The first Ion-based netbooks are beginning to trickle in, so yesterday Nvidia took the opportunity to introduce the technology to us formally. And if there was any doubt as to the focus of the demo, it was quickly made clear by the presence of a gigantic 1080p Sharp Aquos TV with a tiny netbook attached.

The netbook in question was HP’s Mini 311, announced today, and it offers a very similar core spec to others we’ve already seen from the likes of Samsung. The usual 1.6GHz Atom N270 and 2GB of RAM are joined by an 11.6in 1,366 x 768 LED screen and that shiny new Nvidia Ion GPU, which also allows manufacturers to include an HDMI port for hooking up to an HD TV. The Mini 311 is pencilled in for a £349 launch price, which is actually a rather competitive price for its size and spec.

We’ve played with Ion before in an Atom-based nettop and were extremely impressed by the results, but it’s still a bit of an odd experience to see the same intensive video tasks being carried out by a humble netbook, and output on to a monster screen. And just in case we couldn’t tell how impressive it all was, we were shown all of the demos side-by-side with a current Intel netbook.

Better performance

First up was simple playback of a 1080p H.264 video trailer, which unsurprisingly ran in WMP without a stutter on the Ion while its Intel equivalent jerked all over the place. The single-core CPU ran at around 40-60% load throughout. Mainstream gaming is also an option, as Call of Duty 4 running smoothly at a low resolution showed; our rep suggested The Sims 3 and Battlefield Heroes as examples of Ion’s level, so don’t expect Crysis just yet.

Next, demonstrating Windows 7’s drag-and-drop GPU-accelerated conversion via Nvidia’s DirectCompute, a two-and-a-half minute H.264 video trailer (at around 150MB) was dragged to a Sony Walkman media player to begin the transcoding process.

Nvidia claims a five-fold increase in transcoding speed when using the GPU. Accepting that the estimated Windows file-copy times aren’t the most reliable of figures, this test appeared to be even quicker: the Intel device estimated a massive 60 minutes, compared to less than three minutes for the Ion.

Higher quality

And the HP netbook had another trick in store, coming pre-installed with ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre 3 software and SimHD plug-in, capable of using the Ion GPU to accelerate the upscaling of video playback. Obviously these netbooks don’t come with DVD drives, but it’ll work with any file on your hard disk.

As for the real-world effect, it was quite clear that it was an upscaled clip rather than native HD quality, but with only a little bit of noise it made a positive difference on such a large TV.

The final, big reveal is unfortunately embargoed for the time-being, but it’ll be a game-changer for watching video online when it arrives. We can’t say anything about it until October, so keep an eye out.

And that was that. Ion is the breakthrough that gives every netbook manufacturer the cue to revamp their product lines, and – after the last few months of the same tired Atom-based clones boring us to tears – it simply can’t come soon enough.

We’ll be getting the first samples in the coming weeks, and they’ll undoubtedly prove the netbook has already evolved. No longer just an Internet device, it’s now a very capable media player too.

The ARM11 core (which is also used in the Zune, several Nokia phones and the HTC Dream) is the main processor but, for tasks that have specialist demands, several other chips are included: a GPU handles gaming and 3D tasks, an audio unit is optimised for mp3 and radio playback, a 2D graphics chip can handle a camera.

Separate chips tackle video encoding and decoding, with Nvidia promising the ability to encode and decode 720p video simultaneously. The board also houses flash and system memory, which are the larger chips towards the bottom of the PCB.

This “modular” approach, according to Bill Henry, the head of the Tegra Mobile Business Unit, has resulted in “the first high definition mobile processor” capable of playing 1080p video – and, indeed, the device we tried handled HD content without so much as a whimper.

Nvidia is also touting Tegra’s environmental credentials. The modular chip is capable of shutting down unnecessary sections: Henry gave the example of mp3 playback, which uses the audio chip and nothing else, explaining that Nvidia’s engineers have had to “target [their] silicon very, very specifically for that task” and “justify…anything you want to do” with the new chip.

