Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005HA

The basics

Does the Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005HA look familiar to you? It should do: it's got the same specs as the recent 1008HA: a 10-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD and a 1.6GHz Atom processor, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ethernet. The difference? This time, there's a removable battery which will help you work away from the plug for much longer.

The good

Almost everything you know and love about the Asus Eee PC Seashell 1008HA is in the 1005HA. Spacious keyboard? Check. Tapered, glossy casing? Check. Er, pretty normal netbook performance? Check. Now throw in a VGA port that's not hidden underneath the little laptop, USB ports which don't require you to force open little plastic doors with a screwdriver to get to and a battery that genuinely comes close to the 8.5 hours Asus promises, even with Wi-Fi turned on, and you've got quite possibly the best Eee PC yet. And you know how they tend to multiply like rabbits, so that's quite the compliment.

The bad

The removable battery makes it look like the 1008HA after a few too many nights curled up watching ER with a tub of Ben and Jerry's. The Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005HA weighs more, and the keyboard sits at a more raised angle. There's still the problem of not being able to see where the trackpad begins and ends as well, though a few days' practice will have you using it like Ray Charles knew his way around the ivories. Finally, the mains adaptor pin is tiny, to the point where the gentlest knock feels like it could snap it right off.

The bottom line

The Asus Eee PC Seashell 1005HA is slightly bulkier than its little brother, but what are a few millimetres when you get better battery life, for less money? Unless you've got a strange fetish for closed off ports on a laptop (it's OK, you can tell us), this is the best value Eee PC since the very first one two years ago.