The Asus EeeBook X205 is a portable Windows notebook with an 11.6 inch display, up to 12 hours of battery life, and a case that measures just 0.7 inches thick and weighs 2.2 pounds.

Asus pretty much created the netbook market when it launched the first Eee PC in 2007. While netbooks have largely fallen out of favor in recent years, it’s interesting to see Asus revive the Eee name for this thin, light, and cheap notebook.

First introduced in September, the Asus EeeBook X205TA is now available for pre-order from Amazon for $199. It should start shipping November 3rd.

asus x205ta

The notebook features an Intel Atom Z3735 quad-core Bay Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB to 64GB of storage. It has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, Windows 8.1 with Bing software, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 802.11n WiFi, a microSD card reader and micro HDMI port.

While the Asus EeeBook X205 doesn’t have as much storage as some laptops, and features a processor more commonly found in tablets than notebooks, the little laptop is priced like a Chromebook. But it ships with Windows instead of Chrome OS, which means it can run Microsoft Office or other desktop apps which aren’t available for Chrome.

We’ve come a long way since 2008, when I spent more than $500 on a 10 inch Eee PC 1000H netbook with an Atom N270 processor and 5 hours of battery life.

thanks GaraSharp!

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83 replies on “Asus EeeBook X205 $199 Windows laptop coming in November”

  1. I have a VERY important question. I bought this laptop but haven’t received it yet. I started thinking about the power supply. They get lost and I can not find any information on what it is. It looks like a new 3.1 USB
    It seems nobody sells the proprietary charger, not even Asus website. PLEASE can somebody give me some info. on the wall charger???

  2. z3575 is quad core, but single core passmark is 350. n2840 is dual core, but single core passmark is 534. 2955u is dual core, but single core passmark is 808. For good responsiveness single core performance is important. This is a 2014 netbook class machine… a 2955u machine will literally be twice as responsive… but windows 8.1 is only free for crappy machines. Don’t give in to crappy machines… get a chromebook and move to linux.

    1. Not_impressed, I absolutely agree with you, although with the chromebooks I’d like to mess less with the firmware to get native linux support but I’m perfectly okay with it plus without bios flashing legacy support is still fine so long as you’re okay with the developer mode warning for 1/2 a second.

      1. Sometimes you have to cut the cord… I did that literally twice (I have 2 boys). The open bios is pretty stable… I have done kernel updates and modified the boot loader. No issues at all. It even has boot to USB permanently enabled. Zbox bi320 is a similar hardware with no risk. Netbooks are like mopeds, they are fun to ride when your friends aren’t around.

        1. sorry, I was thinking about my Chromebox. I don’t know of a cheap 2955u laptop (other than one of the many chromebooks).

          1. Not only that they have more impressive i3 chromebooks, it’s a shame that soldered 2GB of ram is what these units usually ship with despite the chips supporting way more than that.

          2. Not true, any of the Z-series atom chips with a D, E, F, or G at the end only supports 2 GB of ram.

          3. Well Labmouse, no one was saying that the Atom series was capable of using more memory; the context of my post could only be construed as referring to the Haswell series Chromebooks because as far as I am aware there aren’t any BayTrail i3s or Atom carrying the i3 moniker.

  3. As much as I like the trend of seeing lower priced laptops, it still bothers me to see devices being locked down to restrictive memory amounts.

    I still have a track record of disliking the ATOM series as I feel that they’ve given up too much for battery life strictly where the previous generation of low end laptops were haswell powered which I thought offered the correct balance of budget performance and battery life.

  4. I like it, except for Windows 8. I’ll hold off buying one until Windows 10 comes out.

  5. “Eee PC 1000H netbook” – still one of the best netbook designs ever. still running with me like the famous vw volkswagen, day for day and still with its original battery for 4-5 hrs. one of the rare honest engineering peaces in modern it industry. 64 mb would make a nice new win netbook at this price. 32 mb is as ridiculous as it was in the beginning.

  6. I too have an eee PC 1000H. I primarily use it now as an experimental device. It started with XP and has had Win7 and various Linux distributions on it. Right now, it’s humming merrily along with Lubuntu LTS on it. I have always liked its sharp vivid display. I upgraded the RAM and somewhere along the way swapped out the slow 5400 rpm HDD for a small SSD I had laying about. It runs quite acceptably now, and I have sort of stopped swapping out OS’s. I have a legacy Canon flat bed scanner that Canon stopped supporting long ago, but Lubuntu has drivers and software that make it work again. Truth, that is its major utility for me now, and sufficient reason to keep it around.

