ASUS Eee PC T91MT 8.9-Inch Black Tablet Netbook – 5 Hours of Battery Life
February 3, 2010 | Posted by 
- Intel Atom Z520 Processor 1.33GHz
- 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 1 Slot, 2 GB Max
- 32 GB Solid State Drive + 500 GB Free Eee Storage
- 8.9-Inch Touch LED LCD Display; Bluetooth; 5 Hour Battery Life
- Multi-Touch Functionality; Windows 7 Home Premium (32 bit) Operating System
Product Description
ASUS introduces the newest member of the Eee PC T91 family, the T91MT with Multi-touch. Just like its predecessor, the T91MT delivers ultimate portability and simplicity with an easy-to-use touchscreen that enables user to effortlessly navigate applications and the Web at a press of a finger. As big as a paperback novel, the lightweight Eee PC T91MT is the world’s smallest and slimmest touch PC. Plus, it boasts long-lasting battery life with the energy-efficient I… More >>
ASUS Eee PC T91MT 8.9-Inch Black Tablet Netbook – 5 Hours of Battery Life
Categories: Asus | 
Tags: 8.9Inch, Accessories, Battery, Black, Hours, Life, Netbook, T91MT, Tablet | 
5 Comments »
I’ve had two different ASUS Netbook models, the EEE PC 1000 and 1000HE. The first one I traded in because of the placement of the right shift key directly to the right of the up-arrow on its keyboard, which resembles this model. That drove me crazy and I could not learn to distinguish between the up key and the right shift key, and I needed to have a portable, light, **typing** device.
I sold that one and with the 1000HE improved the keyboard layout, but I still needed a BIG right-shift key, and I really needed the netbook to do more.
This model, I appreciate the touch screen, which I would use. But do try it out first in a store somewhere, especially at this 8.9″ size (the models I had were 10″ screens).
At this size, as a buyer, you should be needing a light portable device that you do light typing and web browsing on and can stow it around. It’s more like an accessory, in that regard. Or a hobbyist device.
At this price point, you could almost buy a new, fuller-featured laptop, but hey, I don’t like how heavy they are!
ASUS was the fastest netbook I found. Worth consideration. Especially with Windows 7 bundled. Just try beforehand, is my biggest recommendation.
Rating: 4 / 5
Nice concept, bought and used mainly as a pdf reader due to the inabilities of the e-book readers for handling pdfs, and it does that very well. Works very well well with Kindle for PC as well; really like the feature that you could rotate the display. Having the keyboard is nice once you get used to type on it, but it also serves as a very handy “stand” while you read so you don’t have to hold it but rather let it sit on your lap.
Could definitely use a more powerful processor, but runs win7 and office ok, upgrade RAM to 2GB seems to have helped a bit; PALM-rejection feature works ok, but not perfect. Display is obviously not as good in bright light as the e-ink screens.
Overall, a good product, depends on how apple prices its tablet, this one may need to reduce its price soon to be competitive.
Rating: 3 / 5
I bought this pc for my parents. They hate keyboard. So, I thought the tablet mode would be easier for them.
The weak cpu really consumed a lot of time for software installing. My parents they use language other than English. So, I had to upgrade to Win 7 ultimate. I had to acquire additional MUI through windows update, and I also had to spend time to uninstall the unncessary pre-installed softwares. All those installing and uninstalling took me more than half day to complete. After completing all those set-ups, this T91mt really looks wonderful! My parents only use this pc for internet research, msn, and youtube. So, this pc is more than enough for them. Playing youtube video is not 100% smooth but acceptable.
The keyboard is tiny. You can’t depend on it for paper writing. However, the handwriting mode is great. I would like to try the handwriting mode for my paper writing. I think this would probably improve my word spelling skill.
The function that prevent your palm touches the monitor is not really useful. Making handwriting input even less sensitive. I would rather close that function and place my palm on the edge of the monitor.
The battery life is not great but ok. Without the wi-fi on, the battery life probably can reach to 6.5hr. Otherwise, 4.5hrs in power saving mode. I would carry the recharging device with me when going to school or friend’s house.
Overall, i think this is a good pc. I’ve been considering to get a 2nd one for myself.
