Testbed and Methods

I checked the performance of the ASUS S200N and S300N under control of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with DirectX 9.0a installed. Before the tests, I disabled power-saving and network services, the audio subsystems, antivirus software, and screensavers.

Our tests:

1. Performance benchmarks: synthetic (SiSoftware Sandra 2004, PCMark 2004), office and multimedia (Business Winstone 2004, Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004), games (3DMark 2001 SE Pro, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 2003);
2. Battery life tests (Battery Eater Pro 2.23).

I used two power modes in my tests. First, I selected the Always On power mode for the maximum performance and the shortest battery run-down time. Then, I switched to the Max Battery mode for the maximum battery run-down time. I tested the computers at the maximum screen brightness settings and the maximum resolution of the LCD matrix.

Performance

The reviewed computers belong to the sub-notebook class (super-light and small-size systems mostly sharpened for a longest time of autonomous work), so it’s natural to test this characteristic first. I measured the battery run-down time with the help of Battery Eater Pro 2.23 in several test modes:

• 3DMark/classical (the test worked incorrectly in the normal classic mode, so in order to create an evenly maximum load on all the system components, I used the user’s mode and cycled 3DMark 2001SE Pro in the background);
• Reader’s test;
• DVD watch test (only for the ASUS S300N since the configuration of the S200N doesn’t include an optical drive).

The results are tabled below:

So, the ASUS S200N can last as long as 1 hour 13 minutes in the 3DMark/classic mode and up to 1 hour 29 minutes in the reader’s mode. The battery of the S300N allows working for 3 hours 23 minutes in the classic mode, 4 hours 34 minutes in the reader’s mode and 3 hours 12 minutes in the DVD watch mode.

I should note that the poor results of the ASUS S200N are quite expected since it uses an integrated battery of 1250mAh only. However, there’s an additional 2000mAh battery among the accessories, and I tested the notebook with it, too. I should also confess that the results of the ASUS S200N in the 3DMark/classic mode with an additional battery are an approximation since 3DMark 2001SE Pro would fall out into Windows on the fifth cycle and wouldn’t run this test correctly to the end. So I had to restart the benchmark and get the result this way.

The use of the additional battery in the ASUS S200N gives an impressive bonus to the time of autonomous work: 1 hour 44 minutes in the 3DMark/classic mode and 2 hours 30 minutes in the reader’s mode – a very perceptible advantage!

For those of you who think visually I drew the following diagrams: