Asus F201E Review

The netbook phenomenon has come to an end;  it’s a term that’s now slowly disappearing from the market. However, this doesn’t stop the launch of low-power, portable notebooks. The launch of Windows 8 also means the dawn of new notebooks, PCs and tablets. Asus’ new F201E is one of these new notebooks to come bundled with a Windows 8 Pro license. 

Design and build quality

The Asus F201E has a 11.6-inch screen, which makes it look a bit like a netbook. And to some extent, it does resemble one. The entire body is made of plastic with the top having a slightly textured feel to it. When you hold the F201E in your hand, it does feel sturdy and stable unlike some of the cheaper netbooks we’ve come across. 

Not a bad looking notebook for sure

The keyboard is fairly large sized, so unlike netbooks, it’s actually quite usable. You no longer have to squeeze your hands to fit the size of the keyboard. The keys are coloured white and go well against the silver-grey shade of the rest of the insides of the body. The function keys at the top are somewhat smaller and difficult to access. Even the directional keys are small and very poorly spaced on the right. The keys are very light and require close to no effort to use, so typing is easy. 

The trackpad has no divisions made for the two mouse clicks, except for a small marker. The clicks are a little hard, but the trackpad in general is decent. It does a good job when it comes to making swipe gestures in Windows 8. 

Pretty slim and easy to carry around

The hinge of the F201E is also very sturdy, so the screen stays quite stable and you have to put some pressure into tilting the screen when you need to, which is a good thing. 

Features

The F201E isn’t a workstation-class notebook by any means. It runs a rather unimpressive Intel Celeron 847, a low-power dual-core processor that runs at 1.10GHz. The processor belongs to the Sandy Bridge line of processors from Intel. For storage, there’s a decent-sized 320GB Western Digital hard drive. The notebook features only 2GB of onboard memory and runs a 64-bit version of Windows 8 Pro on it. The 11.6-inch screen runs a standard resolution of 1366 x 768. 

USB 3.0 and other connectors on the left side

The right lower corner houses all the status indicators for the notebook, including Wi-Fi and Caps Lock status. There’s one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports on the sides. There’s also an HDMI port, something you don’t find in most mainstream notebooks. Even though the ASUS F201E is pretty thin, there’s still space for a D-Sub port and a collapsible Ethernet port. The power adapter that’s bundled with the notebook is smaller than the ones found on other notebooks, and it’s wall-mounted.