Rating: 5 / 5
Personal Background(to give you a sense of how my review helps you) I consider myself a top consumer, and a big fat geek. I research everything, incessantly, prior to purchase. I immerse myself in virtually every review I can find from reputable and not so reputable sources, because usually, with an amalgamation of the knowledge I have attained and the content of these reviews I can determine the true state of a device. That is why I use a custom HTPC that has a dual core Intel Atom and NVIDIA ION instead of the Popcorn Hour C-200 I originally wanted because I decided the pain of setting up a Linux based XBMC powered HTPC was, in the end, preferable to a closed setup. I have no professional knowledge of computers as far as certifications or on the job training, I am simply a kid who started taking apart his computers at age 10, and doesn’t stop until something works, or is broke beyond repair. I am by all definitions I know of, a power user. I am not tooting my own horn, I just think that Amazon’s review system is lacking a easy way to determine a reviewers competence, which is understandably hard to measure, and many reviews here are mottled with user error.
That being said, the new ASUS line of Eee PC Touch computers, are great for what they are. I mean this wholeheartedly, and advise you to know what you want, need, and what you can afford. I am a scrooge when it comes to my computers, so it has taken me awhile to get into the net book game, as no device has had enough features to lure me. For semi-mobility I have a Toshiba x205-s9349 laptop which is a PITA to take anywhere as it’s too heavy/hot/awkward for a lap and too powerful to get a decent amount of mobile computing time from it. I also have a q6600 desktop which currently handles file hosting, video conversion/encoding and whatever I need to do that takes a lot of time/cycles. For true mobility, I have have each iteration of the iPhone to date. For my TV I now have a Zotac ION/Atom N330 HTPC running a stripped Ubuntu that is 100% for the TV and plays everything. With the addition of T91MT I think I finally have all bases covered. The T91MT fits in my Diesel messenger bag along with my iPhone 3GS, Amazon Kindle 2, Casio Exilim Z55 5mp camera(i need to upgrade), Garmin Nuvi 765T, bag full of pens, USB drives, Wi-Fi thumb, blue-tooth thumb etc. You get the point, I’m a geek who carries everything with me. I carry it all, along with drivers so that I can use virtually any computer to do what I need. I also have a DiscGear CD holder that has an OS install disc for Linux, Windows, OSx86, various emergency discs, etc.
Most people don’t have as many machines for singular purposes but there remains an ever growing need for a multitude of devices or devices that serve more and more purposes. As young as I am, 23, I still recall brick phones, car phones, and the first pocket-able cellphones that only, and barely, made phone calls. Now we have a global world where one needs access to a multitude of informational sources without being tied down.
The T91MT is a great device that will handle the needs of anyone needing a truly mobile device, without the limitations that come with most mobile devices such as a mobile phones/”smartphone”/pda. If you need to get in some solid word processing, to email a colleague, edit/finish a school report, or just send some IM’s the keyboard is just fine for that. It took me less time to adapt to it than it took me to develop my thumbs of fire on the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard(the key is to trust yourself, be one with the keyboard
. You will stumble for the first few minutes, but it works, enough so that I find myself leaving tablet mode if I have to type anything more than 3 words. When I get my Lexerd screen protector I will try typing with my thumbs using the OSD, but I have huge fingers and they leave massive fingerprints.
The SSD performs satisfactorily, though my friend, mentioned above, has reported anecdotal improvements in overall performance using FlashFire the SSD speedup tool. As I figured out in my pre-purchase reading you need to run both the windows calibration tool and the asus calibration tool, and I have almost virtually perfect calibration that allows me accurate usage of everything. Also, using sticky notes I was able to confirm true to life handwriting using several of my usual boredom doodles and signature, plus random words. I don’t have much experience writing on a touch screen though as my handwriting is akin to a doctors, and I don’t like holding a pencil/pen/stylus, but it is fine. Also I, like one of the videos I’ve seen on YouTube I saved a file using the handwriting recognition, but it would take much more practice as I am more accurate with the on screen keyboard as far as data entry time.
