The Raon Digital Vega can best be described as an ultra-small PC. Its smaller than a paperback book, weighs less than half a bag of sugar, and runs Windows XP home operating system. Yes. It’s really is an ultra small PC, with screen included! Carrypad has had the device for nearly two weeks and put it through a heavy real-life test schedule. Read-on for a detailed review and our opinion on the device.
Raon Digital have been kind enough to let Carrypad have a Vega for an extended test over the last two weeks. What better way to write up the review about the Vega than to write the review on the Vega itself. I’ve got 2 hours on a train from Brussels to Cologne with the Vega, a Bluetooth USB stick and a Bluetooth keyboard. Lets see how it goes.
Vega Overview
For those that have been following the ultra small PC market over the last 6 months you will have heard about Microsoft’s Origami project and the Ultra Mobile PC’s that were released a a result of the projects platform definition. You might also have heard about the OQO mini PC. The Vega is a device designed along the same principles of ultra portability.
Raon Digital have designed the device with a low-end specification but managed to pack in a huge amount of functionality. A business or games PC it is not but if your looking for something that is able to satisfy all your audio and video playback requirements, perform high quality full-experience browsing, perform email and basic office functions, connect up to a VGA monitor, keyboard and mouse for the occasional full-pc experience, perform as a navigation unit and media device in the car, and provide you with 5 hours of full PC mobility, the Vega is really worth considering.
First five minutes.
As this review device was a pre-production model, I can’t really comment on the packaging. It was white and small though. Hugo Ortega of Ubertablet has done an unboxing video which is worth watching. For a full set of Vega photos, see the Carrypad Vega images gallery .
My first impression was surprise at how small it was. I was expected something a little bigger. First start up was a simple case of attaching the battery and pressing the start button. Windows booted up in about 60 seconds and that was it. The left thumb rested nicely on the dual-function mouse/cursor disc and the right thumb over the function key pad which includes the left and right mouse buttons which have a comfortable and reliable click-action. The keypad is multi functional. Using combination key presses its possible to get over 40 combinations of keys as well as volume and LCD control. As I’ve shown the device around, some have commented that the button layout is too complex. Others have commented that it could speed things up. My personal opinion is that the keys are optional. You can perform everything you need to do without them but as you get used to the device it’s worth learning how to use them as it really speeds up certain actions.
The style of the device impresses. The gloss black and perlescent white, curved edges and silver disc have obviously been well thought out. The other part of the Vega that really impresses is the screen. At the native 800×480 its very clear, bright and well colour balanced.
I personally felt that the Vega was heavier than it looks. Not that 450gms is heavy but you are quite surprised by the density of the device when you hold it. Remember though that unlike other devices, this one is shipped with an extended battery by default. A smaller sized battery is available as an accessory and reduces the weight and thickness considerably.
From the outside.
The 4.3" (light-touch. I guess its an 80gm as opposed to a 120gm heavy-touch panel.) touchscreen is framed with the array of buttons that i mentioned above. The mouse disc is not quite as responsive and certainly not as solid as some mouse buttons that I’ve tried but it’s an analogue device and permits swift and intuitive two-handed control of the device. As an ingress point for dust, dirt and cups of tea, this disc could be a weak point and I feel that there is room for improvement here. Round the outside of the device you will find the power input socket, audio-out and mic-in (3.5mm) sockets, a USB host connector (more about that later), two normal USB ports, heat vents (I’m not aware that there are any fans in this device. Its totally silent, although can get very warm in the hand when watching videos for example.) On the top right is the pointer lanyard hole and moving down the right you have the power button, the reset button ,a screen and front button lock (this does not stop you from accidentally hitting the reset button and it’s not reconfigurable in any way. Its a problem waiting to happen and a definite design fault.) Underneath the lock button is a VGA-out connector which can drive a monitor up to 1920-wide resolutions. I would have liked to have tried the Vega in a desktop configuration but the VGA cable that normally comes as standard was missing in this review device.
