ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PRPU17BK 10.1Inch Black Netbook

Comments

1. Buddog says:

   November 7, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Great netbook!
   Rating:4 out of 5 stars
   The first one I purchased had to be returned because my friend determined that there was a problem with the Broadcom HD chip, but once I received my replacement (very easy to do through Amazon) and set it up, it worked like a charm! It’s so light and portable and the HD videos play great! I let several of my friends try it out and they all loved it to. In fact, some of them may be considering getting one too. Although there are 3 USB ports, I found that you can only connect 1 portable hard drive at a time. There may be a work around to that, but haven’t figured it out yet. All in all, it’s a great product and I’m glad I decided to get it!
2. maurhern says:

   November 30, 2010 at 12:00 am

   They robbed me!
   Rating:1 out of 5 stars
   Amazon and/or Assus just robbed me! The netbook did not come with the broadcom HD card or ship! How can Amazon permit this kind of merchandise to be sold? Who is responsible? Amazon or Assus or both? I don’t have the way to return it because it was finally sent out of the country!
3. S says:

   December 28, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Finally received a unit with a Broadcom HD Accelerator!!
   Rating:5 out of 5 stars
   My first attempt ended with me having to ship the unit back to Amazon because the unit did not have the Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator. I too called ASUS to see if they could help but they were of no help what-so-ever. Bravo, Amazon for excellent customer service!! Unfortunately, I had to wait almost a month before Amazon had the unit back in stock and I just received my new unit a few days ago. I must say, I LOVE IT! I did uninstall some of the bloatware (anything that said Microsoft Office), enabled ReadyBoost with a 4G SD card, updated the Adobe Flash to 10.1 and replaced IE with Firefox (much faster than IE!). I am happy to report that so far I can watch videos and TV episodes without any stuttering. Haven’t tried movies yet. I did purchase the Kingston 2Gb 800Mhz DDR2 CL5 Memory and it should be here next week. But even w/out it, my little netbook is pretty fast so hopefully when I upgrade the memory, this little baby will fly!!
4. W. Murphy says:

   January 21, 2011 at 12:00 am

   Customer Support Excruciatingly Awful – Not Worth a Purchase
   Rating:1 out of 5 stars
   I live in Japan and wanted a netbook for my regular flights to and from the U.S. The 1005PR seemed ideal, so I purchased one and had it sent to a relative in the U.S. (Most electronic goods can’t be shipped out of the U.S.) Naturally, Murphy’s Law kicked in and I received one that did not have the Broadcom chipset. The ensuing struggle with ASUS’s phone support to get an RMA was so monumentally horrible that it poisoned me against the ASUS brand permanently. (I had to postpone a trip to the States, so, sadly, I fell out of Amazon’s 30-day warranty window.) Here’s the message I left ASUS on my customer satisfaction survey:

   Dealing with ASUS phone support was so unpleasant that, while I think ASUS products are generally of very high quality and have built two pcs with ASUS motherboards and other components, I will never purchase another ASUS product. I bought an ASUS Eee PC 1005PR-PU17-BK that did not have a functioning Broadcom HD chipset. This problem was widespread and well documented by other purchasers on the Amazon and Newegg websites. Amazon even pulled the netbook off its site for a time because of the problem. Regardless, ASUS’s phone support reps seemed to have zero knowledge of this, and they did everything they could, including twisting truth into a pretzel, to avoid giving me an RMA. Good going, ASUS. Your phone support is cutting off your customer loyalty at the knees.
5. TrinityM says:

