Intel Corp (INTC)

[mas]

That's a better balanced design that delivers what was promised from Core-M, a fanless genuine Core experience. I really don't know what miracle you was expecting instead ...

Browsing in Internet Explorer or Firefox, streaming 1080p and even 4K clips from Youtube, watching .mkv 1080p movies and even playing some older games are all possible on this configuration. You can also multitask between these apps, to some extent, without encountering stuttering or performance drops. The CPU runs constantly at frequencies close to 2.0 GHz while performing all these activities, as proven by the pictures below.

Now, back to those games. I tried a few titles, including Dirt 3, on 1366 x 768 px with Very Low details and I averaged around 30-35 fps on the T300FA, which made it playable. Need For Speed Most Wanted on the other hand, which is a more demanding title, barely averaged 12 to 15 fps with similar settings. Thus as expected, the platform is not meant for gaming, but it can actually handle older and simpler titles, if you really want to play something from time to time. Even so, gaming on this Asus is a lot better than what I got with the Yoga 3 Pro, whose hardware throttled aggressively, so I can summarize that Core M-5Y70 CPU inside the Lenovo is far more capable than their implementation was able to deliver.

The CPU runs at its designed 4.5W Core Power throughout all the tested activities and both the graphics and the processor run show no signs of throttling in these cases, not even when dealing with games, although GPU frequencies do drop under load.

I also ran some benchmarks on this computer and the results are available below:

3DMark 11: P610;
3DMark 13: Ice Storm – 26246, Cloud Gate – 2765, Sky Diver – 1324, Fire Strike – 346;
PCMark 08: Home Conventional – 1948;
CineBench 11.5: OpenGL 12.61 fps, CPU 1.62 pts;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 16.72 fps, CPU 131 pts.

It’s worth noting that subsequent runs of Cinebench did not lead to lower results, like it happened on the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, thus the hardware isn’t as thermal capped on this device. The same thing is visible from the stress-tests:

Stressing the CPU only with Prime 95 makes it stabilize at about 1.3 GHz and reach average temperatures of about 75 C;
Stressing the GPU only with Furmark leads to an average clock speed of about 420 Mhz;
Stressing both leads makes the CPU stabilize at around 700 MHz and the graphics at about 300 Mhz, with CPU temperatures of 75 C as well.

If your quibbles are about battery life or surface heat well that's down to the OEM scrimping on solutions and not the fault of the genuinely sub 5W but still potent Core-M.