As mentioned before, the Vega comes with an extended battery which gives the device a dense and chunky feel. Although it would feel better with the smaller battery, the battery life advantages of the extended battery far outweigh the disadvantages.
On the inside
Minimalisation continues to extremes on the inside of the Vega. After taking the battery off, it seems hard to believe that in the remaining case holds an AMD LX800 processor, up to 512MB RAM, a 30Gb 1.8" drive, the screen and the additional components that go together to make a PC. What you won’t find inside the casing, very disappointingly, is a WiFi or Bluetooth radio. Herein lies my only important complaint about the Vega. This is not just a media player, its a complete internet terminal and to market the device without even a tiny Bluetooth module seems to be a major mistake. The included USB WiFi module works but is not the answer. Every day that I had the Vega, I had to look for my USB module at least once. If I had forgotten to take it with me, It would have reduced the device to an over-complicated and expensive media player. Raon Digital has said since the launch that they are considering including the radios for an upgraded model so let’s hope that this comes soon.
The 30Gb hard disk comes as two partitions 23+4GB with the smaller partition largely free but containing some drivers. This could be optimized a bit more to give 3GB more space on the main drive although the production devices may have a different setup.
[Switching to normal PC now that I’m home again! The Vega performed well and the test was successful. I had some problems related to the keyboard though that I’ll cover in a later journal entry.]
Software
Windows XP is Windows XP! This is Home Edition which has a base memory footprint of well under 100MB and it functions perfectly and fits well with the intended uses of the device.
In addition to XP Home, you get the Vega toolbar which shows a very simple battery life indicator and volume control and the Vega on screen keyboard which is adequate. I found myself moving over to Ilium Software’s Inscribe software after installing for a test in the later part of my time with the Vega.
Performance.
This is probably one of the first-ever reviews of a consumer product based on the AMD LX800 processor. This processor was developed by the National Semiconductor Geode team bought buy AMD some 2 or 3 years ago and comes with a ‘companion’ chip – the CS5536 – which performs memory, peripheral and graphics functions.
In tests, you can easily see that the 500Mhz processor is a low-end x86 device with arithmetic results comparable to Pentium II’s and III’s at the 400-600Mhz level. Memory bandwidth is also on the low side and again, comparable to 5-6 year old PC’s with PC100 SDRAM at 500-600Mbps transfer speeds.
The Hard Disk speed is quite acceptable at 20MBps read / 16MBps write and this is probably one of the reasons that the device seems fairly ‘normal’ in real-world usage terms.
Real-world performance.
Of all the applications I tried, only those which required 3D support failed. Microsoft Office 2003 loaded easily and even animations and effects on powerpoint presentations seemed to work well. Skype calls pushed the processor very hard and I experienced a few dropouts in one of the calls I made. Other calls were fine and it could be that you’d have to set a higher process priority on Skype to get 100% reliability. Its borderline. Explorer and Outlook express ran well as did many of the other applications. Adobe acrobat is quite slow but acceptable.Other applications I used without problem were Outlook 2003, Winamp, ac3filter, Acrobat reader, Bluesoleil BT stack, Ilium Inscribe, .net frameworks 1.1 and 2.0, Power-DVD, Google toolbar, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Skype, Trillian, LiveWriter and Zoomplayer.
tunes and Streetdeck (carputer software) didn’t function due to lack of Direct3G support. Google earth installs and runs but is unusable because of the 3D processing load placed on the processor through google earths 3D emulation layer.
Multimedia
The Vega has stereo mini speakers built in which are acceptable and better quality than the eo v7110 but headphones brings out the best of the good, clean, quality audio available from the device. Listening to audio and video content with a Sennheiser headset was a pleasure.
The CS5536 companion chip has some hardware 2D acceleration built-in and this helps speed up Windows beyond what would be expected of a 500Mhz PII class processor. It also helps video processing which runs right up to 2mbps for advanced video codes such as Divx, Xvid and WMV9 before frame drop becomes apparent. DVD’s certainly tax the processor but if there’s only a few other applications running there’s no problem. As it’s running windows XP you’ll be able to load up all your favorite codecs and I wouldn’t expect any problems at all with ‘normal’ content.
