CRUISE Mini Laptop Review

By himadri_dimriAug 20 '11

The Good: The good part with CRUISE mini laptop is the 7 inches size. It is neither too bulky nor too small which serves the purpose of a mini notebook perfectly. The price being just Rs. 4,999 it is way too affordable. This device has all the functions which are present in any laptop irrespective of its shape and size.

The Bad: One thing that really worries me as a user is its poor backup facility. The moment you end up doing multi-tasking the efficiency and the speed reduces and the battery starts to die. Moreover, when there is a window opened and you have left it unattended for quite a while, it starts flickering and the mouse moves on the screen making weird noise. At times the text size is too small but that can be increased using controls easily.

Editor’s view: With a price range of 4,999 Rs there cannot be a better deal than this one. It has all the functions that any other laptop has and with a size equal to tablet PC.

REVIEW

Design & Appearance

This device is light weight and has a sleek style. The surface is glossy and has a very professional look. It has 7 inches LCD WVGA with a resolution of 800x480 digital TFT.

There is a power button on the right hand side of the screen. On both sides of the screen there are speakers which are clear enough. It has 3 USB 2.0 ports, two on the right hand side of the device and one at the back side. There is Ethernet, charging, headphones and microphone slots as well. On the front side of the device there are certain LEDs for power/charging etc.

The keyboard has soft press keys which are way too close to each other, thanks to the size here. When you open this sleek notebook you are welcomed by the screen that says “Wireless Book”. This netbook comes with Windows CE OS 6.0 operating system. Though the operating system is pretty old it serves the purpose of minimal usage.

Applications

It has all the usual applications that come with any laptop or notebook. Internet works well with the machine. Connecting to the internet was fast and easy, it took me seconds to configure and in no time I was on Google search engine web page. The internet surfing was good but got a bit slow with time.

The mini laptop comes with Internet explorer, picture viewer, Word pad, Excel, Text maker, Presentation, media player, coral player, recorder, web video, winrar, calculator and such utility software. MP3, WMA, AAC music formats are supported which gives you a good range of music to listen to. I played a video which was clear enough. The notepad supports many video formats such as Mpeg1/2/4, XVID, DIVX4 etc.

When you open any window and wish to type something, there is a small window that flashes on the lower right hand side corner of the screen. It has all the keys and numbers so you can choose to select them with the mouse instead of typing from the keyboard.

Performance

The touch pad scroll is fast enough. The right and left clicks are precise as well. The 1800-2100mA/H Li-on battery is okay but doesn’t support a lot of back up. If you are doing multi tasking then there are chances the battery is going to die soon. The ARM926EJ CPU offers you a decent speed.

When you open any window and leave the laptop unattended for some time, the window starts flickering and making some sound. This can get a bit irritating at times. I do not know the reason behind it so much, it appears as if someone else is remotely using the laptop and moving the cursor.

Final Verdict

Cruise 7 inches Mini laptop is a must buy if you are not too techy and love to have a notepad worth the price which lets you do internet and normal activities like watching movie, listening to music, creating a word document and chatting.