Toshiba N304 vs Asus 1005PE

Originally Posted by mike01

Well I think I'm on to something with the screen brightness.

I really like it that you are doing tests (and reporting it) instead of just speculating. Way to go! How are the differences important for the way you work?

There is no way to match the brigthenss...the Tosh can be either a bit dimmer or a bit brighter. I chose to go with a bit brighter. As it is right now, they are both at 91% battery (playing Kingdom of Heaven), and the ASUS is reporting 5:34 left, while the Toshiba is reporting 6:14.

Have you tried to use a camera spot meter to measure the brightness? In the center of the screen or in the corners? What's the light level of the room where you are measuring screen brightness? LOL Those differences can go on and on. Are both screens matte or both glossy? Do you have different color backgrounds?

What I like is the Toshiba gives a brighter screen for the same battery life. That's good to know since I tend to work in bright locations. I've been looking at the Toshiba for my next netbook especially since my wife uses my netbook and the Toshiba gets high marks for design by her group of friends.

What's the CPU usage at those rates? I think CPU-Z can measure that.

Here's a recent review you might want to check. It lists the tests given.

Also, can one of the mods please fix the "304" typo in the subject? Please change it to NB305.

No can do. I made a mistake in mine once and even Chris could not change it. LOL

[mike01]

I don't know that it gives you more battery life at a higher brightness. Unless you mean a slightly, slightly higher brightness, which is really too slight to notice. So far, both are at 79%, so regardless of what they are reporting (the Tosh is reporting more time left), they seem to be consuming juice at the same rate.

No, I haven't used a lightmeter, but I have a very good eye and checked at several different background light levels. I'm more concerned with percieved brightness than technical brightness.

I don't know what video controlers these machines use, but their hardware specs are identical, except for the battery (the Tosh's battery has 500mAh more, so the Asus may very well be slightly more efficient at the same battery life...we'll see). The one interesting thing is that I had to change to Toshiba's power savings for video playback to otpimze video quality, or it stuttered slightly in some scenes. The ASUS did not need that change. However, both are running stutter free for this test, and it doesn't seem to hurt the Toshiba's battery life.

What you reported is that the screen is brighter on the Toshiba. I like that for my real world usage is in bright areas.

Since you have both computers, how do you use them for your real world tasks? Is one better than the other for the way you work or does it make a difference? What kind of tasks do you favor for the Toshiba and what for the Asus?

I use my Asus 901 as a carry computer for viewing ripped movies, reading pdf files for study, notes I need to consolidate and personal software. The 1000HE is for writing longer papers, small Excel tasks and Powerpoint building.

[mike01]

Yes, it is considerably brighter.

I don't actually use the Asus, it's my wife's netbook. I don't really see much difference between the two except screen and speakers. The Asus has much louder speakers and a much dimmer screen, though the contrast is better.

The keyboards are similar, but the Toshiba has dedicated up and down arrow keys and seperate page up page down keys. The Asus has all but the dedicated up and down arrow keys. The auxilliary keys on the Asus are bigger (shift, tab, comma, etc.) which makes them easier to use, but the Toshiba has more space between keys, making typing a bit cleaner.

They're very close, honestly, I can't say one is better than the other. Just pick the one you think looks and feels better.

Btw...both machines are now down to low 60 percent, with the Toshiba edging out the Asus by one percentage point.

In the same way that the best weight loss exercise is the one that you are actually doing, the best netbook recommendation is for the one you actually use. I like to see carry recommendations from those who carry, school netbook use recommendations from those in school and movie or game recommendations from those who actually game or watch movies. You're doing good. I have to take off for about 10 hours but will check back on your results. 8-)

[ThisIsNot]

Originally Posted by mike01

I don't know that it gives you more battery life at a higher brightness. Unless you mean a slightly, slightly higher brightness, which is really too slight to notice. So far, both are at 79%, so regardless of what they are reporting (the Tosh is reporting more time left), they seem to be consuming juice at the same rate.

I wouldn't worry too much about the battery meter in Windows. It is not very accurate at all. Even Windows 7 has issues with the battery meter. I will see mine stay at 20% for a lot longer than it stayed at other levels.

I think both netbooks run the generic Intel GMA 950. The Toshiba might have been using a lower power setting by default.