  7. i’ve been trying to get a laptop like this for the past 5 years! what the fuck, why did it take this god damn long to develop..

    1. Quite simply, when you are able to rake in MILLIONS, sorry BILLIONS, from highly priced laptops, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. It takes a real pounding before there is give. Needless to say, guess who broke? You bet. I buy into conspiracy theories and the stunting of Atom and the arrival of the next greatest thing, Ultrabooks (for yours for only $1200) as part of holding onto profit margins and general pumping of the public. Thanks Google for your POS Chromebook. I would never buy one, but it sure helped in the race to the bottom.

  8. This is what bugs me about the new Nexus 9 tablet. If you were to add a keyboard case to it, you could literally buy about 3 of these “eeebook” netbooks for the same price. Not only that, but you’re getting a “real” OS and a better, larger keyboard. Oh yes, and expandability, etc, etc. Go Asus go!

    1. I don’t think this laptop is going to be expandable…unless you consider SD card slot and full USB slots expandable…

  9. Does it come with 1yr of office?

    That’s a $70 value for those of using one drive.

  10. I bought an Acer Aspire netbook with a 250 GB hard disk and a horribly buggy version of Linpus Linux. I tweaked Windows XP Pro to run on the box, but found that Crunchbang Linux was a much better option. Later, I found that Android X86 4.x also worked quite well on the little box, including the Ethernet port.

    The Acer now multiboots all three

    I almost never use Windows anymore, but need to keep it around. I took a FEMA course that required Internet Exploder (although they claimed that they were going to fix that) and also need it for printing coupons.

    I sure wish there was 4 GB RAM on this new Asus system, but I guess M$ is afraid of cannibalizing their mainstream notebook licenses. This is a netbook, but grown up. Assuming that you can boot off USB, it might be useful. (Install a better OS and dual-boot boot manager….)

    I love Chrome and see the merits of ChromeOS, but there are things I can do with Linux that I can’t do with ChromeOS. If ChromeOS were an optional, multiboot option on this box, I’d use it frequently.

      1. Not having Windows installed from the start would cut another $15 from the price.

        1. I think with these specs windows with bing applies which costs nothing for the OEM.

        2. That is doubtful. MS is essentially giving away Windows on these machines because they want to erode the chrome book market and make it easier for people to get locked in to the Office 360/Bing/Outlook echosystem.

      2. Actually the locked down UEMI on this unit prevents you from installing Linux on it. There may be BIOS/UEMI hacks that will allow installation of Linux, but this is not a trivial installation.
        Search on-line, no one seems to have successfully gotten Linux running on an Asus x205.

        1. How far have we come? Now manufacturers are locking me out of my own device and hinder me to install linux?

  11. “We’ve come a long way since 2008”

    Have we? In 2008 I bought an Acer Aspire One for around the same amount of money that this device will supposedly cost. And like this device, it was sold as a lightweight web-browsing computer. However, one could combine the cheap and cheerful platform with a little extra RAM and storage for next to nothing and create a wonderful little general-purpose ultraportable. That’s precisely what I did and the same netbook remains a trusty on-the-go workhorse to this day.

    I’d love to do the same with one of these. The platform looks ideal, and once again just needs a little more RAM and storage to turn it into a capable companion for the road warrior on a budget. But that’s no longer possible in these neo-netbooks with their repurposed, non-upgradable tablet innards. Aside from the faster processor, this device offers me very little that I don’t already have with my 6 year old netbook, which doesn’t feel a lot like progress. These days if I want more, I am steered towards ultrabooks and their sky-high prices.

    1. The “only” upgrade i can see is the 10+ hour battery life with higher performance at the same time. It is also lighter and thinner than most netbooks. For some it will be a great/sufficient upgrade, other will find it not so great in comparition to what they have allready (like You Sir). I think it is a step in right direction. I was sad when companies like asus announced that they wont produce netbooks anymore because they are a kind of cheaper version of ultrabooks (not literally of course)

    2. As I said I have a faster device; Quad Core, went with 8GB@1600, I could have easily went 16G but wanted to stay on budget with upgrades. I went from 500GB @5400rpm to 1TB SSHD and once prices go down a bit more, I will go 512GB SSD.

      I will be increasingly doing HD video, so I need a fast machine for that.

      The only downside to Windows is that it’s a bit bloated; because of wider use by business and private sector, it’s under constant threat from the hacker community. Outside of that, I don’t understand the constant harping about devices running Linux.