   January 24, 2011 at 12:00 am

   Excellent Netbook – With Broadcom!
   Rating:4 out of 5 stars
   The Asus 1005PR is an excellent netbook with the supurb features and outstanding battery life. If, of course, you receive a unit with the Broadcom Chrystal HD card and other components installed. I purchased this netbook on pre-order and unfortunately received on of the units with out the Broadcom Chrystal HD,as well as no bluetooth. Bad Asus. Poor Quality Control. When I contacted Asus regarding the issue their front line customer service was impossible to deal with. Even though this is a heavily documented and known issue, the representative implied that they were not even aware of the problem, and after several impossibly long waits while the issue was “researched”, I decided to aport that call and contact Amazom directly. Good decision. As always, the Amazom customer service prepresentative was extemely professional and eager to help. Unlike Asus, they immediately were aware of the Broadcom issue and offered to exchange or refund the product right away. Since Amazon no longer had any units in stock I opted for a refund and to wait a bit longer for Asus to address this issue before reordering. Despite the time loss in dealing with the defective model, I would still highly recommed this netbook. I had the pleasure of testing one that shipped with the Broadcom card and I was totally impressed with its performance. The monitor was crystal sharp, with excellent color. The unit I tested had a 2GB Corsair high speed gaming chip installed to bump up the RAM, and I tell you, this little netbok rocked! Was able to run multiple heafty applications simultaneously (like Dreamweaver and Photoshop), play HD videos and other media on YouTube without a hitch. The Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) allows 1005PR to really manage performace unlike any other netbook on the market, and I have tested quite a few. 11 hours of battery is indeed possible when using the netbook under low CPU demand, such as runing a single application for writing, but most users running multiple appications, bluetooth and/or using wirless Inernet will find the batery life to be more in the rage of 8 hours. Even still, this is at the very high end of what’s currently available on the market. The recharge is a snap and in about 2 hours of charging you will get another 9-11 hours of battery time. The unit does ship with some bloat-ware but most computers these days do, and so I would not consider that a flaw. In addition, as with any other computer it works best when it is fully optimized– and of course with the extra RAM– this again would be the same for any other netbook purchase. So despite the false start with the missing Broadcom and my complete dissatifaction with ASUS costumer service, I would still highly recommend this netbook when the Broadcom issue is resolved. I also can’t say enough good things about Amazon regarding their handling of the situation and I am know waiting patienly for the second release of this puppy and will buy it again from Amazon whe it is back in stock.
6. Cando_kid says:

   February 9, 2011 at 12:00 am

   Lovin’ my little netbook!
   Rating:4 out of 5 stars
   After reading the reviews from other buyers on this site, I wanted to buy one at a store to make sure everything’s working before bringing one home.

   I’m glad I was prepared by others re: the type of product I was getting.

   The playback of youtube files at 720p and 1080p produced crisp, sharp slideshow quality. So the processor cannot handle smooth playback. The cpu usage was at a whopping 100% when trying to play the 1080p vid.

   Then again, the screen is so small that 480p is amazing already.

   Like some others, I don’t like the highly reflective screen, but I understand why a matte screen like the 1005PE wasn’t used. The pixels are so small that a matte finish would actually distort the light from the tiny pixels.

   On the advice of others I immediately upgraded to a 2gb RAM, so I can’t say if it’s made a difference or not.

   Overall, this lil’ guy fits the bill for me for internet browsing, skype, and writing papers.
7. Michael Nolan says:

   March 9, 2011 at 12:00 am

   Another one with no decoder
   Rating:2 out of 5 stars
   I seem to have gotten another one with no (or nonfunctional) decoder (doesn’t appear in device manager, driver instll say “no card”). Rats. Lots of web sites say “they’re working on it”, but no real info anywhere.

   Other than that, it’s as advertised…
8. String says:

   March 26, 2011 at 12:00 am

   +1 – NO BROADCOM HD DECODER CHIP
   Rating:1 out of 5 stars
   I read all the reviews here at Amazon and Newegg. I decided to take a chance on getting one in spite of the 1 star reviews (due to the missing Broadcom Chip) in the hopes that I would get one that has the Broadcom Chip – I didn’t.

   I’m really disappointed but not as much as my niece when she finds out tomorrow morning that I have to return the netbook that I got her for her birthday. Thanks to Amazon’s fast shipping, it was delivered just in time before her birthday on Wednesday, but no thanks to ASUS now it has to be returned.

