Since recently, the 250-dollar Asus X102BA-HA41002F small 10.1-inch touchscreen laptop PC is available in the US. More precisely, it’s sold exclusively through Best Buy, but it has very similar specifications to the X102BA-BH41T which is on sale at some other retailers at the same price.
Both models are powered by the AMD A4-1200 “Temash” dual-core processor and come with a 320GB hard drive. The CPU is AMD’s solution for tablets and ultraportable laptops and has a very low power consumption of only 3.9 Watts. However, it’s one of the slowest processors on today’s Windows laptop & tablet market, so it’ll be suitable for only the most basic computing tasks and multimedia playback with 1080p support included.
The only differences between the X102BA-HA41002F and X102BA-BH41T is in the RAM and connectivity departments. The X102BA-HA41002F has 4GB RAM and Bluetooth built-in, while the X102BA-BH41T only has 2GB and lacks Bluetooth. Since you won’t be able to do heavy multitasking on the included A4 chip, you won’t see much performance gains by choosing the 4GB model over the 2GB one. But, the prices are the same so, the HA41002F is a clear winner.
Having these specifications in mind, one can easily assume that the previously released Asus X200CA-HCL1104G model with a bigger 11.6-inch display, also with touch support, a faster Intel Celeron 1007U processor, and the same price of $250 is obviously a better choice. However, there’s a caveat. The aforementioned 10.1-inchers come bundled with a free copy of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 software suite, which normally retails for about $110. This makes the X200CA the cheapest PC with Office included.
Other specs of the X102BA-HA41002F (and BH41T) are a 720p web camera, stereo speakers, a 3-cell 3000 mAh 33 Whrs battery, one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and VGA video outputs, an SD media card reader, and combo audio jack.
The laptops are done up in matte black plastics. They weigh only 2.4 pounds and measure 1.1″ in profile, so they’re among the lightest laptops and are easy to carry around.
Finally, you can take a look at a video review of the X102BA (2GB version). According to the review, the battery lasts up to 4.5 hours and the main complaint besides small RAM capacity is low speaker quality.