Out of curiosity, what type of videos are you having each play. More specifically: what video type, container, bitrate, resolution, audio format, audio bitrate, and how many audio channels. Lastly, what video player are you using?

I am not sure which website you were relying on for your review information but many sites use VLC for video playback. It consumes less resources than Windows Media Player so it won't eat up your battery, RAM, and processor cycles. I know that I can push 8 hours of SD video playback on an Eee PC 1005HA so long as wi-fi is turned off, bluetooth is turned off, and screen brightness is set to 50%. Most websites, at least the ones I have seen, seem to set screen brightness levels down to 50%. Those numbers that many netbook and notebook manufacturers report don't represent real world experiences. Asus is doing better with this but I don't think that turning the screen brightness all the way down, turning wi-fi off, turning bluetooth off, and letting the netbook sit there with an open Word document is representative of real world usage especially when most people will always leave wi-fi on (these are netbooks after all).

[mike01]

Originally Posted by ThisIsNot

I wouldn't worry too much about the battery meter in Windows. It is not very accurate at all. Even Windows 7 has issues with the battery meter. I will see mine stay at 20% for a lot longer than it stayed at other levels.

I think both netbooks run the generic Intel GMA 950. The Toshiba might have been using a lower power setting by default.

Out of curiosity, what type of videos are you having each play. More specifically: what video type, container, bitrate, resolution, audio format, audio bitrate, and how many audio channels. Lastly, what video player are you using?.

I am playing back a divx file using windows media player, Kingdom of Heaven, not sure of the bitrate or other settings. I'm not concerned with actual battery life in this test, but the difference in life between the two. Therefore the settings are irrelevant, as long as I'm doing the same thing on both machines, which I am.

The brightness settings you mentioned, where reviewers just set it down to 50%, is, I think, exactly the problem with the review. If the Toshiba's screen is 2x as bright as the Asus, then this is not fair. What I have done is set them both to almost the same percieved brightness (the Toshiba is still a bit brighter). The Asus is on full brightness, the Toshiba on level 6.

With the Toshiba's screen just a bit brighter, it is edging out the Asus on battery life by a tiny bit (right now, Tosh at 38%, Asus at 37%).

[mike01]

Ok, the Toshiba wins by 5 minutes, despite being brighter.

Both netbooks are band new.

Activity: divx playback from HD using Windows media player, average CPU about 40% (eyeball figure).

Toshiba, brightness setting 6
Asus, brightness at full
(Toshiba was still brighter by a bit)

Wifi: On for both.

Both used Balanced plan on default settings, except I had to up Toshiba's video playback to "optimize video quality" to avoid stuttering, which would lower battery life.

Results
-------

Time before auto-hibernation:

Toshiba NB305: 6 hours
Asus 1005PE: 5 hours 55 minutes

What this means: never trust reviewers, they apparently can't be bothered to notice that one netbook has a much brighter screen than the other one. Because of these people, Toshiba is going to be penalized for using a brighter screen, and this will affect their future business decisions, so we will probably see dimmer screens in future models.

[ThisIsNot]

Most reviewers tend to only review one product at a time while relying on their older publications for previous information.

You can try turning off wi-fi and setting both screen brightnesses down to 50% just to see if the Asus will last longer. Also, the use of VLC will mean that you won't be using 40% of the dinky Atom processor.

The results are curious. It sounds like the site you read turned the brightness down to 50% for both models. Since each netbook has different measurements for screen brightness, this means that they weren't equal. The Asus' screen brightness definitely is the biggest factor for battery life aside from wi-fi and bluetooth. 6 hours for either model with video playback still isn't all that bad though.

As you said, I guess battery life measurements from reviews can never fully be trusted unless the reviewer were to have multiple netbooks up and running all with the brightness matched.

[mike01]

CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP

My wife had one of those tiny new wireless mouse transmitters in the Asus and I didn't see it until just now...the thing barely sticks out the side of the case.

CRAP

Talk about wasted time. It seems my results can't be trusted either.

I'll run the tests again on Wednesday (day after tommorrow).

Using Toshiba's eco utility, I saw that the mouse receiver burns a little less than a watt of power. This isn't a lot, but it can be significant over long periods of time. I'm guessing that the Asus will now last a little longer, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes. If I could equalize the brightness between the two, that might go down.