The YouTube benchmark mostly fails as even with flash 10.1 beta 2 Active-Xfor MSIE) and plug-in(for FireFox) YouTube HQ/HD playback sucks. On FF it is useless, on MSIE it works but is just crappy FPS, but some SD YouTube does that too. So you understand, I tried watching some HULU in HD and it performed better than YouTube, but not quite perfect so it’s partly YouTube, and partly what seems to be failure of flash to accelerate properly. As stated, with proper acceleration this thing can play any video you throw at it, but YouTube sucks on it. What we need, and if this exists already whoops, is a stripped down YouTube that decreases overhead. On the iPhone YouTube data is parsed into a custom optimized application, but on this net books we are forced to use a page that isnt optimized at all. I have enabled the YouTube Feather beta that is supposed to do this but I still need to figure out how to get it to actually work. Okay I’m gonna stop this review for now because my ADHD is overriding my ability to do this properly. I promise to come back with a proper review
SD Video on YouTube via MSIE pays just fine, you just need to press F11 to remove the extras. Also right click the task bar, go to properties and set small icons so you get an XP/Vista sized small resolution friendly task-bar. So you can use it to watch YouTube at school, and you don’t need HD/HQ because its a small ass screen.
Final thing for now, this device will let you play any media you need if you want to consume media mobilely(s?) whether its music, pictures, videos, emails, books, comic books, etc. You can also do all of that in tablet mode, the only thing thta works worse in tablet is YouTube, you can see the frame-rate cut in half the second you put it in tablet. And the second you life the screen to go back into notebook, and the sensor is disengaged, the FPS jumps back up which proves that the hardware acceleration is not fully working. I have tested it on the desktop and laptop I mentioned and have no performance increase either setup so I’m worried that the hardware acceleration that is supposed to come in Flash 10 is not going to be the magical problem solver of the hardware acceleration implementations that make it possible for this net book to play 1080p. So BOO YouTube and BOO adobe. Please post questions about whatever I missed because I know that I missed something obvious.
Music
Not much to say here, headphone port puts out sufficient audio, loud enough and decent quality. I would still prefer my iPhone’s audio output. Apple MP3 players always seem to have the best audio output for mp3 and stuff. I’m sure any and everyone researching this sort of device all have a proper music player anyway. I must stress, that it by no means sounds bad, it is just not as good as a premium media player.
Video
Love the video playback. Hardware acceleration of all the video formats that require it ensures that I can play every video I have on this device. At the price-point it can replace a lot of devices, and its awesome at it’s weight, and the screen, while obviously not perfect, is really good. I was worried that it would look bad at this price.
Pictures
Good device for looking through pictures with the multi-touch, you can view them in tablet mode with the touch screen. The fun feature is the pinch and spread which is pretty neat. I am presently looking for and app that will let you rotate like you can on the Microsoft Surface but you can rotate an image with multi-touch in Windows Photo Viewer so I am getting as many ooh’s and aah’s as I did with iPhone. I think if you are a shutterbug, you will like viewing your photos on this tablet.
Documents
PDF and various documents load up in nice time. I scroll through PDF’s using the touch screen and it’s very use-able and I am free to do so from bed or a couch anywhere in the house. Though I wouldn’t want to do it for the long term, the keyboard is use-able for some word processing as you can adjust to the size of the keyboard. One thing that is a PITA is the lack of a proper bumped. There is however one on the keyboard utilizing some of the keys already there and the function key, which is better than nothing. I’m not big at reading on the computer since I have a kindle, so I can’t think of what to add to this section, but was told I should.
YouTube
Example: [...] That video is the The Guild – Do You Wanna Date My Avatar music video, which is a HD mastered video which is delivered in HD as a 57.8 megabyte MP4 video. As shows in the 1080p MKV this net book plays flawlessly, the net book is capable of the video decoding which is in AVC with FULL acceleration. It is not necessarily a streaming issue as I waited for the video to fully load, and it still sucked via YouTube in HD and in SD. I downloaded the video using Orbit Downloader and the video plays back flawlessly with MPC-HC and the included version if Windows Media Player. So know that if YouTube gets their act together, which the YouTube Feather product shows they are at least attempting to do, YouTube will work in the future. If you are considering some of the closed devices like the JooJoo, which may or not work with YouTube, know that this is a device like the T91MT is a good idea because you have full control of it, nothing is impossible and can always get better in the future.
Summary: YouTube, as far as I can tell fails, at least to offer an optimal experience due to the site being too busy. Pop-over ads, the various pop ups that video authors can add, all add CPU cycles that are limited on a device like this. My experiment with YouTube in tablet/laptop mode shows that it is purely CPU.
WEB BROWSING
Web browsing is amazingly snappy. You can scroll with your finger/stylus for full iPhone style browsing, but on a bigger screen that is actually use-able long term. Without using any plug-ins, I would suggest MSIE(Internet Explorer) because as it has been revamped for Windows 7(and Windows 7 has been revamped for touchscreen navigation) it is much snappier and makes more use of the touchscreen.
