontal viewing provides a wide range and even vertical angles are good – straight on viewing is of course the most optimal.

Asus 1000he Battery Life

The battery life is definitely one of, if not the headline for the 1000he.  Asus put in a very generous 63Wh capacity battery.  Under normal usage during a day that involved having the screen at 50% brightness, typing an essay, power management on auto, surfing the web and downloading a few MP3s (Wi-Fi was always on, Bluetooth off) I got nearly 7.5 hours of battery life.  Asus promotes up to 9 hours of battery life, and if you really cut back on power usage by dimming the screen and turning off wireless you could probably get there.  Whatever the case, 7.5 hours of productive work is superb and the best out there for the netbook category.  You won’t have to worry where you’ll find the next power outlet as you spend your day on campus.

Asus 1000he Performance

Nobody should buy a netbook for gaming or to hope they’ll be beating benchmark scores of others on PC Overclocker forums.  Indeed, you should be happy to know this netbook has good enough performance to make web browsing snappy, using office applications seamless and any basic task essentially as easy as using a dual core desktop.  The problem arrives when you want to play HD video or do 3D gaming, you just shouldn’t do that on a netbook.  I tried viewing some full HD content and it ended up in frames getting dropped and processor usage in the 60 – 70% range.  The fans kicked in hard and it was obvious that full HD playback just wasn’t what the 1000he wanted to be doing.  Note however, that AVI videos with high-definition encoding that run on the hard drive will be just fine.

Most importantly, boot-up is quite snappy, Windows XP with 1GB of RAM will boot up in about 30 seconds, assuming you don’t have too many programs installed that startup after boot.  The storage is hard drive based, a 160GB 5400RPM spinning Seagate.  A flash drive would be faster but would also mean less storage capacity – Asus made the right move.  If you wanted to improve performance by adding RAM, you can do this by removing the keyboard of the 1000he, however it will void the warranty and is not recommended unless you feel qualified.

The Atom processor itself is power efficient and gives you enough performance for basic PC tasks, for most productivity use related to  what I call “information consumption and creation” (word, excel, powerpoint etc, web browsing) you’ll be just fine with this 1.66GHz Atom processor.  Below is the score result the Eee PC 1000he received on the benchmark program PC Wizard, compared to the Acer Aspire One 8-inch netbook it is faster, but as you can see a full sized HP dv6t laptop with a Core 2 Duo laptop is far more powerful:

Asus 1000he Keyboard and Touchpad

Asus changed the keyboard quite a bit from the previous 1000ha Eee PC.  The keyboard style is what’s called “chiclet”, meaning keys protrude upward out of the casing and are somewhat rounded for styling.  The keyboard is very usable for a netbook.  You do have to type a bit slower and be a bit more careful to prevent striking the wrong key, the key travel is shallow but feedback is good.  Overall I found myself able typing without much problem on this keyboard, the biggest challenge was the small right Shift key that I seemed to keep missing, but other than that adjusting to this keyboard was quick.

The touchpad is responsive and comfortable to use for moving the mouse cursor around.  The touchpad offers some gestures such as two finger swipe for scrolling and pinching in and out for a screen area zoom-in and zoom-out.  I found the pinching move pretty hard to do, it’s nowhere near as responsive as what you get with the Apple MacBook.  The mouse buttons were not so pleasing to use, though their location below the touchpad is good, they are very stiff to push and do not offer good feedback at all.  I recommend taking a travel style notebook mouse for use on the go for a more pleasant clicking experience.

Asus 1000he Speakers

The two speakers on the previous edition Eee PC 1000he are located on the bottom front area.  Max volume is more than sufficient if you’re in a quiet room and if you crank it up there’s not too much crackling or break up of sound.  As you would expect, bass is non-existent from the tiny speakers.  As always, headphones are recommended for the most optimal listening experience – and to prevent annoying others nearby.

Ports and Other Features

Ports and what you can add on to a laptop are of course very important.  The 1000he offers three USB ports, Ethernet port, headphone & microphone ports, VGA out and an SD card 4-in-1 media card reader.  The media card reader does handle SDHC cards for higher capacity storage type cards, so a great way to boost storage would be to get a 16GB – 32GB SD card.  The main thing missing that would be nice to have is an ExpressCard slot, many people use this slot to plug in a WWAN card, netbooks such as the Lenovo S10 and HP Mini 2140 offer such a port.

Left side:

Back side:

Right side:

The built-in 1.3MP web camera is nice to have for those that want to use video chat.  Skype is installed for such purposes.

Wireless comes in the form of an 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi radio with worked flawlessly for me.  Also included is a built-in Bluetooth 2.0 radio, I used this to pair with my Blackberry and used the data plan on that device to connect to the web and then surf the web using the Eee PC 1000he – it worked amazingly well with snappy browsing.

Conclusion

The Asus Eee PC 1000he is certainly one of the top contenders in the netbook category.  It’s excellent battery life of over 7 hours, nice design, usable keyboard and sizeable enough screen all make it a winner.  The drawbacks might be the fact there is no ExpressCard slot and then of course the obvious limitations of every netbook – lack of power for more demanding tasks and a low resolution screen.  For the price I paid, $374 at Amazon.com, you really can’t go too wrong.  If you’re looking for a netbook to use for taking to class and using around campus as a companion PC for those times you are away from your home desktop PC or don’t want to lug around a larger sized notebook, the Asus 1000he could be right for you.

Pros

• Excellent battery life of 7.5 hours under normal usage
• Nice screen
• Attractive looks with a glossy design finish
• Very usable keyboard for a netbooks

Cons

• Poor mouse buttons that are hard to press
• No ExpressCard slot for expansion
• Slightly thick for a netbook