      It’s just impractical for many people. How come there hasn’t been a massive switch over to Credit Unions as most people have accounts with the six largest banks that caused the 2008 Financial Meltdown? It’s simply not practical for most people, there will never be a massive switch to Linux.

      So trying to force a square peg in a round hole is wishful thinking. I am a fan and support Linux for basic computing but for actual work, I use Windows.

      Linux doesn’t support HD capture cards, there’s only one DJ software for Linux and it’s lacking with my Midi setup and I find video editing software, image software and audio software quite lacking, great for consumption but for editing?

      No way…

      1. For actual work I use Linux distros. Specifically Red Hat Enterprise Linux (for paid support), Scientific Linux and Ubuntu. Just depends what “work” is. Just like what you’re saying with your use case, for me, Windows is the square peg.

        You’re talking about your own use case but why can’t you understand that other people have different use cases as well? Your own argument can be used right back at you.

        1. Note that I’m just answering the “I don’t understand the constant harping about devices running Linux” statement.

          Everyone has their reasons to use a Linux distro, Windows, Mac OS, etc. The constant “harping” you see is probably because you just notice it more or the sites you visit just have more vocal Linux users than users of other OS’s.

          For my own anecdotal use case, Windows is nice for basic computing tasks but not for work which is the opposite result for your needs.

          1. Na, Linux users are everywhere I go online more or less. You don’t bother me, I am just wondering why you expect OEM’s who are operating on single digit profit margins should stick their neck for little understood operating system.

          2. If they’re everywhere then shouldn’t OEMs be pursuing them as a customer? I probably shouldn’t have replied. You type a lot of text but don’t really get to an actual point.

            Anyway, why make a negative comment about people wanting to use Linux distros? Yeah, Linux based OS’s aren’t for you and Windows meets more of your requirements. Do you also make comments about about how Mac OS isn’t good for work as well? Maybe talk negatively about Android and iOS while you’re at it as well.

          3. Mac is overpriced for what it is. I use Android phones and my biggest gripe is the lack of serious audio performance and production software, all the focus is on iOS.

            Besides I use Virtual DJ, it works best on a Windows machine.

            So the flood of cheap Windows tablets works out for me and I didn’t have to gripe about it online. As long the USB port can host, I can connect a USB device or USB audio device and use it for various impromptu DJ task.

            Why your feelings hurt if I talk about Linux????

          4. Interesting, I always considered Linux nice for basic computing but not for work. To put things into perspective, work for me is the ability to use professional (software you use at work) software, like office, photoshop, etc. I have seen some alternatives come closer to where office is, but nobody can seem to touch Excel for it’s level of functionality. There’s also the matter of entrenched use in the industry. For example, try to get a real (red corporate accountant to use something other than Excel.

        2. I do understand other people’s uses. Where Linux is popular is IT back end and STEM. I didn’t say it wasn’t useful there and security concerns would have me looking at other options if I was working inside STEM other than Windows.

          What the Linux user base is hoping for the mainstream community to notice the benefits of Linux and demand new products.

          That’s why security issues highlighted by various people about the NSA’s activities largely fell with thud; much discussion but little actual movement.

          The difference here as I am not a Linux enthusiast looking for more product choices, you are.

          1. Actually what has happened is that the increasing standardization of the hardware — due to Intel — has made Linux support for notebooks almost a given. I’m typing this on a Dell I bought recently. I didn’t have to do anything special: everything, I mean everything, works right out of the box. So I don’t know why people are asking for the manufacturer to sell Linux systems — as long as they stick to generic hardware, people can do the installs themselves. And these days installing Linux on a new system is easier than, say, recovering Windows. On first reboot you have a more functional system.

    3. Hi Sarah:

      After 5 years some computers may (or may not (feeling lucky?)) get cranky, u know harddrives wear out, cooling fan gets stuck, keyboard breaks, power supply goes puff, among other things that can go wrong when hardware gets old. Your puter is 6 already just saying…

      Unless you’re on a tight budget 2 Benjamins doesn’t sound like too much for a new puter these days.

      That is all.
      Peace.

