Asus Eee PC 1215N 12.1 inch Netbook (Intel Atom D525 1.8GHz + ION2, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, WLAN, BT 3.0, Webcam, Up to 7hrs battery life, Windows 7 Home Premium) - Black

No doubt about it; this 'netbook' is brilliant, it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it, and yet doesn't suffer from over-heating or lack of portability.
First off, it looks amazing, the pictures don't do it justice, the matte-style finish is far superior to that of its glossy predecessor, its also less of a finger-print magnet, although they do tend to appear if your holding it for extensive periods of time. The build-quality is fantastic, disregard what you hear about the flex in the keyboard, as it only becomes noticeable if you type with exessive force, the large touchpad is a pleasure to use, and the multi-touch gestures work perfectly.
The screen and bezel are both glossy, and so viewing angles are not brilliant, but unless you're going to be looking at the screen from an awkward angle, there will be no problem. Now, I expected this beauty to get quite warm at times,especially when the ION2 was kicking, but it remains cool to the touch no matter how long you use it, even when doing a bit of gaming, it remains cool enough to comfortably rest on your lap, and not burn through your trowsers.
Referring to this as a netbook in my opinion is rather off putting, as you tend to associate netbooks with unbearable slowdowns and riddled with restrictions, but the 1215n has neither of these annoyances; everything runs at blistering fast speeds, the dual-core atom really makes a difference, especially combined with the might of the ION2, but even the GMA holds up well and can run HD youtube videos lag-free. I rarely fire-up the ION2, as only 1080p movies and gaming requires its assitance to run well, its definitely not essential for internet browsing or word-processing.
Now; if your looking at the 1215n, then it can be expected that you intent to do a bit of gaming, and this i'm glad to say is definitely a possibility. Now, as you may already know, since the ION2 is relatively new, the drivers currently available for it hinder its potential, and so some games may not perform as well as they should, this however is no reason not to purchase this machine as this is only a temporary drawback, new drivers are bound to present themselves with time. With the current drivers and the standard 2GB of DDR3 ram, this machine is more than capable at taking on a vast-range of games, just to put its capabilities in perspective, L4D 2 runs flawlessly on this machine on medium-high settings, no lag whatsoever, FPS wise I get a relatively constant 30-40+ FPS, multiplayer also runs without any problems.
If you want to know anything else about this beauty, feel free to leave a comment.

CONCLUSION- If its a portable,stylish,exeptionally powerful monster of a 'netbook' your after, look no further than the Asus 1215n.

I purchased this netbook with two specific purposes in mind, Primarily to use while on holiday for listening to my music, emailing, web browsing etc and secondly to use with my flatscreen tv as a secondary pc.

It performs brilliantly in both roles. The bigger 12' screen and higher resolution really makes a difference when travelling and the size/weight increase is hardly noticable. The battery life, while not up in the 10+ hours of some smaller netbooks is perfectly adequate, I'm getting 5+ hours out of it on light duties. The massive hard disk was also a bonus, I can now take my entire music collecton (90Gb+) with me whereever I go.

When linked to a flatscreen via the DVI it gives a brilliant display, bright and crisp and the added power of the processor really works, I've played world of warcraft on this as well as watched HD movies and am very pleased with the results.

If I'd have to pick a fault with the machine it would just be that the keyboard is a bit 'flimsy', it tends to bow in when pressing the middle keys but it is perfectly usable and would not put me off recommending it.

The only other thing to watch out for is that the version supplied here (at least currently) is NOT the model with USB3.0 ports, I mistook the bluetooth 3 option for this (which it does have). This really isnt an issue unless you are specifically going to need them but would have been a 'nice to have'.

All in all 5stars for this machine, it really has raised the benchmarks for all netbooks to follow.

My objective in buying the asus 1215n was to have a useable netbook. Every other netbook I've looked at over the last year or so has frustrated the hell out of me within 2 minutes, even attempting to just browse the web. Ask yourself, if the person next to you on the train can open a browser and do a Google search on their smart phone in 1/10th the time it takes you to do the same thing on a netbook, what are you carrying an extra kilo of dead weight for? This unit I'm happy to say performs as it should, like a useable PC with no compromises; MS office, videos, games (not the latest of course) all spot on.

THERE ARE NO USB3 PORTS ON THIS PRODUCT. Although extensively reviewed as having this feature my unit only has USB 2 ports. You'll notice Amazon do not offer an image of the USB3 ports, for obvious reasons, that said it wasn't my reason for buying an asus 1215n. I'll give 1 star to Amazon for not being entirely honest here, they don't say that it has USB3 ports but they don't indicate it hasn't either; if this feature is Important to you, beware. My 5 stars for the product stand.

This is a very tidy looking netbook/laptop. There is an abundance of chavy stickers on the wrist rest that take a good bit of scrubbing with nail varnish remover to get rid of. That said, if you're the kind of person likely to stick a wing on the back of your car or "Turbo" or "GTI" badges all over the place you might want to keep them on, all power to you, I'd have preferred the choice though.

The size is just right for me. I've tried playing with 10 inch screen netbooks but honestly you might as well go for an iphone or tablet given the frustrating user experience in trying to get a readable page of anything displayed and then waiting for it to chug up and down as the feeble earlier atom processors and graphics try to show the rest of the page.

The keyboard is very well laid out and there is not a problem typing at speed on this product; it is a little bouncy but it's really not that bad. There's very little/no flex in the case and it gives an impression of being solid. The screen is glossy, colours are bright and contrast is impressive; direct sunshine might present a problem.

There appears to be no problem with performance with the atom d525 processor and it keeps up with the day to day tasks of running windows 7 whilst leaving all the real hard work, videos and games, to be handled brilliantly by the Ion 2 graphics processor. They make an ideal marriage but honestly I couldn't see myself shelling out for a lesser atom or a netbook with Intel graphics, half the price does not in any way equal half the value of the asus 1215n. You might just want to browse the web, and that's what a netbook is for, right? Well if it is don't waste your time go buy a tablet. Honestly windows wasn't written for the atom and until Microsoft produce a OS that's lighter on its feet you'd be wise to pick the best performance/economy compromise available and that's wrapped up in the asus 1215n, if browsing is your sole aim look to an Apple or Google Android based machine.

Summary: This is everything a netbook should be, it runs beautifully fast, does not take hours to wake up, plays HD content + games, is well built whilst the extra 2" of screen space really reduces the hair pulling and teeth nashing. If a netbook can't do everything a PC should why waste your money when you can do all the basics on a smartphone?

I'm so far very satisfied.