Benchmarks

Time to see some benchmarks and I am really looking forward to this. From the time I pulled the U210 out of its box and saw that it ran the AMD Neo platform, I was looking forward to seeing how the machine performed compared to the Intel Atom-based netbooks I typically review. I will be using my iTunes encoding test, the Windows Media Encoder test and Battery Eater Pro to give the machine a workout.

Battery Eater Pro

As always, I give the caveat that your real world mileage will vary when it comes to battery life. I ran the U210 at 100% screen brightness with no power saving options turned on for the max performance battery life test and then reduced the screen to 50% brightness at the same power settings. Battery life considering the performance of the U210 is very impressive.

iTunes Encoding

Version and / or Patch Used: 7.1.1.5
Developer Homepage: http://www.apple.com
Product Homepage: http://www.apple.com/itunes

Now it is time for our familiar iTunes encoding test. I take the Stone Temple Pilots Core album in MP3 format and use iTunes to encode the tracks into AAC format. I time the process with a stopwatch and compare the numbers to other systems in the chart below. The U210 blitzed the netbook competition in this benchmark.

Movie Encoding

Version and / or Patch Used: 9
Developer Homepage: http://www.microsoft.com
Product Homepage: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

The last benchmark up for the U210 is the movie-encoding test. I take the Microsoft Magic of Flight Video in 1080p resolution and use WME to encode the video for downloading from a computer in DVD video quality and CD audio. Again, the U210 whipped up on its netbook peers with impressive performance.