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Medion’s Akoya E1311 is the first netbook we’ve seen to come fitted with AMD’s new 1.5GHz Sempron 210U processor. With 1GB of RAM, it was more than twice as fast as a netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom processor in our image-editing test. It was only slightly faster at editing video, though, and was significantly slower at multitasking. We suspect this is due to the fact that the Sempron doesn’t support Hyper-Threading, as Intel Atoms do. At 1.4kg, the Akoya is a touch heavier than most netbooks. It lasted for a respectable three hours and 35 minutes in our battery test, but other netbooks lasted almost three times longer. Its high power consumption of 25W and smaller 4,400mAh battery are to blame for the relatively short battery life; by comparison, Samsung’s N120 managed 18W when active and had a 5,400mAh battery. The Radeon X1250 integrated graphics chip is no better for playing games than integrated Intel chips. It had no trouble playing standard-definition iPlayer and DivX videos, but can’t play high-definition video smoothly. This is disappointing as the 11.6in widescreen display has a resolution of 1,366×768 pixels, which is enough to show 720p video. The backlight is fairly bright, but colours look a little washed out and viewing angles are a touch restricted. We were disappointed by the keyboard’s stiff keys. This is a shame, since the keys are generally quite large, although some of them, such as the cursor keys, are narrower than others. The Fn and Control keys have swapped their usual places, which can trip up touch typists. The touchpad is large and accurate though, with buttons that give just the right amount of feedback when pressed. Unusually, there’s an ExpressCard/34 slot, which could be useful for adding a 3G mobile broadband modem instead of using up a USB port.
Medion’s Akoya E1311 may be worth buying if you need a netbook for editing a lot of photos. However, if you’re specifically looking for a netbook with a bigger than usual screen, Acer’s Aspire One 751 is generally better designed, has a longer battery life and is cheaper to boot.
