Acer Aspire One Netbook Review

Hello all, you may remember reading my Clevo M570RU (link to come). If you do, you'll know that I'm a bit of a minimalist when it comes to, well, a lot of things, including reviews. I was lucky enough to receive an Acer Aspire One netbook as a Christmas present. My initial thought was "we should return this and wait until June or July to get a better model", but since it's from Costco, I guess I can return it just about whenever I'm ready to.

The specific model I received has the following specifications:

• 802.11 b/g WLAN
• 10/100 LAN
• Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 160GB HDD
• 8.9" WSVGA (1024x600)
• Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
• Acer Crystal Eye Webcam
• Integrated Microphone
• 2.0 Speakers
• SD/MMC/RS-MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD Card Reader
• 3x USB 2.0
• VGA Port
• Windows XP Home

It was purchased from Costco Online.

First Netbook Use

This is the first netbook I have ever used. The keyboard is small, but I'm typing perfectly on it at this very moment. It's not that great of a difference from a 15" notebook, so the average laptop owner should have no problem.

I do have several complaints which I'll hit on later on in the review. The first one is the mousepad, which seems to work smoothly only when your fingers are perfectly dry. The second is Realtek Audio. The third is the heat. Now for the real meat of the review.


First Impressions/Startup

My first impression was "my goodness this thing is small". Honestly, I had seen netbooks in photos before, but... wow. Going from my 17" Clevo to this 8.9" Acer is awesome. The box came with your standard things: battery, AC adapter, booklets, and a nice little baggy to put it in.

The thing is lovely to look at. It's got a nice metallic blue color offset with the orange from the hinges. This brings me to something else that is a novelty for me: the screen tilts up and away from the actual chassis, leaving a large open space between the top of the chassis and the screen itself. I thought this would become bothersome, but it's really not that bad. It's like a little peek hole to see if you still have legs (not that I check if I still have legs every 5 minutes or anything).

Starup was interesting as well. I had never experienced a notebook that came with a preinstalled OS on it. It all went smoothly, but I wasn't very fond of the Acer Startup Manager which came up at first boot. It installed several bloatware programs from Google (Google Desktop, toolbars, McAffee trial, etc), but it finished within 15 minutes, rebooted, and then let me do my thing.


Keyboard/Mouse

As I stated previously, the keyboard is small, but not super-tiny. It's easy to type with, and has a nice soft click to the keys which I find to be quite a pleasure with any keyboard. There is nearly no flex, and even if there was, you wouldn't notice it very much because the limited space kind of hinders any motion large enough to cause massive flexing. It has gread placement of Fn keys along the F* which invlude Sleep, mousepad on/off, backlight on/off, and easy access to brightness and volume controls on the arrow keys.

The mouse is something that could use rework. I personally don't mind it, but others may find problems with having the buttons on the sides of the mouse as opposed to the bottom as it is with most notebooks. It does have a response click when you tap the pad, which is what I use 99% of the time, which also frees up my hand to use the right button. Hence why I don't mind having them at the side. If you prefer to use the buttons rather than tapping the keypad, you'll find yourself either stretching your hand a lot or using some of that dual-core hand-clicking. The pad itself is not one of my favorite things. It's similar to the flagship models of the HP family. It's very smooth, not textured at all, and will be extremely jumpy or not responsive if your hands are at all moist or wet. This is sure to annoy you if you work in a hot room, have sweaty palms, or use a laptop only if you can dip your hands under water every other click.

Even though it doesn't have any markings on it, the right side of the trackpad can be used for vertical scroll, and the bottom of it is used for horizontal scrolling.


Screen/GPU/CPU

The screen is impressive, to say the least. It's glossy, which means that it reflects images, unlike matte screens which don't reflect anything. This isn't a bother at all because the light from the screen is powerful enough to not cause any reflections. The screen is LED-backlit to save on energy and provide a longer life (I'm not 100% sure on the last one, but I know that LEDs last a heck of a long time). There are 6 or 7 light settings, and I find myself using one that's right inbetween the lowest and the highest. The lowest is perfect for nighttime or dim rooms, and I find the highest is a bit too bright even for daytime. The 1024x600 resolution is great for whatever you're doing. Large enough for movies, large enough for word processing, small enough for visible icons. The lid is actually larger than 8.9" because the screen has a surrounding glossy black border around it, about 2cm wide on the sides and 1.5cm on the top and bottom. This isn't much of a bother.

