Asus A716 Review by Matt Keys
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-Benchmarks

Ah, benchmarks! The section that many of you no doubt skipped down to. For this review I ran two types of benchmarks, performance and battery life.

I am sure all of you will be happy to hear that the a716 carries on Asus’ legendary performance. It would seem that it has about the same performance as you would receive from the a620. I loaded the unit up with Quake to test out the fps on the first demo. I received 18.3 fps from the device while running in 400 MHz (turbo) mode. Just for kicks I overclocked the device to 472 MHz and ran the same test. When overclocked the a716 received 21.7 fps. These two scores are the best out of all current PocketPC’s at the time I am writing this. It just barely beats the a620, which received 18fps in turbo, and 21.2 fps overclocked. A difference this small is not really noticeable, and can differ from device to device. To see how all of the current PocketPC’s stack up in this test, go here.

a716 running @ 400mhz		a716 running @ 472mhz

Battery Life. Where do I begin, this device has simply hands down the best battery life I have ever witnessed from a pocket pc. The unit ships with a 1500 mAh battery and an optional 3000 mAh battery will soon be available for purchase. For all of the battery tests below I used Battery Monitor by PDAwin.

For those of you who read my Asus A620 review, this first test will be familiar to you. I set the 716 to loop a movie off of the storage card with the volume on its second notch, and the backlight at equal brightness (between the models I am testing). In these tests, the backlight on the a620 was at level 20, the backlight on the a716 was at its first notch and the HP 4150 was at its second (middle) notch. Using these setting, all three of the units have roughly the same brightness, making for the most accurate results.

a716, almost dead from movie test

As you can see in this test the a716 has astounding battery life, absolutely crushing everything else on the market. I can only imagine what the battery life with the extended battery would be.

Typically I would run a very simple test, with the units just sitting idle until they reach 0% battery. But I decided the a716 would go on and on and I do not have the patience for that sort of thing. So I did a more practical, and interesting test. This test was just between the a716 and the HP 4150. I set both units to the same backlight settings as before, and turned their WiFi connections on. I streamed music off the internet in media player in a loop until the batteries reached zero. For this test I kept the volume off, the music was only to keep the WiFi active.

It comes as no surprise that the a716 beats out the 4150 by quite a large margin in this test. The a716 is truly the king of battery life.

-Wireless

As I hope most of you gathered by now, the a716 is a dual wireless unit, having both WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities. I myself do not use Bluetooth much, but WiFi on the other hand, is a big plus for me. But there is one flaw which some of you may not like. Unlike with the 4150, you cannot use both bluetooth and WiFi at the same time. I personally do not have the need to use bluetooth plus WiFi, but I can imagine some people wanting this ability. One example would be if you want to stream your music over a WiFi network and listen to it with a Bluetooth earpiece. I have spoken with Asus on the issue and they told me that this is both a hardware and software limitation, so unfortunately there will be no patches or rom updates to alter this.

But on the upside, Asus bundles some really nice WiFi software with their a716. With the HP 4150 you really can’t edit and manipulate the connection settings like you would with a desktop. But on the a716 you have pretty much all the information you could want provided for you. Their WiFi ME application is a one touch, get me on the internet/network program. Simply tap the icon, and it will connect you to whatever network it can grab. And if there is a WEP key, it will prompt you to enter it.

Once online, a signal strength indicator will appear at the top of your screen. By tapping this signal strength icon, you are taken to a menu full of options. All of these info/configuration screens can be seen in the screenshots below.

-Housing

From left to right: HP 4150, Asus A620, Asus A716

The casing is all plastic, but it feels sturdy in my hand with very little to no creaking. I have heard some talk on the forums that people did not like the antenna, and were afraid of it being mistaken for a phone. For those of you who had concerns about that, you may be glad that the antenna can be unscrewed from the top and taken off. It does cut your signal strength in half though, so I wouldn’t recommend it for most situations.

Overall the design of the unit is very nice and polished. The front and left side buttons have a nice feel to them and I have not had any problems with the device turning itself on while in my pocket. My only complaint would be due to its size. I think Asus just doesn’t really put to much effort into thinning down their pda’s.

-Looking to buy

For those of you looking to purchase an a716 pda, you will be happy to know that ProPortable.com will be stocking them, and will be the first ones to recieve them in the US. Justin from ProPortable and I have set up some specials for the PocketMatrix readers.

• The first 100 MyPal a716 orders will recieved downloadable copies of PDA Mills Anthelion, Snails and Gamebox Classics (a $60 value)
• You can receive 15% off of any one Asus PocketPC accessory
• Free leather flip case with the purchase of any a620 until March 15th and also $10 instant rebate when mentioning PM

This unit MSRP's for 500 dollars but ProPortable is currently selling it for $450, this puts it right in the same price bracket as the HP 4150.

But best of all, I will be giving away my Asus a716 review device. All you must do to be entered, is post here telling me how you would best take advantage of all of the a716's features. All entries must be in by 11:59 PM Eastern time on February 23rd, and I will read them all and select a winner in the following few days. You must be a registered member of the PocketMatrix forums to be considered. If you have pre-ordered and you win the contest, then you will be given the option to keep your order or cancel.

-Conclusion

So it all comes down to one paragraph to sum this unit up. This unit is what I expect to see from a company like Asus and a bit more. It pushes the speed barriers of today’s PocketPC’s and is nothing short of feature packed. I can only discredit it for two things; its size and not being able to use WiFi and bluetooth at the same time. But the most surprising and redeeming feature of this new PDA from Asus is its battery life. With more than 12 hours looping a movie, it more than makes up for its size. You will not find a better combination of performance, features and battery life on the market