NETWORK PERFORMANCE
So far I have unscientifically tested the Wi-Fi speed/range and I have no plans to test it scientifically beyond what may be measured with consumer software. The speed of connection with an AP is on par, perhaps superior, to all my current devices. The range in which the device can acquire/maintain a connection to your AP is also above par. Just scanning for Wi-Fi AP from my computer room, it found two extras that my laptop and desktop never found in the same placement. Based on signal quality, if I had access to those AP, I’m confident I could get a decent connection to at least one of them. I know they are there on the fringe because my DD-WRT routers both show the AP during a Wiviz survey. The AzureWave BGN adapter in the T91MT often gives me 20-30% better signal as per both windows tray icon and the DD-WRT web GUI, when in the same room as the router i get 95-100%(100% at the moment) whereas all my other devices are reporting 60%. At the time of the screen-shot the number matured to 65% average, which is, as pictured, 10% higher than my iPhone 3GS which is right next to it. Based on the placement of devices I think the % may not be the best way to measure signal, but it still gives an idea of its signal in relation to other devices.
In the interest of fairness, I will state that the T91MT is running on my second router Linksys 160v3 with DD-WRT v24-SP2 (11/17/09) mini in N only, which is configured as a bridge for my 1st router a Linksys 350N with DD-WRT v24-sp1 (07/27/08) mini running in G only. Both are in the 2.4GHz spectrum, channel 11 on main router, 6 on second. Both are equidistant from my desk. As far as I know, this setup gives me affordable simultaneous G/N with 7 LAN ports. Because of the G devices, I can’t run the net book/router in the 40MHz width necessary to get Full 802.11N speeds on the 2.4GHz spectrum, but I still get faster than G speeds, currently reported 65.0Mbps, I can stream up to 1080p MKV to the net book. Tested using a 1080p of Serenity which is AVC Video at 7259 Kbps, DTS 5.1 1510 Kbps. The key to video playback is ensuring that you use a player that offers proper hardware acceleration. I’m using Mediaplayer Classic Home Cinema with built in codecs. It doesn’t hardware accelerate AVI, but it was capable of playing SD XVID as well as some HD 720p XVID I have of star wars. You must use the EVR Vista/.NET3 renderer, the others are problematic. Also, you cant do much else while you do that, if for example an IM window popped up, or a Windows Live Messenger notification of a friend signing online, the video would lag behind, while the audio played along in time, but soon after the pop-up stops rendering the video will catch up at a very fast pace so even then its just an annoyance. So you wont be playing video in the corner while surfing the web, but I can view all my media from the bed or couch over the network. Also I have a friend who has the device who does all that plus view CBR files and he has no problems doing so. I have read a few pages of a book with it, and it’s doable, though i prefer my kindle still for obvious reasons.
HARDWARE PERFORMANCE
After 3 full days with the device, using it at my desk, in bed, on the couch, in the kitchen while I cooked, in the car when I went out. I got a sense of the devices EXTREMELY annoying perfomance bottlenecks. But there is an upside, this device does all the things I mention in the review, with annoying performance issues that are not showstoppers. Starting an XVID AVI of The Big Bang Theory over my SMB protocol Windows 7 File share took the obvious 3-4 seconds longer than a local file, then proceeded to take a unique(to a stock T91MT) delay of 4-8 seconds for audio and video playback to get up to sync. Also pausing said AVI files took 1-3 seconds, and the same for resuming playback. There was also a delay when switch a video from windowed, to maximized window, to border-less full screen that was accompanied by video/audio sync issues that took up to 5 seconds each and every time to catch up. Audio, if I wasn’t multi-tasking usually kept along with the clock while video sped up to catch up, so it wasnt too annoying.
All this changed on the 4Th day when I swapped out the 1GB included ram for a 2GB stick. This computer is now EXPONENTIALLY quicker in all tasks that were affected by what was apparently a RAM bottleneck. Videos start up in the same speed they do on my desktop computer if the player is opened with audio and video synced up from the start. There is no delay when maximizing the video and un-maximizing(is that a word) a moment later, i can also now browse the web/IM while a video plays in the corner of the screen which was impossible before. Prior to the upgrade, if MSN popped up a notification during a full-screened video the computer would virtually lock up for 20-30 seconds. This has been cut to about 8 seconds before you can pause the video to wait for the pop-up to dissipate. That particular issue is not a problem if you turn off those types of notifications as they are mostly useless, or just log out of MSN when you want to watch a video in full-screen.