The result is tiny power consumption, with Henry claiming that playing SD video sucks only 200mW from the 24W battery, with this figure rising to 500mW at 1080p. He also declared that the entire Tegra chip and its memory never drew more than 1W.

Henry also cited Flash animations, which are featured on “around 85% of sites in the Alexa top 100“. Arguing that a standard laptop, even with a low-power CPU, will draw “between 15W and 35W” when running a web page using Flash, he booted up the same animation on one of the Tegra-powered MID devices, claiming that it used a mere 150mW to deliver the same content.

This, obviously, has a positive effect on battery life. Whereas the average netbook will be lucky to see six or seven hours, Nvidia claims that Tegra devices could last for “25 days” when playing audio, since every other chip, and the screen, can be shut down. Nvidia also mentioned a more believable figure of a day’s solid use when the machine is used for web browsing.

Tegra’s performance and power draw seem up to scratch, then, but we can’t say the same about the Tegra-powered device that Henry demonstrated, with our hands-on test leaving us far from convinced.

Made by Mobinova – the consumer arm of Foxconn – the N910 looked like a small, slim netbook, albeit far flimsier and cheaper, with a cramped keyboard and trackpad that even had Henry slowing down during his demonstration: while the pad itself was responsive, the buttons were uncomfortably tucked away in the corner, much like those on the Dell Mini 10.

After going hands-on with the device ourselves, we can confirm that it’s more uncomfortable than the first archaic netbooks and, while these devices are meant to fill a niche below the netbook, that’s no excuse for making them so difficult to use or cheap to the touch. Henry did have positive musings on the price, though, saying that these devices will be cheaper “than any netbook in the marketplace today”.

The Mobinova also wasn’t running Windows XP, which has now become the de-facto standard for netbooks: because Tegra is built around ARM11 rather than an X86 CPU, it’s not possible to run the popular Microsoft OS, with the devices we’ve seen using Windows Mobile instead. The result is a Windows-style interface with a dock, much like Mac OS X, with popular applications such as Mozilla Firefox and Windows Media Player, both of which launched within seconds.

Henry argued that consumers would be glad to see a Windows OS rather than Linux, which inspired a spate of unfamiliarity-driven returns when it was included with the first netbooks, and that XP isn’t a natural fit for these machines, anyway, claiming that “we’re not a PC, we’re a device to serve up a browsing interface and media”, and that a traditional taskbar and start button would detract from the machine’s main focus as a media and web machine.

According to Henry, Nvidia has demonstrated the Tegra technology to 27 telecommunications companies from around the world, including Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile, all of whom were apparently impressed but none of whom wanted to run any version of Windows on any device – instead, they all favoured Android-powered devices, none of which are available at the moment. Apparently, devices like the Mobinova N910 could be licensed for use by these companies, but we’re not sure that they’d want to be associated with such a product.

And what of the big players in the netbook market, such as Asus, Acer and Samsung? Thanks to the ARM11 processor, none of those are interested either, put off by the lack of an x86 infrastructure. Henry seemed bullish when asked about the lack of support from phone companies and OEMs, backing his technology to come good in the end, saying that “we know what’s missing [from the marketplace], we can fill that hole, but it’ll take some time”.

It seems that Henry knows that Nvidia has an excellent product on its hands, with Tegra a success in every area: it’s quick in 2D and 3D applications, adept with HD video and music and is wrapped up in an interface that, while not Windows XP, isn’t half bad at all – and all this with a tiny power draw that promises excellent battery life.

It’s also a product that Nvidia predicts will make up 50% of its revenue in the longer term, with more powerful Tegra 2 and 3 parts set to launch in 2010, and that when the first devices are launched towards the end of 2009 they’ll be half Android and half Windows Mobile.

It’s just a shame that, at the moment, the devices we’ve seen using this platform are wholly unconvincing. Until Nvidia demonstrates one of its much-touted MIDs or Smartphones to truly take advantage of this exciting new technology, we’ll still have our reservations.