   This would’ve been our first PC. We’re an Apple Mac family. I refused to buy the Apple iPad because it’s not really a computer. Part of my job is that I research and recommend computer equipment. I just ordered 2 ASUS Eee PC 1201N-PU17-SL for work. I hope I don’t get disappointed (crossing my fingers) it would be embarrassing.
9. Sam says:

   April 16, 2011 at 12:00 am

   Great machine, perfect for traveling
   Rating:5 out of 5 stars
   So I was one of the early adopters who bought the 1005PR from Amazon only to find that it was missing the Broadcom HD chip. Asus customer service took care of me and got me a new machine. This one works beautifully! I upgraded to 2GB of RAM and removed all the crap that Asus pre-installs.

   First of all, the 1366×768 resolution screen makes a HUGE difference for this netbook over others. The higher resolution makes this computer eminently more usable. It is no longer absolutely necessary to run everything in full screen mode. It feels much closer to a “normal” size computer than the 1024 x 768 screens do.

   I will be taking this computer with me while I am studying and traveling in India for a year. It seems perfect for traveling. It’s light and portable, great screen for watching movies, long battery life for the plane and train rides, large hard drive (so no need to pare down my music or movie collection for the trip), decent speakers for playing music without headphones, and then there’s the higher resolution screen.

   After the initial hitches with the Crystal HD card, I’ve got this running well, and I’m super happy with it so far.
10. Scott A. Loomer says:

    April 28, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Another missing Broadcom card…now found
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    I had hoped that the disappearance of the Asus 1005PR from the Amazon site for a couple of weeks indicated that they were addressing the problems reported with the Broadcom Crystal card so I ordered and received one yesterday. Alas, while the computer seems otherwise exactly what I want, the Device Manager (with the View Hidden Devices option on) didn’t list anything that looked like the Broadcom card under any device category. Add/Remove programs shows “Braodcom CrystalHD Decoder” so I thought that possibly it was present and just not being recognized by Windows. I downloaded the latest Broadcom HD Crystal driver and when I ran it it reports that there is no Broadcom card installed which I take to be definitive.

    So, back it goes to Amazon and I’ll wait a decent interval for them to get their act together on this otherwise seemingly great computer and try again.

    Three star rating since it is either 5 (with the Broadcom card) or 1 without (not that it wouldn’t be quite a good computer even without the card, but it is a feature that needs to be delivered)

    Update (18 June): I debated returning the computer to Amazon and playing Russian Roulette on whether the replacement would have the same issue, or contacting ASUS. I opted for the latter and received a replacement computer yesterday (3 days after contact). As requested, they verified that the Broadcom card was installed and functioning before shipping the otherwise brand new replacement (also a requirement since that is what I would have received from Amazon). Only downside was (probably) a slightly longer replacement time (though guarenteed to be the LAST replacement for this issue) and the cost of shipping to return the defective computer. Note that ASUS sent the replacement without having received the defective unit back or asking for a credit card against their trust I would do so. I consider this to be unusually high customer service. Hence the bump back to 5 stars. I consider this computer to be perfect for what I wanted at a reasonable cost. As others have noted, buy a 2GB memory module. This ~10% increase in your total cost will be more like a doubling in performance. Only wish they hadn’t gone with the glossy black finish which I expect to obsessively wipe clean!
11. Full of Fail says:

    May 18, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Do not buy for HD
    Rating:2 out of 5 stars
    I’ve tried every trick I can think of to get HD playback to work on this thing, and no matter what I try it is garbage. And that’s with a 2GB RAM upgrade.

    Even if you CAN get the broadcom CrystalHD chip to kick in (it only “works” with about 4 different players, not including Amazon’s player or Quicktime) it will be very jumpy, even when plugged into full outlet power and all the power settings set to max.

    Additionally, wireless card seems to be pretty crappy. Less than 50 ft. from my access point I get 1 bar of signal and terrible performance.

    Good: Battery life, form factor
    
    Bad: HD playback is useless, wi-fi barely usable.

