Review Asus F102BA-DF047H Netbook

The all over plastic casing only features a matte display bezel and keyboard bed. The rest of the base unit has a dotted texture; the underside is slightly structured and slip-proof. The only surface that is not black is the display's back, which features a matte, shiny blue color. Models of the X102BA series are also available in white, black, and red.

All surfaces are susceptible to fingerprints. The base unit can only be warped marginally even when higher force is used. Overall, the casing makes a stiff, though not necessarily high-quality impression. We did not notice any unpleasantly sharp edges on the casing while working with Asus' F102BA. The display's back has to be dented with quite high pressure to produce image distortions on the front.

We would have appreciated an opening angle of up to 180 degrees for the netbook, particularly in view of its touchscreen. Regrettably, approximately 135 degrees is the maximum. Consequently, even touching the screen only lightly lets the base lift in the front, which is extremely annoying. The hinges largely prevent distracting wobbling when in motion. The lid cannot be opened with one hand. The review netbook's weight of 1.1 kg is roughly on par with the Transformer Book while the Medion weighs 250 g more.

Standard-sized VGA, HDMI, 3 USB ports, audio, and Ethernet will hardly be found on a tablet. But they are on this kind of netbook. Asus tried to position the interfaces far back, which was likely the only possibility due to the base that tapers to the front. This has an advantage when using an external mouse.

Medion's E1317T sports the same ports, but they are located further front. The Transformer Book's array is very slimmed down in comparison, and most ports are only micro-sized.

The power socket's position on the review sample is unfavorable because it is between the HDMI and USB 3.0 port, and gets in the way there. The HDMI port supports Full HD, and the transfer speed of a hard drive connected via USB 3.0 was a bit lower than that measured in other devices.

Keyboard

Asus designed the layout of the unlit keyboard as closely as possible to the standard. The keys' distribution on the limited surface is appealing. The keys are level, slightly roughened, and feature a short drop, a clearly palpable pressure point, and a firm stroke. That should satisfy most prolific typists. However, the keyboard makes a cheap impression due to its glossy, and difficult to clean keyboard bed as well as the fact that the keyboard can be easily dented over its entire middle. This is even noticed evidently during normal typing.

Touchpad

The sleek ClickPad does not have mechanically dedicated mouse keys, and can only be pressed as a whole. It is too small due to the netbook's size. The tester would have preferred a roughened surface for feedback reasons. The keys' medium resistance is ideal subjectively, and the feedback is clearly perceived both mechanically and audibly. There are not many options for configuring gestures with up to three fingers simultaneously. Unfortunately, occasional lags impair the use. For example, particularly opening a program via double-clicking rarely worked.

Touchscreen

The touchscreen does not always respond to touches immediately either. This might be due to a delayed command execution on the APU's side. The accuracy is good, and it can be used confidently after a bit of familiarization. According to the manufacturer, the screen detects up to ten touch points at the same time.

The WSXGA resolution of 1366x768 pixels (16:9) that the Asus F102BA series has in common with both comparison devices is acceptable considering the screen's small size. It results in a pixel density of 155 ppi. A higher resolution would make elements on the desktop too small to use with a finger. It only gets tricky in the task bar (and, of course, in various programs not optimized for touch).

A screen based on TN technology alongside its usual drawbacks in terms of color reproduction, contrast, and viewing angle stability is installed. As typical in this price-range, and for touchscreens anyway, the surface is reflective though it is fairly moderate. The screen is definitely too dark with an average brightness of only 217 cd/m²; at least 250 cd/m² would have been welcomed. The Transformer Book almost achieves this rate, and the Medion device is virtually on par with the review sample. The illumination is satisfactory.

Although the screen is reflective, this quality is not very marked. Owing to this fact, it is possible to work perfectly with the netbook outdoors on a cloudy day when no light source shines directly on the screen. The weather conditions did not allow testing in direct sunlight, but experience has shown that even matte, and much brighter screens are no longer legible.

AMD's A4-1200 APU only clocks with 1 GHz, and does not feature a Turbo. It is a known fact that AMD processors now have, and have had for some time, a lower per MHz performance than Intel's CPUs. Thus, we have a combination of only two cores with a low per MHz performance fused with a very low clock. The result is as expected. The review sample's APU is at the lowest end of the scores achieved by all tested laptops and netbooks in both Cinebench R10 and R11.5 that we use to assess the pure CPU performance of one or both cores during load. Besides a few other devices with the same APU, essentially only AMD's C-70, C-60, C-50, and an A4-1250 APU gather at the bottom end of performance. Thus, the A4-1200 is (more or less) suitable for small devices like netbooks and tablets, where power is allegedly not important, but primarily the lowest possible consumption.

The results of our Medion, powered by the same APU, are on par. In comparison, the Transformer Book has a lead of 11% to 204% depending on the benchmark, which is due to its stronger Intel Atom Z3740 CPU that, by the way, features four cores with a clock ranging from 1.33 to 1.86 GHz - and that with a TDP of just 4 watts. Our review sample did not get slower in battery mode.

Generally, the platform cannot render older, and less demanding games either. According to our experience, only age-old titles from around the new millennium, such as System Shock II (59 fps @ 1366x768, Toshiba Satellite W30D-A-100, same APU), Diablo, or Fallout should run lag-free. Of course Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. are no problem.

System Noise

The other side of the low performance is whisper-quiet operation. There is no idle mode in the actual sense because even the most basic tasks already fully load the APU. The fan can just be discerned from the background noises during longer full load at a normal seating distance to the device. The HDD is occasionally audible with quiet click noises.

Four and a half hours in the Wi-Fi test sounds good at first - until the user realizes that the APU only has a TDP of 4 watts. The low performance is thus not justified by an exceptionally good battery runtime. The netbook is not so lightweight that a reduced weight could be made responsible for that either.

The differences to the Medion can again be neglected; however, our Transformer Book clearly takes the lead in the comparison with the three devices. Compared with the Asus, its advantage is 42% during load and a high 136% in the Wi-Fi runtime test where it lasted for almost eleven hours.