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BenQ Joybook Lite reviewed, keyboard found wanting

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The folks at Laptop Magazine have posted a full review of that BenQ Joybook Lite U101 netbook they picked up the other day. The mini-laptop is one of the few netbooks to ship with 1.5GB of RAM and one of the first to sport a true 16:9 aspect ratio, making it ideal for watching HD movies. But Laptop Mag gives it a sold “meh” when it comes to the keyboard and battery life.

The batter conked out at just over 2 and a half hours. And while that’s more battery life than I get from my cheap 15.4 inch Toshiba laptop, it’s not great for a netbook. The Joybook Lite U101 ships with a 3 cell battery, but you might want to wait until the 6 cell version is available if you want to get something closer to 5 hours.

The keyboard is also surprisingly small for a netbook with a 10.2 inch screen. As you can see in the image above, there is a bit of empty space on either side of the keyboard, so it’s surprising that BenQ didn’t make the keys a tad larger. The netbook also places the shift key to the right of the up-arrow button rather than the left, something which Asus and Dell have also decided to do with their netbook keyboards. If  you regularly use the right-shift key when typing, you might find this mini-laptop awkward to use.

The BenQ Joybook Lite U101 isn’t available in the US yet, but there’s a decent chance the company will begin offering the netbook here in the not too distant future.

Posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008, 5:53 pm by Brad Linder | 5 Comments




  • BoloMKXXVIII

    How can they offer this netbook with 1.5 GB of RAM and XP (in the photo) when Microsoft said they will not sell a license for netbooks with more than 1 GB?

  • http://slacy.com/blog/ slacy

    That keyboard looks *exactly* like the one on my Lenovo S10. I wonder if there's some “design sharing” going on between these 2 companies?

  • http://liliputing.com Brad Linder

    It's possible. Many of these computers from different companies are
    actually built by a handful of manufacturers in China, Taiwan, and
    other places.

  • http://slacy.com/blog/ slacy

    That keyboard looks *exactly* like the one on my Lenovo S10. I wonder if there's some “design sharing” going on between these 2 companies?

  • http://liliputing.com Brad Linder

    It's possible. Many of these computers from different companies are
    actually built by a handful of manufacturers in China, Taiwan, and
    other places.

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