Earlier this year Asus launched yet another Eee PC model in the crowded market of netbooks, with the introduction of the 1015B. It has a clamshell design which Asus calls seashell, which means that it’s thickest at the hinge while toward the front edge it is tapered. The mini laptop is available with a black matte finish but it can also be ordered with a red, silver or glossy black look.

The netbook is made out of plastic and the construction seems to be quite rigid so there is only a little amount of flex in the screen and chassis. The 1015B measures 1.43 x 10.31 x 7.0 inches (HWD) and it tips the scales at 2.8 pounds. It adopts an island-style keyboard with square keys that have a matte finish which manage to provide a very comfortable typing experience. The bad news is that this isn’t a full size keyboard so you might consider that it is a little bit cramped.

The Asus Eee PC 1015B is fitted with a regular 10.1-inch display that has a native resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels so it is not suitable for watching high definition content. However, it will suffice for web browsing and lower resolution streaming video. The screen is surrounded by a glossy black bezel which you will probably be cleaning often because it collects fingerprints. The palm rest has a silky finish just like the one you’ll find on the touchpad and the lid.

Under the hood there's an AMD C-30 processor clocked at 1.20 GHz from the company’s Fusion line. On the same chip is the AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics processor which improves energy efficiency but it is certainly not the fastest netbook out there.

The mini laptop will score 0.22 points in CineBench R11.5, which is considerably lower than the 0.48 points obtained by the Samsung NF310-A01 and the 0.61 points of the HP Pavilion dm1z. It is able to score 30 points overall in SYSMark 2007, while its highest performance was in 3D modeling and in the productivity tasks. The Atom-equipped HP Mini 5103 and the aforementioned Samsung score just about the same.

A lower processing power means that the Asus Eee PC 1015B has a great battery life. Thanks to the inclusion of a 6-cell 56Wh battery, the mini laptop is able to last for about 7 hours and 45 minutes during a test in MobileMark 2007, which is half an hour more than the Samsung and the HP dm1z. However, it’s still less than the 8 hours and 40 minutes achieved by the HP 5103 which comes with a 66Wh battery. Even though it will not reach the 8-hour mark, it still offers a long runtime.