Gaming
The Vega is not a PSP competitor. 3D support is limited to 3Dnow which means most modern games are not going to work. If you have a cache of older or 2D games, you might find a second wind for them on the Vega though because the ergonomics of the device are good. Switching the mouse button into cursor mode and programming the correct keys is going to give you a good quality games controller. I tested an old version of Need For Speed (circa 2000) which worked but didn’t have enough time to dig out some of my old favorites like Defender and Donkey Kong! There must be a whole set of older 2D games that would work well on the Vega.
Battery life.
Battery life is exceptional. In real-world terms it’s a one-charge-per-day device. Raon Digital have performed a good marketing trick by providing the extended battery as standard because 4-5 hours of battery life is way way above what any of the current Origami-based UMPC’s can do. Having said that, the extended battery is only about 20% bigger than the standard batteries of the Origami devices and the Vega is truly energy efficient with an average loaded drain of about 8W.
I performed one battery life test using a looped Xvid video file. I disabled all enrgy saving, put the screen to max and ran from a full battery to very ungraceful shutdown for 4 hours and 17 minutes! That’s more than the Microsoft Zune is supposed to be able to do. Under normal use and with the screen brightness turned down slightly, this is a 5 hour device. As an audio-only player with the screen off, you could be looking at over 10 hours.
Boot-up / Standby / Stability.
Boot-up takes around 60 seconds on a clean device and return from standby is an acceptable 5 seconds. Both standby and hibernation performed without fault and after 2 weeks with the device, I didn’t see any blue-screens or unplanned reboots.
USB client feature.
One quite unique feature of this device is that it is able to function as a USB drive when shutdown or in standby mode. The supplied USB cable powers the drive and provides USB2.0 connectivity. Its very useful for transferring files, even if the battery is removed or flat.
Accessories.
Included in the box are a slip case (not provided with this demo model) a USB cable, pointer and lanyard, a VGA cable (not provided with this demo model) the USB WiFi stick and some in-ear headphones (not headset) of unknown quality.
The pointer is a very cheap affair. Too short. I threw it back in the box and used the pen from my Ipaq. Another annoying thing is that there is no storage for the pointer. If you want to keep it nearby you have to use the lanyard provided and leave it dangling around. Its an ugly solution. The Wifi stick is of average quality and won’t beat any range-finding records. If you want something better at least you can easily replace it. It would have been nice to see a Bluetooth stick and a headset included but these don’t cost much to add afterwards. Finally you get a power supply which takes 100-240v in (good for global traveling) and provides 12V out. I read that the Vega has a regulated power input which can take 10-15volts. It should (not guaranteed though!) run from a car battery with no problems.<
As optional accesories, Raon Digital offer a portable keyboard, GPS module and navigation software (presumeably for the South Korean market) , extra batteries (small and normal) and a TV-OUT converter.
Other notes
Linux (Ubuntu) booted from a Live CD worked OK. Ubuntu had no problem recognizing the hardware. Booting Linux from USB stick was also possible.
I tried the Vega in a number of car situations and found it to be a very good size for on-dashboard mounting via a cheap PDA holder. Its also powerful enough to run all the applications you need in a car from multimedia to phone control to navigation. Using InCar Terminal as the overlay package, I was extremely happy at the functionality and portability it gave me. The Vega could shine as a CarPC. For more information on using the Vega as a CarPC, I have a series of journal entries with images and videos here : One note on the car software. The very popular StreetDeck application did not work due to it’s 3D requirements.
Comparison to Other devices.
The Vega is smaller than any of the Origami UMPC devices available today and sits at the smallest end of the UMPC scale with devices like the Nokia 770, Sony UX and the yet to be released DualCor UMPC. In terms of performance, the obvious comparison is the Pepperpad 3 which is also unreleased and untested but uses exactly the same chipset. One might also compare it to some high-end Windows Mobile PDA’s and smartphones but it’s software base gives it a big advantage over these in terms of choice.