    4. Try watching 720p or 1080p video from your 6 yr old netbook, a common usage scenario for people.

      1. I have an eight year old Dell D620 running Linux Mint 13. Have no problem watching 720p or 1080p. The trick is to avoid the worst software ever written, ie: Adobe Flash, with which I can barely playback 360p without turning this core duo processor into molten heap of metal. I use Greasemonkey script Viewtube and gecko mediaplayer in Firefox for youtube, and also ise smtube and minitube to watch youtube outside the browser. For other content I also use XBMC whenver possible, which with all the plugins available is almost always. I avoid Hulu and Netflix, and use Navi-X in XBMC for the occasional stupid movie. For BBC iplayer stuff I just wait for some kind soul across the poind to post the content I want on youtube, usually happens in about a week or so.

        1. Your Dell D620 must have a discrete graphics chip, definitely not a netbook with integrated graphics. The nvidia quadro can really boost video performance depending on the codecs and players you use. The last D620 I used had the intel graphics and couldn’t even run the 720p videos of it’s day without it turning horribly choppy and unwatchable. The Intel HD graphics from the current generation of bay trail and haswell line can handle 1080p hi10bit without breaking a sweat.

          1. That’s true the Baytrails handle all sorts of HD content well, the older Atom’s not so much, but AMD’s low power APU’s handle HD content well as long as you weren’t doing something intensive with it otherwise and it took a couple of driver revisions to handle Silverlight and do a better job with latest Flash build. That said the newest AMD APU’s are better in every respect.

  12. The battery life and weight of this thing is spectacular. Its unbelievable how much less expensive and more appealing Windows laptops have gotten in the last year — probably thanks to the competition from the Chromebooks.

  13. Much better color than the garish HP Stream. Waiting for the reviews.

        1. Thanks. Too bad, borderline unusable, should be ok for simple MS Office jobs (although buying MS Office ruins the sweetness of the deal and I don’t want to get started with the online version – why am I thinking of buying this thing again?).

  14. Why arent Canonical in talks with Asus to come out with something similar? Either way, I’m glad there is competition and downward pressure on prices, hoping I can get my hands on one and start working towards getting a desktop GNU/Linux running on it

      1. I don’t get this neither. I want a cheap Kubuntu notebook. I think that Canonical lost their chance some years ago. Windows 7 was very demanding and expensive. That was their chance to get into the notebook business. But now when Windows 8 is free and can run with only 1 GB RAM, there is only a little chance any HW produced will be interested in Ubuntu desktop.

  15. I’d get one if it had a 10“ screen and I could install Linux without boot loader workarounds.

    1. The Acer Aspire E3-111 was a better deal. Originally $250, it was discounted to $200 street, and BestBuy had it on sale for $180. It had 2GB (upgradable to 8), 320GB HDD (upgradable to SSD), and Bay Trail M. It also had 3 USB, one of which is 3.0, along with gigabit Ethernet port. It’s still being sold by Acer on eBay IIRC for $210.

      Frankly I’m underwhelmed by these “Window-ized” Chromebooks. If you are to get a laptop, then get one that is expandable and with ample number of I/O ports.

      1. Depends on uses doesn’t it?

        I am finding it slightly inconvenient to use my everyday laptop for DJ use as well. I am not concerned about viruses, other security attacks or crashes. W7 hardly crashed and 8.1 has only crashed once and that was caused by me.

        But as I said in another thread, it’s either this or a 11.6 Windows tablet to set hot cues, edit tracks, etc. While I can still use my laptop for say tutorials.

        I want to keep the price point down however. There some good choices around this price and slightly more than $199, but I don’t want to spend too much. The ability to upgrade is less important.

        Still might get a Windows tablet, but having a keyboard is useful as well.

        1. Have you considered one of those 2-1 convertable devices? Like the ones that convert from a tablet to a laptop?

          There should be quite a few available by holiday shopping season, some of them even under the $200 mark.

  16. I might be tempted if it didn’t have Windows 8.
    It’s also funny how afraid Microsoft is starting to get of ChromeOS if they’re pulling stuff like this.

    1. It’s a great thing, chromeos is awful. I’m glad someone finally made a cheap laptop that wasn’t just extremely heavy and bulky for no reason except to make it cheaper feeling.

      1. it’s almost like you’ve never used ChromeOS, or you havent since the early CR-48 days, ChromeOS is pretty dang great now, i mean heck, i use it daily and a lot of people i know use them.

