Viewsonic VNB102 Review

Chris — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:06:10 +0000

Pros:

Only 1.1 inch thick, Great touchpad and buttons, Minimal bloatware

Cons:

Keyboard has a lot of bounce which makes it feel cheap, weak netbook specs based on current competition, small keyboard (see full review)

Bottom Line:

This is Viewsonic's very first foray into the netbook arena and although I believe there are some good things to be said about the netbook (such as it's thin chassis and very responsive touchpad) the problem is that most netbooks have moved onto more mature specs (i.e. 250 GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM instead of 160 GB hard drive and 1 GB RAM). If I had reviewed this netbook six months ago this would be a different story, but because this netbook was released less than a month before Intel releases a new faster processor I'd ask you to hold off on making this purchase decision for now. I expect as manufacturers release their better netbooks the current generation will drop in price. Speaking of price, that's the only other thing that bugs me about this netbook. It's currently priced at $366.99, whereas a more powerful ASUS Eee PC 1005HA runs $354.99 and provides a larger hard drive and faster Atom processor. My advice is to wait to see prices in a month before making your decision on this netbook.

Quick Product Specs:

Intel Atom N270 1.60 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, 6 Cell Battery, Windows 7 Starter
See full specs

Full Review:

Design:

The netbook has a very thin chassis at 1.1 inches but it doesn't escape the common bulge from the 6 cell battery.

The battery bulge isn't a big deal as all netbooks have it, but it's nice to see they kept an otherwise thin chassis in mind when designing this netbook. Unfortunately like most netbooks (besides some of the Lenovo's I've reviewed) this case does get smudged by fingerprints though.

Usability

The keyboard claims to be 92% full size; however, after I measured it against my 10 inch 92% full size keyboard Asus Eee PC 1008HA I made an interesting discovery: it's actually smaller than the one found on the 1008HA:

(click image to enlarge)

The keyboard on the Asus netbook is nearly a full inch longer than the one found on the Viewsonic and the individual keys are 3/16 th's of an inch smaller too so it does make typing on this netbook a little more cramped. They keyboard itself also has quite a bit of spring as well when you push down on it which makes it feel a little more cheap.

The bright spot is the very responsive touchpad and independent buttons. They feel quite a bit better than the keyboard while I used it.

Battery Life

The Viewsonic VNB102 netbook features a removable 6 cell battery and I did a test using Battery Eater Pro v 2.7 with 1024 x 600 32 bit resolution and got five and a half hours of battery life out of it. Battery Eater taxes the machine at 100% so this test is done more to just establish the bottom end of the scale you should see. I would not be surprised if you got 7 hours of battery life or more based on the settings you chose (i.e. wifi off / on, screen brightness).

Overall Performance:

This netbook features the Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz processor along with the rest of the familiar early 2009 netbook specs (160 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM etc.) so don't expect to play Crysis or some other high end PC games on this netbook as there is also no Nvidia ION inside.

Overall, as I mentioned in the beginning of this review I believe this netbook came out several months too late based on the specs it's carrying. If it had 2 GB of RAM and 250 GB hard drive for the same price this would be a different review but because it did just release in December 2009 I would suggest you wait until the new Intel processor is released in January and prices of older generation netbooks shift downward. If you do want the best netbook for games then look for something like the HP Mini 311 or Lenovo S12 ION. You can buy the Viewsonic VNB102 for $366.99. While I would have liked to have seen something better from Viewsonic this is their very first netbook and I expect things to improve with future netbooks they release.

Check out some other reviews at test freaks for this netbook

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Netbook Reviews» Viewsonic Netbooks

Viewsonic VNB102 Review