In terms of pricing, well, unfortunately, the Vega is currently unavailable outside South Korea where it sells for the equivalent of $700. ($750 – 512MB RAM) As I’ve been doing this review over the last two weeks I have been hearing the Raon Digital are in negotiations with a few resellers around the world.
Pricing is very difficult to predict. Day-one prices will be a careful balance below the pricing of the low-end Origami devices. Anything more than $800 and there will be comparisons drawn with the more powerful and office-oriented XP tablet edition Origami devices. At a price lower than $700, reseller could be depriving themselves of profit. My guess is that the day one price will be $750 in the U.S. with the usual price premiums being added in other regions of the world.
Who is the target customer?
Because of the small screen does not lend itself well to extended periods of typing, software development, graphics or presentation work however, the addition of an external screen would permit the Vega to be used for office applications with no problems. Presentations via an LCD screen or projector will seem all the more impressive coming from such a small device. Graphical, video, software development is really beyond the scope of the device and aming possibilities are very limited.
What the Vega is very good at is quality output! That is, web browsing, email reading, music, navigation and video. Being a highly mobile device with multiple input possibilities, long battery life and style makes it perfect for the home user as a combination lounge, bedroom, car, holiday PC. For occasional use as a emailer, word processor, or presentation device, its fine too. Car PC enthusiasts looking for an easy way to add a mobile PC to the car with screen expansion potential should really take a close look. For families looking for a portable entertainment and education solution its also good. Kids educational software is usually low on performance requirements and may run well on the Vega.
Faults and issues.
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The lack of built in Wifi and Bluetooth is top of the list and possibly the only significant fault of the device. It’s going to attract bad press, bad forum comments and will ultimately put people off the device despite the WiFi capability being delivered in the box. The Vega is too good to ignore just because it doesn’t have WiFi and Bluetooth but it’s a constant annoyance.
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The default Korean text on the on-screen keyboard requires a press to get the English keyboard up and a problem with screen focus (the application drops to the back and has to be brought to the front with alt-tab before it can be used.) needs to be sorted out.
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Pointer /silo. The stylus/pointer is very low quality and too short. In addition, there’s no slot for it.
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Key backlighting.Only the cursor keys get a backlight when enabled. Other keys have no backlight making night/low light use difficult.
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Some faint screen backlight pulsing at low backlight levels during disk access.
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Reset button does not lock.
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256MB version will require regular housekeeping over time to keep it performing well.
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Device gets very warm under heavy and continuous load
Summary.
The Vega is an Ultra Mobile PC in a class on its it’s own right now. Although there are a few devices in the same size class (Sony UX, DualCor, Nokia 770) nothing can match the price/functionality ratio of the Vega. As I said before, this isn’t a device that can handle all the office applications that you will throw at it. Its not a 3D gaming PC either. Despite the form factor being perfect, its not powerful enough to handle modern games.
What it is though is a low-end computer that can be an ultra mobile core to a number of computing scenarios. I almost hesitate to say it but the Vega is more mobile than Origami devices. Performance was never so slow as to be annoying and the 110Mb XP Home footprint and 32Mb video memory left 100MB free for applications. Explorer, outlook, Skype, winamp and WordPad will all run together with a number of taskbar applications without giving you performance issues. The hard disk is nimble and large enough for most uses.
In the home for the average user, its so useful and so mobile that you’ll find yourself using it in preference to a laptop or desktop for many day-to-day email reading and web-browsing activities. With a good set of bookmarks there’s no need for the keyboard at all! You might find yourself picking it up and slipping it in your handbag, manbag, purse, rucksack, or school bag as you leave the house, you might find it replacing your audio source in the car and helping with navigation or passenger entertainment duties as a video player. In the train I used it with a mini Bluetooth keyboard to write the first half of this article. In the waiting room I plugged in a 20Euro Bluetooth stick and checked emails and RSS feeds via 3G.
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