Review of Acer Aspire One

Acer has developed a reputation for selling inexpensive systems worldwide, so it's only natural that it would come up with its own affordable netbook (or UMPC). Pressure from the ASUS EeePC and the HP 2133 Mini-Note made the company realize that it had to be on the same gravy train. The Acer Aspire One ($319 street) enters a quickly expanding field of miniature laptops, in a race to see who can out-shrink one another while staying within a strict budget. It has the performance potential to surpass the competition and a $319 entry point is just as cheap as the Asus EeePC, but the typing and navigating experience is not on a par with its competitors.

The affordable, stylish, and compact Aspire One catapulted Acer to the top of the heap in terms of market share for the red-hot netbook category. The latest version, the 10.1-inch Aspire One, is likely to keep the company in the lead. Expanding the original Aspire One’s screen from 8.9 to 10.1 inches, the new Aspire One is nearly as svelte as its predecessor and, even though the keyboard is the same size, its revamped touchpad is a marked improvement over the original. Add in a six-cell Acer Aspire One battery, which offers 6 hours of battery life, and you have a killer deal for $349.

With many Netbooks teetering on bulky kickstand-style batteries, we were pleased to see the Aspire One present a fairly slim profile. The six-cell battery does bump out a bit from the rear of the bottom panel, but the system is still less than 1.5 inches thick in the back, and less than 1 inch in the front. Our review unit was clad in an all-over glossy midnight blue, which looked fine from a distance, but was extremely fingerprint-prone.

Similarly, the touchpad is exceptionally easy to use, which is not always the case with netbooks. It is large, yet we never brushed it during typing and the multitouch functionality worked without a hitch – again a rarity on a netbook.

An Intel Atom processor provides power enough for basic use. It is a dual-core version, so should provide more power, but we didn't notice an improvement over older Atom processors, and word processing and web browsing run just as laboriously as before.

Specifications

• Intel Atom N450 (1.66 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache) CPU
• 1GB DDR2 RAM
• 250GB Hard Drive
• 10.1″ Acer CrystalBrite, 1024 x 600, LED Display
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 with 128MB Graphics
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 802.11b/g/n WiFi
• 0.3Mp CrystalEye Webcam
• 8-9 Hour Battery Life – 6 Cell
• 1.25Kg (2.8lbs) / 7.28 inches x 10.17 inches x 0.99 inches
• 5-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
• 3 x USB Ports, VGA out, Headphone/speaker/line-out jack, Microphone-in jack
• Windows 7 Starter

The first generation of netbooks comprised little more than overpriced toys that gave us a glimpse into the future of this emerging mobile market. Tiny screens, even smaller solid state storage and an overall cheap look and feel initially kept many users at bay.

Then a second wave of these mobile computing solutions came, bringing larger (mostly 10-inch) screens along with traditional spinning hard drives that significantly increased storage capacity, a near exclusive adoption of Intel’s mobile Atom processor and more solid, non-childish looking designs.

The 10.1-inch screen is very comfortable to use thanks to the lack of a shiny screen coating, and so is easy to read in all light conditions. Having said that, we would have liked it to be a little brighter. Colours appear a bit washed out, making this more suited to office work than viewing movies.

The Aspire One from Acer is, I admit, a subnotebook I fell in love with almost as soon as I got my hands on it. The reasons were twofold. Firstly it wasn't white, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to photograph. Also, the keyboard.

The keyboard is where most subnotebooks get it wrong. They shrink it down too much or not enough. They make the keys a little bit smooshy, or they over compensate like the HP Mininote, creating a satisfying and solid feel that unfortunately drives the price up. The Acer though is different. The keyboard is decently sized, firm and easy to use. Our standard keyboard test involves writing articles, playing some games and writing the Jabberwocky poem over and over again – and we had absolutely no problems with any of them when it came to the Aspire One battery.

Connectivity is also identical to its cousin and indeed to most other netbooks, whether from this generation or the last one. That means you get a disappointing selection of three USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks, an Ethernet port, memory card reader and analogue VGA video output.

That's why we're impressed with Acer's entry in the netbook wars, the Aspire One. True, "impressed" doesn't mean "enraptured"; Intel's new Atom processor's performance is underwhelming, and our test unit delivered disappointingly brief Acer Aspire One battery life.

But the Acer is a handsome and classy ultraportable with a high-quality 8.9-inch display, a remarkably usable keyboard, and the familiar environment of Windows XP Home Edition with an ample 120GB hard disk for installing applications and storing data, music, and image files. Considering that it cost the same $399 as the 7-inch, keyboard- and storage-cramped Eee PC 4G we cheered last November, we decided fairly quickly to give it a thumbs up.

Acer’s Aspire One netbook range has been running almost as long as ASUS’ Eee PC line, and by now the company has got the industrial design down to a fine art. No expensive metal or unnecessary finishes, just a lightweight shell that’s a mere 0.8-inches thick and 2.5lbs, a nicely sprung, full-sized chiclet keyboard, and a broad multitouch-capable trackpad that’s easy to use. We’re not 100-percent convinced by the blue color of our review model, but Acer also offer other variants.

Acer decided to continue to use the 10.1-inch LCD display size rather than moving to a larger one. This does help keep the overall size down but there is a wide bezel around the screen. The PineTrail platform also comes with a new GMA 3150 integrated graphics solution. Unfortunately, there isn't much difference from the older GMA 950 in terms of performance. It still lacks the performance to even handle high definition video streams.

The screen of the One is 1024x600, 8.9", and has that glossy finish, something some love, some hate. In any case, the screen is very bright, and can be read in dim and bright light conditions, perfect for a mobile device. The size is a bit small at first, but you get used to it quickly. It's perfect for browsing, especially when combined with Firefox 3.0's excellent full-screen capabilities (F11).

The solid state drive poses some problems. Especially with small write operations it's quite slow, which can become annoying when you're dealing with larger amounts of emails. It does aid in boot time though, it takes only about 20 seconds from pressing the power button to a fully operational desktop.

OpenOffice springs into life with appreciable haste and, in contrast to HP's Mini-Note 2133, video streams smoothly from Youtube or Blip.Tv in full-screen mode. There's the odd stutter now and again, and some videos seem a little jerkier than their windowed counterparts, but it never renders anything unwatchable. Disappointingly, though, DivX's and .VOB files refused to play with the supplied Mplayer software, which claimed to lack the suitable video codecs. We hope this is an omission which will be rectified in production models.

But here’s where things get really shocking for me: I didn’t have to do any more serious tweaking than that. Because out of the box, this tiny machine runs like a complete champ. Now, I’m probably biased because I’ve been spending the last few years continually stripping extraneous crap out of my old Vaio to get it to run faster and leaner, but to be able to have eight fairly resource-intensive Firefox tabs open, along with iTunes, Thunderbird, and Pidgin, and not have the machine slow down — well, it almost feels like a fairy tale.

This Intel Atom based netbook won't be breaking any speed records, but it performed more than adequately for normal activities. Internet browsing, word processing, and even photo editing tasks were handed in a very snappy environment. The most surprising thing from a reviewing standpoint was this subnotebook giving benchmark results in every program we could throw at it. This is not par for the course though, as many other netbooks have limited resolutions or other odd quirks that prevent most of the standard benchmarking programs to give valid results.