 "Mitashi Smart Pro")
One of the fastest emerging categories in laptops today are the small-and-light machines made famous by the Asus EEE PC. This section has been rapidly filling up with releases from companies like ECS, HCL and ACi. And now we have an entrant from… Mitashi.
Mitashi, as all of us know by now, has developed a reputation for its low-cost no-nonsense products. How does its version of the compact laptop fare? Let’s find out.
One thing that has to be said about Mitashi is its trademark green-and-white color scheme. The Smart Pro maintains this look across the body of the laptop, including the lid and the keyboard area. While it’s not at smooth as the Asus EeePC’s ivory white finish, it still manages to convey class and panache.
The physical construction of the laptop is definitely sturdy. It’s a great deal thicker that it needs to be and sports reinforced hinges. The material used for construction is an odd plastic that flexes at the slightest touch, so the device can be shoved into the tightest of spaces, including the glovebox of your car.
In a bid to save the world, Mitashi has chosen to equip the Smart Pro with a low-power LCD screen with a native resolution of 64x8. This grid display offers three different settings of contrast along with static values of color and brightness. By sheer dint of trial and error, we found that level 2 offered the best tradeoff vis-a-vis power consumption and display clarity.
The keyboard of the Smart Pro is quite well designed. The keys are well spaced out and offer good feedback. But one thing we found annoying was that the key presses often failed to register. Around the keyboard area is a bunch of specific direction keys – direct short links to the specialized features of the laptop.
The mouse of the Smart Pro deserves a special mention. For probably the first time in the history of laptops, a manufacturer has provided an embedded pointer solution. Though the mouse is a bit small, in size it offers a nice deep-seated clicking experience and a scroll experience on par with offerings from companies like Logitech.
Connectivity-wise, however, the Smart Pro is only sparingly equipped. It offers just the embedded mouse and a battery slot.
In keeping with its low-cost theme, the Smart Pro offers a very basic Intel 4004 processor, which uses a 10μm silicon-gate enhancement load PMOS chip. This processor is capable of executing 92K instructions and offers adequate processing power for our needs. The OS has been specially developed for the Smart Pro and is written in Assembly.
Keeping in mind the highly customized CPU, we decided to forego any heavy-duty benchmarking. We instead chose to focus on the UI experience, were the Smart Pro excelled. The menus were well-designed and allowed easy navigation, while the pre-defined program list was extensive and offered something for everyone.
The battery life of the Smart Pro was top notch. Even with maxed-out contrast, we were able to derive a phenomenal nine hours of battery life. This is simply unrivalled in the annals of budget laptops and Mitashi has to be commended.
Yes, the Smart Pro breaks new ground in battery life and usability. It’s an excellent product in its class and a valiant competitor to Intel’s classmate PC and the EeePC. The price? An absolute steal at Rs 1,690. Now, don’t you think it’s worth it?
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