The GPU is a neat little thing. I haven't ever used an integrated video accelerator before, but I can say that I'm not disappointed. I was warned that it might not be sufficient to play some of the higher-resolution films. It plays 576p films (a step above SD) absolutely perfectly. I love having my own mini-theater to watch Gladiator whenever I want. I also installed Steam and CS 1.6 to see how it would run, and I see just minor lag when it has wide-open spaces (video coming soon). I also have Darwinia installed, and I'll run that a bit later to see how it handles (video coming too).

The CPU seems good enough; it's a 1.6GHz Atom processor, which is Intel's line of efficient low-power processors. It gets the job done for any netbook tasks you have. It unzips files quickly, plays films fast enough, plays older games with no problem. If anyone wants, I can run a PCMark test on it.


HDD/WLAN

When I was told that the hard drive is a 160GB HDD, I was kind of bummed because it's hotter and uses more power than an SSD. Now that I think of it a bit more, I love the large amount of space which will prove to be useful for running multiple OSs (something I'm fond of doing). It'll be nice to see how Ubuntu and Mac OSX run on this. The computer seems to get a bit hot, and I have a suspicion that this is from the HDD. It's no major problem, but I was expecting it to be a bit cooler than it is.

The reason I included WLAN with HDD is because I run a fileserver which holds all of my media. That was one of the reasons that I was thinking that 160GB might be overkill. I was worried that a 576p film would have a bitrate too high for an 802.11b/g connection to handle, but it's working just fine from 30 meters away through several walls and a staircase. I've been streaming music for the past 6 hours without a single skip. There is a switch on the right hand side, similar to what HPs have, to turn WLAN on/off. This can save you maybe 15 minutes of battery life if you choose to turn it off.


Battery

The battery is a 3-Cell lithium-ion battery which works well enough for me. I get an estimated 2 hours and 15 minutes of life when I unplug my AC which is a step up from the 75 minutes I get with my desktop replacement Clevo. It's nice and small; doesn't stick out like some other batteries do.

The power brick is small and light, and gets just warm when it's plugged in. You wouldn't be using it as a heater during the winter.


Peripheries

This netbook has 3 USB 2.0 ports: one on the left and two on the right. They're placed right in the middle of the edge which is nice, since any USB keys won't get in your way. The SD and Multi-In-One card readers are also nice. The SD is on the left, and Multi-In-One is on the right. These do just what you'd expect them to do: read your cards. The VGA port is on the left side, used to connect the computer to a TV. I might use this when I have any parties or if I want to watch a movie with friends. The LAN connector is on the left side. The audio and recording jacks are right where they should be: not in the front. They're comfortably placed on the right side, easily accessible and out of the way.


Audio

This is a little peeve of mine. Realtek is just fine, a generic audio card/driver. My Clevo notebook also has "Realtek HD Audio Manager", a program which is nice enough to notify you that "You just plugged a device into the audio jack!" Many people complain about Realtek because the sound quality is bad. A fix for this is to go into the Manager's options and change it to Padded Hallway and to Soft or Rock EQ settings and you'll be much more pleased, be it with headphones or the integrated 2.0 speakers. The main reason I don't like Realtek is because I've had problems with the Realtek HD Audio under Linux systems, and it's a real pain in the neck to fix. If you'll be using the installed Windows XP SP3 OS then you're set. The included 2.0 speakers are nothing great. They're loud enough to fill the entire room with tinny low-quality sound, and then some. If you use them at low volume they don't sound half-bad.


Other

It comes with 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, which should be more than enough for typical netbook use. The heat issue I mentioned at the beginning and somewhere in the middle, I do believe is from the hard-drive, but it isn't anything that will keep this little gem off of your lap. You can touch the bottom comfortably, although you will begin to feel a bit toasty after a while. I doubt that a cooler is needed.

There is no optical media drive. This is just fine for me because I use my server for any media I have, or if not, I'll just use my main computer and transfer everything using a USB drive. USB drives are also the solutions if you want to install other operating systems.