    Would I buy again? No. I would have bought a cheaper model without the bells and whistles that don’t work.
12. Eric A. Soto says:

    June 17, 2011 at 12:00 am

    My wife loves it!
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    I got this little guy for my wife for our anniversary. It looked better than I thought it would. Nice textured black on the top. The keyboard and screen area is glossy so expect fingerprints and glare. Pretty quick for a netbook. Streamed Hulu well enough to watch many episodes without a problem. They partitioned the hard drive in a strange manner tho, thats about the only bad thing I can say. Just annoying to me cuz I’m in the computer tech business but certainly doesnt hurt the netbook
13. Zhe S. Liu says:

    July 11, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Finally a usable netbook!
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    I had a Dell 1011 and a Dell Latitude 2100 before, and I really loved the portability factor of the netbook concept. The thing that bugged me the most is the small screen resolution. And FINALLY Asus comes out with a netbook with a HD screen! I considered this netbook along with Sony’s and HP’s offers that all came with a 1366×768 screen, and finally settled on the Asus because: Sony’s is wayyyyy overpriced, HP has a standard 3 cell battery, the 6 cell sticks out, and Asus’ reputation and quality.

    Pro:
    
    GREAT textured lid. Its very high end feeling, not glossy.
    
    HD screen. now I can finally do some work without having to scroll every 2 seconds.
    
    Long battery life. I never got 11 hours, but I get 6-7 hours on good brightness and everything enabled. And thats more than enough for me.

    Con:
    
    Chicklet keyboard. It has too much flex for me. I prefer their non-chicklet style keyboard better. Much more solid.
    
    Trackpad: I hate trackpads that are “built in” with the palm rest. And there is no textual differnces, only tiny bumps to differentiate it. Also the mouse click button is a single bar (I prefre 2 individual buttons).

    Note:
    
    I dont really use the broadcom chip as I dont really watch any HD videos, so I cant comment on that feature. However I did upgrade to 2GB of ram and swapped out the HD for a 40GB SSD. It was prolly the best thing you could do for this netbook. Just know that changing hard drive involves removing the keyboard and unhooking quite a few connectors, I’d say its not for the faint of heart even thought there werent soldering involved.

    Overall I love this netbook. It much more usable than traditinoal 1024×600 resolution netbooks and it still has solid battery life and design.
14. Paul M. says:

    July 16, 2011 at 12:00 am

    I like it but don’t love it – decent value for money but not spectacular
    Rating:3 out of 5 stars
    First let me say that the netbook looks great and is really light. Even with a padded sleeve, this takes up much less room in my bag and is really light.

    I read other reviews where fingerprint smudges were mentioned. This definitely happens, and because it’s so shiny the smudges are obvious, but they easily wipe off.

    Beyond the appearance, the keyboard is nice – actual raised keys that are satisfying to touch. Unfortunately, on a couple of occasions, the keys did not seem to catch up with me as I typed (I type quite quickly) and that meant that I had to go back and revise many words that were misspelled. I like the mouse touchpad and buttons (actually one button with two sides – nice), but it takes a little getting used to.
    
    The screen is bright and crisp and I was pleasantly surprised at the resolution quality.

    The netbook comes with 1GB of RAM and I upgraded almost immediately as this was simply not enough and I was not happy with how slow programs and websites loaded. For $60 I bought a 2GB memory card and found it pretty easy to swap in. Note: There is only one card slot, so to upgrade, you will need to get a 2GB card and not an additional 1GB card.
    
    I bought an external ASUS DVD read/write drive for $72 which works well but ends up being a little bulky to carry around once it is in it’s case. This is the opposite of what I was trying to do by adding a netbook to my laptop collection.
    
    I have not upgraded to full windows 7 yet but am likely to do that as the starter version of the operating system is very basic and limiting.

    By the time you buy the memory card, CD/DVD drive and upgrade to windows you could easily have a richer function laptop (or an ipad and a couple of hundred dollars to spend on content) so I’m not sure I would recommend this to everyone.

    The one significant problem that I have encountered is with the headset output. I was trying to use the netbookch a movie on a plane and could not hear anything. Even though I was using noise isolating headphones, the output from the netbook was really low and made it basically useless for media viewing in public (i.e. with a headset).

