The Aspire One is another venture into the Netbook range, but this time from the laptop manufacturer giant Acer. It has a 8.9” 1024x600 beautiful glossy screen and handsome colors give it an edge for a consumer choice as far as looks go, but it’s whats inside that counts more so for those who are looking for the “best bang” for the buck. We’ve managed to find the sought after 6-cell battery version, which brings running time to nearly 6 hours – if you are looking for a sporty sexy netbook, you should read the following to see if it screams your name and offers that smoke a cigarette after satisfaction.
The Aspire One is another venture into the Netbook range, but this time from the laptop manufacturer giant Acer. It has a 8.9” 1024x600 beautiful glossy screen and handsome colors give it an edge for a consumer choice as far as looks go, but it’s whats inside that counts more so for those who are looking for the “best bang” for the buck. We’ve managed to find the sought after 6-cell battery version, which brings running time to nearly 6 hours – if you are looking for a sporty sexy netbook, you should read the following to see if it screams your name and offers that smoke a cigarette after satisfaction.
Design
Beautiful is one word to describe the Aspire One. No doubts the highly metallic color schemes, the chrome accents and stark bezel (although rather large) it seems to fit in with the niche that looking good for mobile devices might surpass the purpose they were developed for. I do admit that the glossy screen and paint finish is nice, but attracts dirt and fingerprints like kids to a candy store. The trackpad also offers some confusion. I’m at a loss as to why they put the buttons where they did, it is a little awkward so be prepared for that.
Being that this is an 8.9” LCD model, one would hope or expect that the actual dimensions of the unit would be smaller than other netbooks with the 10” display. You would be wrong – the bezel makes up the big chunk of space that provides the extra dimensional space, and when you pick up the 6-cell battery version as we did, the depth of the unit is actually larger than some of the 10” modeled netbooks out there! That’s because Acer opted to protrude the extra capacity to the rear (not down as in the MSI Wind) it makes for a bulky back that doesn’t offer lift, and might make the dimensions hard to find a “bag” made for such dimensions. If it’s one thing that I do love on the design, is the simple LED status lights which are located towards the top rear of the unit – making things visible no matter if the LCD is open, or closed. One thing I also dislike is the way Acer implemented the Wireless radio button – slider thing. It’s cumbersome and should have been a plain button instead. It’s too easy to accidently trigger, and when you really want to trigger it, it’s hard to tell with the slider if you have “slid it all the way” to disable / enable it.
Keyboard:
The keyboard on the Aspire one is nice. Although they have switched the fN and Ctrl layout, at least they cover all the basics and make the keys seem natural. They are somewhat larger for a netbook, and offer great travel. There is some flex, but not to bad. Negatives is that it’s a black keyboard, and although it matches the color scheme, hunting for fN keys in the dark is troublesome.
The touchpad leaves some tweaking to be worked with – it does it’s job, but the buttons are laid out on either side of the pad, and it’s awkward for normal laptop users to adjust to this. Other than that, I have no complaints other than you’ll have to bump up it’s sensitivity a bit, and the paint job matches the rest of the chassis which looks the smarts for sure
Display Quality:
Being LED backlit, the LCD on Aspire One carries a 1024x600 resolution and it has a glossy finish. The color push on the LCD seems to be slightly red – but more importantly, the viewing angles on the Aspire wind are horrible! Severe color shifting and inversion happens at nearly any angle that isn’t “directly” in front center of the screen. This makes it even difficult to read a webpage at an angle of the screen, as the top might be in correct placement, making the bottom shift and invert! But – you do get better contrast and excellent color reproduction. It was a noticeably different than that of the MSI Wind – and even with some instances of extreme glare, the backlighting seemed to bleed a lot around the edges. Making blacks seem more gray and annoying with a letterbox
Connectivity
The Aspire One, much with other netbooks, offers some consideration as to how you wish to use the unit for it’s connectivity installed. Most if not all netbooks offer at least one USB 2.0 port but anything after that is sort of up to the manufacturers.
On the left, you have a power port, VGA out, Ethernet connection, USB 2.0 port, and a SD card slot. This slot ONLY accepts SD media (or mini/ micro with the correct adapter)
The right houses microphone in, audio out, 2 more USB 2.0 ports, a multi card format (that surprisingly also supports XD format for those who have devices that use this, is awesome) and a lock slot.
The front has that weird wireless slider switch and it tells you it’s on with an amber LED above it housed in a silver casing. However, it’s sometimes whats inside that matter to most. With the Aspire One, this models sports the ability to connect via B/G/ for wireless networks, but is missing the next gen format of N, and it does not support Bluetooth. Why they opted for this surprised me, as being mobile and connectivity, one would hope an investment such as this wouldn’t gather a whole new computer to implement said “newer” technologies. Something to consider is also the in-ability to use the mini pci-e slot located with the unit – it’s there, but it offers no connection harness. That brings a casual WTH from me, as I would assume it would be nice to simply add some features before making a whole new unit. If you feel handy and competent enough to add said connector – go ahead. But for me, I’m just baffled they include a slot and no harness.
Upgrading
Upgrading is possible, but not without seemingly voiding some sort of warranty. The RAM and Hard drive can be upgraded, but much further than that isn’t possible. Again, these netbooks are made for a purpose, and modifying past these thresholds often isn’t beneficial, and down right dangerous. There is a small following of how to overclock the Atom processor using software, which we will cover on a later date. I just mentioned the mini PCI-E adapter (or lack there off) – modify at your own risk!