It has LED lights for Power, Battery, HDD use, Capslock, and Numlock.

There is a place on the right side to put a lock through.

It's awesome



Conclusion

If you're looking for a netbook which has Windows XP preinstalled, this wouldn't be a bad option at all. It's got a great keyboard, apparently better than most other netbooks, a good amount of easily-accessible ports, a very bright and crisp screen, and is extremely quiet while running. It would be ideal for college students or people who travel between many places during the day and need a computer with them.


Pros

• Bright, crisp screen
• Good variety of ports with great placement
• Very large disk space
• Easy-to-use keyboard
• Breaks the color code by offering a metallic blue finish

Cons

• Trackpad dooesn't work well if fingers are wet
• Mouse buttons to the side of trackpad
• Speaker sound is mediocre at best
• 3-cell battery may not be enough for some
• HDD sucks battery life and emits excess heat

As always, feel free to PM me or post a reply if you have any questions. I'll update this with pictures and videos when I do a bit more of my college application essays

 

Good review. My wife has one... and I would like to add to the 'cons':

IMPOSSIBLE to upgrade RAM or HDD without tearing apart completely (removing screen, keyboard, motherboard) and thus voiding the warranty

Chipset supports 2gb of RAM, but since 512mb is soldered to the motherboard RAM is effectively capped at 1.5gb

BIOS issue where it becomes corrupted randomly. There is a hack that home users can do, but it is bricked until fixed.

 

This was an issue with bios rev's 3114 or older. It has been rectified since then, I believe around 2 months ago at least. However, that brings up another problem where the newer bioses have removed the option for the lower light settings on the LCD due to some panels having flicker at these settings.

 

Good to know. I wasn't aware that Acer fixed the problem.

 

That was a nice review you provided! I was looking at the Aspire One, at one time before purchasing my current netbook!

Can't wait to see the pic's/vid, once you have completed your college app' essays, that is!


Cin.

 

There is a version with 6 cell. You did review the 3 cell so that is fair that you put that as a potential con but you should also mention that a 6 cell model is available. The battery does jut out the back though but also raises it as well so it does give a bit of a lift for typing. Can't complain too much about more than doubling battery life though (5200mah for 6 cell vs 2200mah for 3 cell). I think our Acer's at Costco in Canada come with a 4 cell 2750mah battery though I haven't verified this as of yet.

Other than the HP, I think this has the best keyboard in the 8.9" range. The Asus is good except for the right shift key being on the other side of the cursor keys. There is also a FN+F7 that can be used to disable the touchpad which the Asus EEE series does not have, handy for those who would be using an external mouse.

The small touchpad and larger keyboard mean a smaller surface for palm-rest, this is a con for me.

The right side reader is more of a multi-reader than the Asus, as it also reads XD. The left side is only an SD as you mentioned.

I did not enjoy having to take the whole laptop apart to upgrade the ram/HDD. I wish they would have done a bottom panel like Asus did. Definitely a con. Removing the keyboard, the left-most tab holding the keyboard down cannot be reached easily if it is pushed too far in and does not come back out. The other 2 (middle + right) can be reached pretty easily. You must really finagle to get the left one to come back out again.

 

Good review, Romanian, and good comments, Goofball. I appreciate the information and concur with what has been said.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One, 150-1029, for my wife. She loves it. My two main criteria were price and XP instead of Vista. She has been using it a couple of weeks and she loves it. She needed a computer to download and manage her music on and to check her email.

I looked at a lot of laptops and notebooks. The laptops with XP were out of my price range. The Acer Aspire had the best keyboard (that means larger keyboard and good feel) of any of the netbooks we looked at. I can even touch type on it.

I spent the better part of the day at a hospital where a friend was undergoing heart surgery. I took the AA1 with me. I connected to the hospital's guest wireless service and passed the time surfing the net and catching up on my email. As aresult of that experieince, I did go purchase a wireless mouse. However, my wife prefers the touch pad to the mouse. Go figure.

The Acer is a good buy for the money and fits her needs perfectly. It is easy to take along when one is traveling. We paid $327.00 USD.

 

nice review!!!please post the pics when you are free.

 

I've got the Aspire one with Linux. It's so cheap and works great for getting on the net when I'm overseas and don't want to carry my big Alienware all over.