    Overallthis is not a bad netbook and is reasonable value for money but beware of the sound limitations and the extra costs for upgrades.
15. M. Yu says:

    July 30, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Media friendly netbook
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    This netbook has a great feature set and works well, despite a few niggling flaws.

    PROS: Bright, full resolution screen, great battery life, HD accelerator, bluetooth, smudge-free case, kinda decent speakers, nice touchpad, very light.

    CONS: Noisy keyboard, keyboard flex, takes some tweaking to get the Broadcom card to work well, bad speaker placement (under the front), stiff trackpad button.

    FINAL THOUGHTS
    
    Other users complain about bloatware and there really isn’t all that much. And like any new computer, it takes awhile to configure it. I also added an SD card for a little ReadyBoost speed bump and will add another gig of RAM, but when it’s in Super Performance mode, it does everything with minimal, if any, hesitation. I’m hoping the extra RAM will speed things up.

    I bought this mostly as a media player and it does that well. 480 Hulu can be twitchy at times but Netflix and Youtube play very well. It’s my first time using Windows 7 Starter and so far I haven’t found a real need to upgrade.

    The battery lasts for well over 8 hours, which is fantastic. They keyboard is noisy and flimsy but I can type fairly quickly with it. Frankly, with the video accelerator and the full screen resolution, it’s the netbook I wanted at a very reasonable price. I can live with its few shortcomings.
16. SeaDav says:

    August 10, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Great computer, probably the best netbook
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    With the latest broadcom drivers (3.3.0) and flash software:

    pros:

    - sleek and well built. Not the thinnest around but the battery is almost flush with the body (not promiscuously hanging in the back as most).
    
    - bright HD screen. You can work as you are used to on a bigger laptop, plenty of room. The fonts are not too small (also can be increased).
    
    - perfect decoding (silky smooth) of 1080p 720p 480p h264 videos files with included total media theater 3 player and MPC-HC, etc.
    
    - Youtube (windowed) 1080p = ~22 fps, 720p=~22fps
    
    - Youtube (fullscreen) 1080p = ~8 fps, 720p=~12fps. Amazingly, it is still watchable
    
    - youtube (fullscreen with total media theater 3) 1080p, 720p … silky smooth!. Works from clicking a play icon on the youtube video thumbnails in internet explorer only. 35-60% cpu max in power saving mode for 1080p
    
    - long battery life
    
    - noise cancelling microphones tech (with two microphones)
    
    - great keyboard
    
    - sdcard slot allows the card to be flush with the case

    cons:

    - webcam could be better in low light but ok in most conditions
    
    - no desktop vsync due to lack of aero in win7 starter => some tearing occur on the desktop. it does not affect playing videos with total media theater 3.
    
    - touchpad has to be tuned (disable zooming gesture)
    
    - lack of aero on windows 7 starter makes the desktop look laggy so better optimize for performance (remove windows decorations). Tried linux 3d desktop and it is silky smooth so it is a software issue with starter.

    Very happy with my purchase overall.
17. M. Arabaci says:

    August 27, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Broadcom Crystal HD decoder card is missing
    Rating:1 out of 5 stars
    This PC is advertised with its ability to play HD videos.
    
    Unfortunately, it is not sold with HD video decoder. This is embarrassing for asus and frustrating for us.
    
    Don’t buy it!!Don’t be deceived like us.
    
18. K. Chan says:

    September 12, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Nice Hi-res screen and keyboard. Touchpad a bit sticky
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    This is my first netbook. Ordered and shipped on May 12, just before Amazon put a halt on selling this machine. When received, checked to have th broadcom HD card in device manager. After upgrading to 2GB ram and updating the Adobe flash to 10.1 RC4, things work fine. I just use the stock Win 7 starter. Played around for 2 days.

    The good:
    
    The hi-res screen is very nice. Screen brightness can range from very dim for use in dark to very bright.
    
    I really like the chicklet keyboard. Very good feedback.
    
    The “eee super-hybrid engine” is useful and fun to play around with.
    
    On-screen-display for Wifi on/off, power mode, volume change is very responsive.

    The so-so:
    
    Viewing angle is not exceptional but usable, as mentioned in other reviews.

