A few days ago I found a CPU-Mark score for the ‘Oaktrail’ Z670 CPU. It confirms to us in no uncertain terms that the 1.5Ghz single core Atom CPU is, relative to other X86 CPUs, extremely weak and really no different from the first generation Atom CPUs that came before it. The difference with Oaktrail is that the memory and graphics speeds should be vastly superior to that which we saw on the ‘UMPC’ platform, Menlow, over the last few years. Coupled with quality components and good engineering it should be able to provide an acceptable Windows tablet experience and offer some interesting battery life scenarios too. In theory.
In practice we’re going to have to wait for more Oaktrail Windows tablet hands-on and it looks like the wait for the first Oaktrail based devices has finally come to an end. In Germany the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is now shipping and, even better, the guys at Gottabemobile have got both the Fujitsu Q550 and Motion Computing CL900 in their hands. Sumocat (@sumocats) has the Q550 and Chris Lucksted (@DangerousWit) has the CL900.
Lets start with the Q550 and it’s not a good start at all. A ‘bitter core’ is how Sumocat refers to the processor and in the video he’s included in his Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 review, you can see the tablet struggling to handle the Gottabemobile home page with flash turned on. This is an area where GPU, memory and disk speed have little affect because it’s mostly about the CPU working to render the page and execute javascript and flash a tough challenge and one that got worse since Atom was introduced. The performance we’re seeing here is nothing better than Tegra 2 tablets running Honeycomb. Again, back when Atom was introduced, there was no ARM competitor so this lack of CPU performance increase is now very apparent. Application startup time is fast though and, of course, you’ve got a full desktop operating system at your fingertips which is still the only answer for some customers but it seems obvious that this CPU performance issue is going to be a shock to many customers. Is it the same on the CL900?
Part 1 of the CL900 review series is already up. Unfortunately this article doesn’t include any comments about performance or battery life so we’ll have to wait although reading this line was quite the tease…
a 43 WHr battery providing up to 8 hours of runtime with a 4:1 work/charge ratio allowing the CL900 to charge from zero to full in two hours.
I’m not sure if that’s the marketing talking there or the real world testing. An average 5W drain would be something to talk about. Flipping back to the Q550 review you’ll see some discussion of that in the comments. Sure enough, with the screen brightness turned low, but still usable, there was an indicated 8hrs battery life on the Q550. This is with the 4-cell, 38Wh battery which means Oaktrail is indeed running in a very low power envelope.
It’s the power-envelope that’s the key here. It’s allowed the 10 inch Windows tablet design to drop the fans and shrink to under 2lb (about 800gm.) The question is, is it fast enough? The trade-off could be too much for some, especially as we’re talking about pro-mobile users here. The Q550 customers aren’t exactly casual internet users.
I’ll be interested to see some SSD speed tests and GPU tests done on the Oaktrail platform and to do some more tests on the SSD (which could, in theory, be struggling and blocking if it’s not good enough.) We’ll also have to wait for more tests. The CL900 part 2 review is expected today.
