Quantel E10 Review
Over the long weekend, I managed to squeeze a few hours reviewing E10 from Quantel. Quantel is a new brand currently promoting its first line of notebooks, namely Quantel E10 and T8. Looking at the barebone of this unit, we know that it’s the same one marketed by Twinhead under TwinBook family.
Build
The actual unit feels rather solid in my hands. Twinhead is the manufacturer of such unit and from experience Twinhead does make quality product at affordable price. Definitely not flashy but absolutely good value for money and won’t feel or look cheap.
The dark charcoal color is definitely a nice color signifying a formal look and feel on this unit, contrary to Asus eee trendy and somewhat young look. The finishing feels nice and should last a long time.
Keyboard
The keyboard feels great and you can perform touch typing with a little practice and getting used to new layout. I find the space bar to be rather short. In substitute, there’s an additional Start button and alt key to the right of it. I would much prefer having a longer space bar than having these 2 additional keys. Nevertheless, this keyboard nails it and will perform well after a little practice, no doubt.
The top row is occupied by the usual F1 to F12 keys. These keys are overlayed with additional function keys that are of use, namely Wireless On/Off switch, Mute, Volume Up and Down, Play or Pause, Previous track, Next track, Stop keys. Also, a VGA out selector is there along with Brightness Up and Down keys.
Touchpad
It works great and not too overly sensitive. One thing I miss in this touchpad is the scroll bar, now widely available in many notebooks.
The right and left click buttons perform their functions well every time.
Indicator or Status Lights
Quantel E10 comes with 7 indicator lights, namely Power, Hard disk access, Battery, Number Lock, Caps Lock and Wireless Lan/WiFi.
Miscellaneous
The hinge is solid. There are 6 grey rubber stoppers that don’t blend very well with the rest of the dark charcoal solid. The small metal latch is also better to be concealed more.
Processor
Quantel E10 and T8 both introduce processor from AMD namely LX800 with 500 MHz clockspeed. This is AMD’s version of ultra low voltage with thermal rating of 0.9W. It is much lower compared to current Intel DualCore or Core 2 Duo processor family and therefore suited in such mobile unit.
This processor doesn’t require a fan to cool it down and Quantel is a quiet companion when working at night. There’s no loud spinning noise, but a quiet whisper of HDD working occasionally. That’s why this unit has no vent outlets at all. After many hours of use, the unit stays at certain level of warmth, but never gets too hot even working on my lap.
Battery Life
Important in all mobile review is that the battery supports long period of use. In this department, Quantel fails to provide us with good battery time. Quantel bundles the unit with a mere 1600mAH battery which lasts less than 1 hour 20 minutes on a full charge with WiFi turned on. But don’t worry, we should see more options for batteries in the order of 2600 mAH and 4200 mAH.
Starts 4:31 pm with WiFi turned on and brightness set to 50%
Battery shows 90% / 1:12hrs remaining
Battery shows 86% / 1:05hrs remaining
Battery shows 63% / 51 min remaining
Battery shows 31% / 22 min remaining
At 5:41 pm: Low batt warning
Ar 5:50 pm: Ungraceful shutdown
On the side note, if you every try to conserve the battery for lasting use, forget about taking the battery out when it’s fully charged. As such action will not provide any benefit, but cumbersome operation. The battery these days has a nice indicator which avoids over-charge. If anything, make sure to pre-charge the unit before initial use for a good 8 hours. Subsequently, be sure not to plug in and out the power cable too many times.
Size and Weight
Quantel E10 comes with a 10″ LCD that feels quite spacious. Many UMPC models, such as Zyrex Ubud / NanoBook / CloudBook, Kohjinsha, Amooba Origami, Samsung Q1U come with 7″ screen that feels rather tiny at times. Quantel E10 weighs around 1.2kg and doesn’t feel heavy when handled with one hand.
Storage and Upgradability
Nice thing about Quantel E10 or T8 is how easy it is to upgrade. You can upgrade this unit easily to 120GB Hard Disk (2.5”) and upgrade the memory on this unit to 1GB or 2GB. Only one DDR1 slot is available though.
Wireless
Quantel E10 and T8 come equipped with a ZD1211B an IEEE 802.11b+g USB wireless network adapter. It’s awesome to report that this WiFi adapter is very strong. It captures wireless networks not normally captured by other devices.
In this department, the only common wireless missing is the Bluetooth. Fortunately, these days we can add Bluetooth to any devices without too much problem. USB Bluetooth dongles are available everywhere. But one such dongle of note worthy is this tiniest Bluetooth dongle from miniNova.
LCD
Quantel E10 comes with a 10.2-inch extra bright LCD. Contrast ratio is very good. Working for hours on the unit is a joy with such bright and crips display.
Ports
Quantel E10 and T8 come with 2 x USB 2.0 ports, LAN RJ-45 port, a VGA out, PCMCIA and a 3-in-1 card reader. So it’s going to be really handy to use this unit for presentation and add additionally capabilities e.g. 3..5G modem using provided PCMCIA slot.
Speaker
There are 2 speakers located at the bottom of unit, each with 0.5 W. When used to play music, it outputs a decent quality. Speakers are also uncommonly loud.
Manual Book
There is one English manual book which contains more important information and also one small leaflet as a start up guide in Indonesian language. The manual book says that it’s for T8 model, even though we’re sure that it’s an E10 model. Typo, it seems.
Another thing worth nothing is that the manual seems to indicate as if the screen is of 1024×600 native resolution.
Price
In terms of pricing, you can find E10 priced from Rp 4.5 million upwards and T8 from Rp 3.5 million upwards.
Overall
Quantel is a nicely built notebook with optimum size and priced fairly. Apart from the mere 1600mAH battery, I have very little complain about this notebook.
Where to Buy
Here’s one trusted store to buy Quantel from with upgrade possibilities:
www.umpchouse.com.
Posted: April 2nd, 2008 under Launch Info, Product Specs, Review, Sub Laptop, Sub Notebook, UMPC.
Tags: 10", 8", AMD Geode LX, E10, Quantel, T8, Twinhead