Asus 1215N features dual-core Atom, ION and Optumus, strikes fear into the hearts of other netbooks

Asus announced the 1215N netbook – though calling it a netbook seems derogatory. Asus have crammed as much new technology as they could possible fit into the 12” frame of the 1215N – a high-res screen, a dual-core Atom, NVIDIA ION, Optimus, USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 3.0, Wireless N plus even more…

Intel is still working on dual-core Atoms for netbooks, but Asus didn’t want to wait – so they equipped the Asus 1215N with a desktop Atom, the D525 (technically a nettop CPU). The Intel Atom D525 recently became available and it has two cores that run at 1.8GHz with two threads each, thanks to Hyper-Threading.

CPU performance isn’t the only thing the Asus 1215N is good at – it’s graphics feature a NVIDIA ION, which merrily decodes Full HD and outputs it over the HDMI port. To save on battery life the 1215N also has NVIDIA Optimus technology, which seamlessly switches between integrated and discrete graphics, depending on how much muscle is needed for the task at hand.

The 12” HD ready display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and 16:9 aspect ratio. The Asus 1215N will be equipped with either 250GB or 320GB hard disk (no SSD options, unfortunately). Asus also throws in 500GB of WebStorage for free.

The connectivity options on the Asus 1215N are also very impressive – USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi b/g/n – ensure the fastest connection available today, be they wired or wireless.

With all those specs, the Asus 1215N is more of a sub-notebook than a netbook if you ask me. Here is a video of the Asus 1215N versus its predecessor, the 1201N fighting for points in 3D Mark:

Unfortunately, Asus skipped revealing any pricing and availability info. Sigh!

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