        Unless you need things like CAD/CAM work, or iTunes there isnt really a lot it *cant* do

          1. Lack of native local network share support is a major issue for me with ChromeOS.

          2. most people dont have SMB/NFS shares in their house, and the people that have them and properly configure them mostl ikeyl arent going to be using Chromebooks

        1. I used it about 6 months ago maybe for around a week. Firstly there definitely are alot of things you cant do. While google docs I will admit has gotton better, it’s still not a complete solution on top of Microsoft office, or any of the other free ones like kingsoft, or openoffice. You’re stuck to a tiny app store, I couldn’t do things like use skype/ventrilo, and my other cloud storage didn’t have any easy integration. Simple games that I play with people like league of legends I can play on my $200 windows notebook. Not to mention most chromebooks come with like 16gb of space, and they don’t have as good of battery life as they should for mostly ARM devices (which is admittedly getting better. Honestly, you are left with paying the same price for a device with less power, less options, less robust operating system, and more cheaply made. I think with the same price, the choice is bafflingly easy, there are almost no better things you can say unless you just hate the windows 8 layout.

      2. Actually, Windows is awful; I expect these machines will have the typical Windows failings of bogging down at inconvenient times, being the #1 host of malware and getting slower the longer you own them. But, at least these Windows machines are being sold at a price commensurate with the awfulness of the operating system. ChromeOS isn’t awful, it’s just limited; impractical as an only machine (mainly because it can’t legacy print, but also because it can’t run MS Office), but way simpler, faster and more secure most of the time.

        1. Agreed. Based on my experience with my T100, I arrived at the same conclusion re W-8.1. Personally, any larger than a 10.1 and the tablet seems too big, so this item seems more attractive than the T200. I digress. 8.1 get a solid C+ for all the reasons you state. But for $200 list this would seem an excellent value. IT will be nice to compare actual benchmarks between this and a comparably priced chromebook.

          1. I have an asus t100 also, cracked it badly, so now it sits on my desk. I did use it as a desktop computer, just bought a micro hdmi to via and usb hub and that was it. It ran extremely well. I couldn’t even tell it was a cheap processor. Animations were fast, Web browsing was quick, word processing good, what else is there for basic computing needs?
            Now I have an i3 dell venue 11 pro, screen is much better than the asus and I love the keyboard. Don’t like the thickness or the vents but had to sacrifice something. The asus was actually less buggy than the dell, dell is fast but occasionally freezes. Never had this with my asus.

          2. Assuming you’re speaking of the Haswell celeron 2955u chromebooks…they eat these Z3735 based units for breakfast. No contest. The 2955u are up to twice as fast in processor tasks alone.

        2. What exactly makes Windows awful? It does what I need it to do, talks to my WHS 2011 server, talks to my other Windows machines over the network. Does console emulation with the files on the server, something you can’t do inside Linux when your file system is NTFS on a Windows based server. No work around that I know of.

          I’ve also mentioned that community tech and customer support sounds good on paper but not nearly efficient as corporate, paid support. Problem with Linux and this is that these people have jobs themselves, they can’t spend 8-10 hours a day fielding questions and support for a add-on they designed.

          They have projects to finish…

          1. I’ve already described why I think Windows is awful for the typical user As for why you think it is good, the typical user doesn’t have a server or lots of networked windows machines and have no idea what console emulation is or what its for.

          2. But a typical user would probably have a legacy printer and some other devices that may not be supported by chrome, there is also the issue of small software selection, and lack of the most popular software/services. No Office, Skype, Vent, etc…I hear google drive works pretty well though.

          3. Actually, the SMB network shares in Linux works pretty well depending on the distro. I was able to use a domain level windows network share with kubuntu pretty much from install.

        3. Windows isn’t awful. It just doesn’t for you. It doesn’t work for me as well but for others it’s a great OS.

          1. Nah, Windows is awful, is not great for anybody. Most people don’t realize how often Windows does background updates or how negatively that affects performance.

    2. I don’t care about it having Windows 8. They’re not charging for it anyway. Well, MS isn’t charging ASUS for it. What really bothers me is that it’ll likely be a pain to install anything other than Windows 8 on it. I doubt Windows 7 can be installed. At least to due to no drivers for it ignoring if it’ll actually install. The likely 32-bit only UEFI would require kludgy workarounds to get a Linux distro on it as well.

      I can’t even blame a single company since it seems everyone involved is contributing to this situation (Intel, ASUS, MS, BIOS/UEFI firmware makers, etc.).

      1. You can dual boot other OS on it. Just stop the hate, Windows 8.1 isn’t bad, you can’t complain for something that is ridiculous cheap and provides great OS on it for cheap.

        People these days….

    3. Nothing stops you from installing Linux and uninstallilng Win8 on it.

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