:Panasonic R4 ASpec (Mini Review)

Panasonic has finally adopted the Sonoma God in its line-up, so here we are face-to-face with the new R4 series, and more specifically its strongest member, the R4 ASpec.



We already talked about the R3, so here's the link to that review. We will not start all over again when looking at this R4, because aside from the arrival of the Sonoma platform, there are no major changes to be discovered.


So the R4 is Sonoma (you kinda figured that by now) and this implies a 915 chipset, a Dothan 753 at 1.2Ghz, a 915GMS Express graphics chipset with 128Mb of (shared) memory and DDR2. Here we look at the R4 ASpec, which means that the machine already 1Gb of RAM as of standard and a 80Gb HDD (as opposed to the usual 40Gb). This model also has a regular qwerty-keyboard layour with the Japanese characters.




The casing is identical to the R3's, so nothing new here.









This PC still weighs less than 1kg and Panasonic announces a battery life of 9h, but we estimate it 6-7h, which is still impressive nevertheless.





As you can see, the ASpec models (be it the R, W or Y series) all come with a qwerty layout without Japanese characters.




The only differences between the R3 we tested and this R4 ASpec are:
1) the Sonoma platform and the 128Mb of shared video memory
2) more RAM and a bigger HDD

RAM and video memory are influencing factors in these benchmarks, and they could explain the 109 points of difference between the R3 and R4. Not being an expert in these matters, I'll let the pro's draw their conclusions.




Thanks to GeekStuff4U.com for allowing me to test this device.