Wibrain B1 first impressions.

At 500gms and 2/3rd’s the size of a Q1 ultra mobile PC with just as much power, the same memory and disk, longer battery life, better controls and a higher-resolution screen, the WiBrain is pretty much the bang-for-buck bargain of the year. At $699 (price from Dynamism) it undercuts every ultra mobile PC on the market by a good margin and that alone makes it very attractive. Well, technically attractive at least because in terms of ‘style’ there’s not much here at all. Its more bricky than a brick-thing which is going to put a lot of people off. I’ve had it for 4 days now and have given it a good hard work-out, discussed some specific aspects in the forum and I’m fairly well acquainted with it now. Its time for a rundown of the main points and a demo video to show you some performance and features.

The device is functionally, very well laid-out. The large mouse pad is superb for navigating as its a ‘proper’ synaptics pad with tap-to-click function and configurable scroll areas. The keypad, function keys, scroll and directional pad adds enough control that you need never really take the stylus out and use it on the touchscreen. I’m getting used to the keyboard (but only at 40% of my normal typing speed so far) and loving it on the sofa and around the house. The keyboard keys are a good size and give good feedback. I like them more than the silly keyboard on the Q1 Ultra and it might even be better than my favorite split-keyboard – the one on the Pepper Pad 3.

The screen is bright (better than the Q1 but slightly less bright than the Q1 Ultra) and sharp but wow, that hi-res screen is too much. 4.8″ at 1024×600 means that anyone with less than perfect vision is going to be struggling. Its not possible to use it as a table-top PC with a keyboard at that resolution either. Luckily it works very well at an interpolated 800×480 and that’s how I’ve been using it with the occasional switch to the higher res for those over-sized dialog boxes. The touch layer is soft and finger friendly which doesn’t work well for those that like to use handwriting input. It comes with XP Home too so you can forget ‘inking’ on this.

One thing that’s apparent straight away is the processing speed. In comparison with other UMPCs its good. The combo of XP, 1GB (on my test device) and a 1.2Ghz VIA processor along with a fast hard drive makes for some impressive desktop performance. In terms of Internet browsing its up there with the best UMPCs and it absolutely kills the N810 in side-by-side browsing comparisons. Where the N810 takes over 25 seconds to load up the New York Times front page, the WiBrain takes just 8 seconds. Its also noticeably faster than the competing Raon Digital Everun and even able to play back online and local media without any real problem using standard plugins/players. You’ll see that in the video below. As a portable Internet and media player (PIMP?), this is a great little machine.

• Divx 4mbps no problem. 6mbps too much.
• WMV. 1.5mbps is about the upper limit.
• H264. 1mbps upper limit.
• YouTube no problem (FLV, full quality. Fullscreen too.)

Battery life is down to 2.5 hours for Wifi-on heavy browsing with Internet media use and up to 3 hours for light browsing with a low-mid screen brightness setting and the CPU in one of the power-stepping modes. With Wifi off you’ll be able to attach a keyboard and type away for nearly 4 hours on the WiBrain but that’s the upper limit.

As with all devices though, there are issues…

• Fan noise and heat. It gets warm most of the time. Not hot. Fan noise is onmi-present. (But acceptable when set to ‘silent’ through the available control application.)
• Too big for pocket but still, extremely small and light.
• Speakers – very poor. Distortion and low volume.
• No SD card slot is disappointing.
• No easily visible or accessible pci-express mini slot for user expansion.
• Only one usb port. Probably OK for most people.
• No built in mic and webcam not working with Skype. (in my tests)
• Screen rotate works but the mouse doesn’t follow (strictly speaking, the mouse rotates when it shouldn’t.)

There’s also the aforementioned ‘style’ factor. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I know that many people simply won’t find the device attractive enough to give it a second look.

Summary: Its a great value device if performance, price and portability is at the top of your ultra mobile PC list. If you value style, the value goes down somewhat. Ideal customer: Someone looking for a good value, portable, flexible and full Internet and media solution with the ability to perform basic computing tasks if needed.

And on to the video (available here as a high res WMV version.)

More info on the Wibrain (including links to other videos and review) here.

Testing continues so if you have specific questions, take a look at this forum thread and if the answer isn’t there, add your question on to the end.