Benchmarks

If this is an ordinary netbook, we honestly wouldn’t even bother to run some benchmarks as it just seems pointless. Every netbook that we tested had the similar, if not the same results in benchmarks. The Atom CPU, whether it’s a Z530, N270 or the 230, has pretty much the same performance level, and we can't be bothered commenting Intel’s integrated graphics.

Thankfully, this is not an ordinary netbook, and you can certainly surprise a lot of people once you run Call of Duty 4 or play a full HD 1080p video over an HDMI output on such a tiny machine.

We’ll start with regular benchmarks that we usually run on any netbook or notebook that comes into our lab.



HD Tune shows decent performance similar to those of any other netbook that we had a chance to test. Lenovo S10e and MSI Wind U115 Hybrid scored pretty much the same numbers with their 160GB Western Digital drive, while Toshiba drive in POV’s Mobii ION had a slightly higher latency and also a higher burst rate.





Sisoft Sandra tests show that all netbooks that we tested so far are pretty much on the same level even if they are using different model of Atom CPU working at the same clock speed.



There is slight difference in memory latency but this can be attributed to different memory settings.



3DMark is where Point of View’s Mobii ION mini really shines. As this one is based on Nvidia’s ION LE chipset with 9400M integrated graphics, it can score a decent level of performance in 3DMark 2006. The test was done with default settings at 1024x600 which is native resolution for this netbook.



Just for reference, we decided to include Acer’s Revo ION nettop as well. You can check out our review of it here. Lenovo S10e is far behind as Intel’s integrated graphics is simply not enough for 3DMark, or anything else for that matter.

Games

In order to show that POV’s Mobii ION mini is quite capable of playing games, we launched Call of Duty 4 and FRAPS measured an average of around 25 frames per second at 1024x600 and lower details.

This means that it can also run some other games as well, as long as you keep the detail level down. We are quite sure that it will have no trouble with World of Warcraft, or other similar games for that matter.

Temperature and Noise

The POV Mobii ION mini gets pretty hot. Don’t get us wrong as it doesn’t go over 50 degrees Celsius at the left side exhaust and around 45 at the bottom of it. According to GPU-Z the ION GPU can heat up to 68 degrees Celsius under full load and hovers around 65 when in idle.

The fan is silent in idle and we had to check twice in order to see if it is actually spinning. But when pushed to do some heavy lifting, like for example, Call of Duty 4, you can hear it from time to time as it spins quite fast in order to cool down both the GPU and the Atom CPU.

This probably happens due to the fact that the ION GPU is clocked at 200MHz for the GPU and 400MHz for shaders in idle and only jumps to the reference 450/1100MHz once needed. There are also the 300/600 and 350/800MHz modes, which CPU-Z reports as 2D desktop clocks but we honestly haven’t seen these as they are probably used only briefly.

Battery Life

As we already told you, our sample came with 6-cell 4400mAh battery which is capable of keeping POV’s Mobii ION mini running for around 3 hours and 27 minutes in regular use, which is considered to be surfing over WiFi with a 70 percent screen brightness.

When pushed to play a movie with a 100 percent brightness, Point of View Mobii ION can give you around 2 hours and 20 minutes of constant playback, enough for most movies. We must note that even when playing a movie the GPU clocks up to 450MHz so this may be considered as the battery life under full load.