OCZ Neutrino 10″ DIY Atom Netbook Review

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The OCZ Neutrino 10″ DIY Netbook was a blast to work with as everything worked perfectly. Usually when doing reviews we encounter a million problems, but the Neutrino netbook was problem free. Not bad considering this is a DIY netbook that was running Windows 7 RC!

As good as the Neutrino is, there are a few downsides to owning a netbook like the Neutrino. For starters the platform the Neutrino is built on uses the Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz Processor, Intel 945GSE North Bridge, and Intel ICH7M South Bridge. This processor/chipset combination is not upgradable and inadequate for HD media playback. That is true with any netbook using this configuration, so you can’t fault the Neutrino for this one. What you could gripe about, however, would be the lack luster 4-cell Li-Ion 2200mAh battery pack and the itty bitty track pad. OCZ is coming out with a 6-cell battery this month that should help the battery life, so that leaves just the track pad as being a negative. That’s not bad considering what could be poorly done on a netbook.

When it comes to pricing, the OCZ Neutrino 10″ DIY netbook was priced at $289 when we started working on this review, but right now Amazon.com is selling the Neutrino for $286.01 before a $50 rebate! That means the Neutrino can be picked up for just $236.01 after rebate! If you happen to have a SATA notebook hard drive and memory kit sitting around this system is a killer deal. Even if you had to buy the extras, an 80GB SATA 2.5″ notebook hard drive can be picked up $39.99 and a 2GB DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM is $21.99. If you purchase those items you’d have just $297.99 tied up in the entire netbook. Not bad at all for a system that is ideal for children or for something light weight to carry around with you on the go. Even at this killer price the Neutrino DIY Netbook will face tough competition, though, as the fully built and ready to go ASUS Eee PC 1000HA (our review) with Windows XP Home can be found for $319 after rebate and has the same screen size, processor and chipsets. The nice thing about the Neutrino is that you can save a few dollars doing it yourself, especially if you plan on installing Windows 7 or Ubuntu 9.04.

Legit Bottom Line: The OCZ Neutrino 10″ DIY netbook costs slightly less than other pre-configured notebooks and is rock solid with Windows 7.