    The bad:
    
    The touch pad is a bit sticky. Maybe it’s my oily finger. But really frustrated me a bit. Would have given it 4.5 stars. I put scotch tape over it and it is better now.

    Would be nice to have:
    
    Dedicated button for vol up/down and mute.
    
    Separated Fn key for Wifi and Bluetooth. (Currently, Fn-F2 would cycle through all combinations of WiFi on/off and Bluetooth on/off.)
19. Choonik Lee says:

    September 30, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Excellent value!
    Rating:5 out of 5 stars
    I got mine yesterday (purchased from Amazon) and after some tweaking everything works fine for me.

    It came with THE CARD installed (not missing like some of the early reviewers) and it also came with the Broadcom driver installed. I didn’t bother to update the driver. Only thing I had to do was to uninstall Adobe Flash player and reinstall with the Flash 10.1 beta. For some reason I had to install two separate version. “Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX and Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin”

    Youtube works great in 720p and AVCHD (.MTS) files from my digital camera plays back smoothly! (For the sound I had to install AC3 codec, googled it and found free one called AC3Filter 1.63b) Beautiful screen with high resolution. I adjusted font size to 120% from the control panel. Everything looks gorgeous.

    I wanted a small, long-battery life netbook that can playback AVCHD files through SD card slot. I own Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD (Black), so I thought when I travel some of the aforementioned features will be handy. And now I got everything I wanted.

    The build quality is on par with other affordable netbooks, but I don’t care much since this will be my 2nd PC. I am not going to invest for extra RAM, since I can do what I wanted to do just fine. The trial version of office 2007 handles a 40MB powerpoint file without much trouble. And what a big difference the HD screen makes!

    Thank you Asus (don’t embarrass yourself), thank you Broadcom, and thank you Amazon!
20. Ken Hoang says:

    October 24, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Minor problems out of the box
    Rating:4 out of 5 stars
    Out of the box it had problems playing 720 HD youtube videos. I couldn’t find any solutions on Asus’s support forums, but after some research I discovered that it was due to the current version of Flash Player installed. For those of you who has the Crystal HD decoder but still gets choppy video performance, you have to download Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 release candidate 4 or newer. Other than that is very good; extremely long battery life, very clear screen, and spacious keyboard. Minus the fact that it didn’t work perfectly out of the box, i’m very happy with it afterward.
21. Thomas Suarez says:

    October 26, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Shoulda been better
    Rating:2 out of 5 stars
    I waited for this model because of the hi-res screen.

    Unit arrived with some dead pixels that my eyes seized upon and won’t stop seeing. I’d thought the days of putting up with dead pixels were long over. Amazon — terrifyingly good service — is sending me another unit, though I tried too late to stop them, as I have gotten nervous about this machine.

    Question:
    
    Does anyone else find that the screen, however fabulous the sharpness, doesn’t LOOK good? There is something about the image — a lack of contrast, no true blacks, a lack of depth, and even a sort-of purplishness (no matter how I adjust IT or ME), that makes me hate it. I keep looking back at my old trusty Asus 9″ screen, and my newer Acer 10″ screen (both 1024 x 600), and their image is markedly BETTER, lower resolution notwithstanding. As much as I lust after higher resolution, I would rather look at their images. Anyone else feel that way? Or do I have bad screen?

    Now, regarding the 1005PR I am also a bit unhappy about how LOW the screen sits, altho I can see that this is a compromise to make the closed unit as small as possible. (The Acer, for example, is hinged in a way that puts the screen up high, but adds a hair front-to-back in the closed unit.)

    Also, I find the keyboard to be okay, but just okay. The keys are spongy and the facade “gives” too much, making a slight-but-annoying rattling noise.

    Lastly, the compy has trouble recognizing my ethernet connection. Each time I pull up Internet Explorer, it says there is a network problem and I need to reload the page a few times before it behaves (then it’s fine). I’ve not had any such problem with other machines.

    If you add up all the features, this netbook is a super value for the money. But in its sum, it is disappointing to use.

    PS I do not have Broadcom either — see screenshot [...]