Medion Akoya Mini E1210

The E1210's ten-inch screen puts it at the very limit for today's netbooks, and Medion themselves prefer to call it an 'ultraportable'.

Nevertheless, the fact it's lacking a DVD drive and sports Intel's stripped-down Atom chip place it very much within the former category.

Handling & Connectivity
Medion's decision to install a ten inch screen affects the whole of the computer, which is around 200 g heavier on average than the smaller 8'' models we've looked at.

As well as the extra weight, the E1210 also ships with a keyboard that's truly worthy of the name, with only a limited of number of keys smaller than usual.  One minor irritation is the position of the Fn key, which here is to the left of Ctrl, the reverse of the situation on the majority of classic keyboards.

The touchpad, though, is surprisingly small given the size of the netbook: indeed, it's closer to the touchpad on the smaller Hercules eCAFE than the Asus 901 which is in general about the same size.

A single bar replaces left and right click buttons, but pressing it at each end produces the desired effect.

A classic selection of ports adorn this netbook: three USB, one Ethernet, one VGA and a pair of mini-jacks for headphones and a microphone. 

An increasingly common addition is a memory card reader, although they are often of dubious quality.

Medion's choice doesn't disappoint, however, as their card reader reaches data transfer speeds approaching 20 MB/s, which is almost as good as on regular laptops.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the webcam, which doesn't match up to an otherwise excellent netbook.

The image is very noisy, and sound recorded via the microphone crackly and rough. 

2 USB, grille de ventilation	USB, lecteur de carte mémoire
2 mini Jack, VGA, RJ45	Webcam

As for listening to sound, you'd do better to plug in some headphones as the onboard speakers are only barely up to the job.

Even with the sound at maximum, it's difficult to catch everything while watching a movie for example.

Processor Power
To start with a simple question, is this netbook up to performing all the basic tasks that you'd be likely to use it for? 

In a word: yes.  You can certainly use it easily to check your mail, browse the web and work on documents.

But if you want to take things further and ask whether or not it matches up to the competition, then things are less clear. 

Although it contains the same Intel Atom processor as other models, the E1210 has a conventional hard disk drive rather than the flash memory found
elsewhere, which significantly slows it down.

Its sluggishness in accessing programs means this netbook can take up to a minute to boot up, but the quicker write speeds of hard drives go some way to compensate for this.

Battery Life & Portability
As we alluded to in the intro to this article, ten inches is more or less the upper limit for netbooks today.

The bigger screen and more comfortable keyboard are certainly a treat to use, but the payback comes with the decreased battery life. 

With just 1 hour 48 minutes of continuous video playback with screen brightness at 100 cd/m², the E1210 is a long way behind the Hercules eCAFE's 3 hours of the Asus 901's stunning 5 hours.

Low battery life is only exacerbated on this netbook by a very bulky charger.

Weighing a hefty 400 g, it adds a considerable load to your backpack if you're planning on carrying round with you, which you're very likely to want to do.

This is a factor that's worth bearing in mind as some manufacturers manage to fit lighter chargers, and so while only 200 g separate this model from the Acer Aspire One on paper, for instance, when you include chargers, the Medion model is nearly half a kilo heavier.