COMPARISON TO Gigabyte T1028
Because of the processors power, which is not as lacking for regular usage as many say, and the unique capabilities of the video card for graphic acceleration this device again proves to be an awesome device. The current industry is often confusing, and devices like this offer a great alternative to other devices that aren’t planned as well in that it gives you the cheapest option without any true sacrifices. It is my opinion that a faster CPU, while nice, drives the initial price point too high. This T91MT, at the time of writing is $528.34 if you use the free shipping option, and I was able to get it for 410$ from a retailer offering open-box that came in perfect retail boxing/accessories/condition. The closest competitor to this product is the Gigabyte TouchNote T1028 which is presently 688$ which is 160$ more, or 30% more.
With the T1028 you get a screen with 1.2″ more viewable screen.The screen has a higher resolution which I will assume has a similar pixel size, so everything should be the same, just more text can be visible at the same size which is good, but that among other things comes at a price of 3.26lbs(1.48kg) which is significantly more than the 2.12lbs(0.96kg) which I think approaches defeating the purpose of this device. This is a personal decision, and if you are already carrying too much it could be a deal breaker. I would say this is a point to the T91MT.
You also a processor that is 268/333MHz faster(it lists two models) which is a fair thing to consider as CPU’s are simply not logically upgradeable in a device like this. That CPU is roughly 25% faster, which sounds impressive as it implies things will take 1/4 less time but in practice this is not true. This device, which is called a net book is designed for that, low intensity net based activities which work fine on this processor. Also, the applications load nice and quick on the T91MT because of the SSD which will load all data at the same speeds across the disk because of the technology, and wont be affected by physical movement. But let’s say for the sake of fairness that the device will feel 20% faster in anything that takes over a full second, so something will take 3 seconds to load on the T1028 for every 4 seconds it takes on the T1028. for 160$ you get a minute or more time saved on app loading and tasks over the course of the day, if money is not a concern in your purchases then the point goes to the T1028 for this.
3G mobile support in a device like this makes me angry. I haven’t understood why they have added it to any of the net-books thus far. I understand that you don’t want USB dongles hanging from everything, but I believe that it is unwise for a manufacturer to throw in such niche features that people would be better served adding on their own if they need it. Many of us with a net-book like this will have the option to tether via our smart-phones for which we already pay 100$ a month for as it is, and they expect me to consider it a value when they add the functionality to something like this. I say the point for offering my a more universal device without bells and whistles that are statistically less useful goes to the T91MT.
The larger HDD that utilizes the less-efficient damage-prone tradition hard disk technology in the Gigabyte T1028 is a mixed bag. It is well accepted that the most antiquated part of computers is the hard disk drive, which is the last mechanical moving part in the system. Because of the age of the technology, and the nature of the tech they simply fail at random intervals that range from months to a few years, and this is under optimal conditions which include proper cooling, shock absorption and lack of exposure to static electricity. Using a traditional HDD wipes out many of the gains from a faster CPU in that it introduces the delays from accessing data that is likely fragmented and spread around the HDD on what is already a slow HDD. Also it takes significantly more power to power the mechanics in a hard drive so this decision raised the weight because hard disk drives are heavier than SSD, and require a larger battery to get the same battery life. The battery also needs to be larger to get the same life due to the screen size.
There is also was appears to be a more powerful video card, but I am unsure if the chip of the GPU offers the same video acceleration, but let’s assume it does. You aren’t gonna be playing any high resource 3d games on these devices, so the extra power wont make a difference.
The T91, and now the T91MT seem to be a popular device and I believe it is because of what I have mentioned. It offers a screen that is far and away larger than any of the smart phones on the market, but is careful not to get to big so as to have decent battery life
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s great, I haven’t installed a 2 gig memory stick, but I’m not noticing any major slow downs. This netbook is not designed to be a workhorse computer. I’m using it to take notes in class, the handwriting recognition software is pretty neat, although it’s going to take some getting used to (my handwriting is fairly chicken-scratchy). The SD drive expansions come in pretty handy to double the storage space.
Rating: 5 / 5