Hands-on: A*Note/Clevo TN120R tablet-notebook

The latest big computer show event was over more than two weeks ago, and it has managed to brought smile on many lucky buyers. One particular that I know of, is my own brother.

He bought a tablet notebook, it's an A*Note TN120R. Which is a local brand here, and not so well known. Heck, even I don't know about before! ;-p And so did my brother, but he's lured with its low price tag: around US$930.

I literally begged him to lend me his new tablet-notebook, making lame excuses like I need it to save the universe etc. ~LOL~ He agreed, and I have only half the day to play with it.

At first I'm not quite confident on the quality of it, but upon a closer examination underneath the tablet-notebook; I found another brand name existed on the label besides the serial number. It is Clevo Co., and turns out that Clevo is producing computers for distributors/retailers who wish to branded them with their own name. As described in the FAQ page, it has become clear now.

So basically the A*Note tablet-notebook is Clevo's TN120R product, and this make me easier to shorten my post on its specs. If you're interested, then please head-on to Clevo's page to read the long spec details. Let's start with the hands-on, shall we?

The outer body has glossy white paint finish, making it work like magnet for your fingerprints and smudges. The underneath cover is black colored, and so is the screen's frame. As you can see on the animated picture left-above.

On the front, there are the usual suspects like we often find in common notebook: LED indicators (power, battery, HDD, Bluetooth & WiFi), power switch, sound jacks (headphone & mic) and memory card reader. The stylus is hidden in the front-right slot, not seen on the right picture there.

On the right there are monitor & IEEE 1334 ports. On the left there are DVD-RW ROM, one USB port, LAN & telephone modem jack. Lastly on the back there are two USB ports and the power jack.

To open up the tablet screen, I need to press my other hand's on the base near the keyboard. Because it seems like the tablet screen is slighty heavier than the base itself. And I was surprised with the keyboard, it has nice feeling when pressed; almost feel the same like the ThinkPad's. The keyboard buttons are soft to be touched, and have good tactile feed back too. But the mouse buttons are the opposite, and the mouse track pad is only mediocre.

Head on to the tablet screen, the 12.1" display can accomodate 1280x800 pixels and not too shabby. A built-in camera is present on top of the screen, and there is also a fingerprint scanner on the right side. Near it, there are two shortcut buttons. One for the displaying shortcuts to TN120R's menus, and another one for rotating the screen display. And I must say that these shortcut buttons are hard to use, since they are heavy to press and not so responsive too. Makes a real minus when using it as one handed tablet notebook.

The overall performance is alright, it's running Windows XP Pro SP2 on Intel's Core 2 Duo T7100 (1.8GHz) and make moderate benchmarks for working on Office and Photoshop. And IMHO that's good enough, considering on the specs and the price of the device.

I quickly swivelled the TN120R, and transform it into one handed tablet mode. After playing around with the menu and rotating the display, I took it to a place where there's plenty of sunlight; to see how it looks like under shiny environment. And as I feared before, the glossy screen make it more terrible and harder to see the display even with my eyes squinted. Seems like A*Note, ...errr I mean Clevo is more considering fashion than function. ;-p

Speaking about function, there's one peculiar design I wanted to give praise on: the removable 4-cells battery. It is surprisingly very small, shaped in triangular kind-alike form and placed on the above-right side of the base (if seen from under). Although it does small in size, I'm quite satisfy with its span of life when I tested it out to run for nearly 40 minutes non-stop of moblogging.

So all in all, my verdict for this A*Note/Clevo TN120R is that it's worth the price tagged on it: US$930. It's not the best both on the design and performance, and if just the tablet screen is not so reflective; I can only recommend it for you who is working in house/room & suitable for moderate office workloads.

And according to my brother who asked the resellers at the event, this tablet-notebook is on high demand. Many have taken interest by its specs and low price, especially college students. I believe so, it is indeed a tempting alternative before jumping into higher and more expensive notebooks until you're financially ready.

All of the photos are taken & made by my brother, Lee. Thanks bro, and I'm sure you'll enjoy them too by view it in larger size then just click on the thumbnail pics.

[blogged with my Treo 750v]