Performance
We take a different approach to testing these specialized machines and is outlined on our “How We Test page” located at http://www.laptoplogic.com/about/test/ We try to run the tests in as a controlled environment / variables as possible. But, sometimes we’re limited to the software / hardware provided. In this example, Windows XP is loaded on the machine, giving us standard benchmark programs to be run. WorldBench 6: 33 Considering the raw power required by some of these tests, and the paltry processor and specifications provided – a score of this nature isn’t surprising, but it’s notable to see that it can do some of the intensive application test runs (although much slower) If you plan on doing heavy Photoshop or audio rendering, be prepared to either have extreme patience, or a different laptop / computer in mind. Prime32 Score: 120.817
Battery Performance
Much like the MSI Wind – I had both sort of going at once to have things sorted out for you folks. I mean, I know I have a lot of free time all day long (sarcasm) but these things with the 6 cell battery are just awesome. Trying to gather the same amount of battery life (other than the x200) is almost impossible for a simple road warrior machine such as these are.
There was, however, some noticeable improvements from having a smaller screen and no Bluetooth to worry about.
6 hours is a long time, make no doubts about it, I wouldn’t trade this sort of battery life on a netbook for anything, weight and size aside of it, it makes it a true road worthy companion. DVD watching isn’t really an option since these carry no optical drives – however, you can load an image of your legal DVD onto the machine to watch which is exactly what I did. After 5 hours and 20 minutes on full volume and full brightness, the Aspire One went to sleep hinting that I should plug it in. That was two runs of the same movie…and then I had to start it again! Needless to say that if you want to watch a movie first, then do some spreadsheets and writing later on that cross country flight, you’re more than welcomed to. The Aspire One met my expectations and then some with it’s 6-Cell battery pack, it’s a shame that the Bluetooth function wasn’t available internally (meaning I don’t have to sacrifice a USB port for it)
Real-life usage:
The Aspire One was a sexy sidekick whilst testing it with the Wind in coffee shops. Needless to say when you are an electronics guru / editor, everyone who decides to sit down in my java locale, is often surpassed with wonder with small items I am reviewing at the moment. The Aspire One was no different, it’s color set it apart – it no longer looked like a mini Macintosh (Shame on Mac for not living up to the ipod color craze and offering it on their macbook lineup). It’s color and size made it stand out. Which, I’m sure is why a lot of other companies are offering different color schemes than black and white for these little companions.
The screen estate at 8.9” was a tad small sometimes, it’s barely noticeable in some situations, but in others, it can cut out at least 3-4 rows/columsn working in a spreadsheet document. And typing made the text seem so crystal clear sharp that it was almost hard to read. But not only that, the aforementioned color shifting didn’t help either- remember, this thing carries the same resolution as most other netbooks out there with a 10” LCD – 1024x600 – and it crams it in a smaller space than most as well! It makes things amazingly crisp – but be careful, it comes with some flaws as well. Again, when getting a netbook, look for the features it has and the battery life. I’ve opted to review the 6-cell version, and while I’m sure the 3-cell carries all the same features, it seems to be just that much more worthy of taking along instead of my 15.4” widescreen that barely creeps over 2 hours of battery life. I wish this unit had Bluetooth – it’s one of the things that really marks it down especially when a lot of other netbooks carry this feature.
The speakers on the Aspire One – of the three that I’ve thoroughly tested, sounded the “best” with the most volume and clarity. Maybe because of placement or brand, but they put out enough volume to make things audible – but don’t expect theatre sound or tremendous sound – they work, and sound OK for skype or to hear some online talk radio…that’s about it.
The webcam on the aspire one is awesome –the motion trail is minimal, the colors are nice, and the quality is better than the Wind. Only thing is – doing video chat is pretty taxing on this system, and again, you lose some precious screen estate space with an inch and some smaller than the 10” netbooks out there.
One thing also to note, is that the noise levels that came from the Aspire One are immediately noticeable. I’m not sure because of fan speed, location, or thermal dynamics – this thing like to push out a lot noise to keep it cool. Which concerns me, and honestly annoys me – the MSI wind and Lenovo S10 both have great larger vents that make air output simple and effective – this seems to suffer from a small exhaust and an overworked fan. Is it incredibly loud? No – but it’s constant buzz from the get go and louder than average hum will gather stares from your fellow note-takers in class, and will annoy you soon if you aren’t rocking a pair of headphones. At least, it did for me.
Conclusion
All in all, this netbook is nice to look at and does just about everything all the others can do. The specs (which matches nearly every other netbook out there) offers decent hard drive space, 6-cell option, glossy screen and nice webcam to boot. Its looks on the outside are stellar and mesmerizing, but it’s sometimes what’s inside that count, and for this little 8.9” netbook - the LED LCD with sub-par viewing angles, ok connectivity, and noisy fan are merit a average experience. And upgrading it harder to do as it requires a whole disassembly of the lower chassis – but at least there doesn’t seem to be a stupid “void if removed” sticker covering a vital screw hole. Your machine, your risk.
Bottom Line:
Glossy, gorgeous, and decently configured and weighing in with a 6-cell battery are the standouts on this machine. It makes a great blogging / classroom companion. Anything much more than that and you should consider something a little larger with faster components, but make sure you mind the noise it puts out – for such a little machine it sure likes to scream like the bigger boys out there…
Sources : http://laptoplogic.com
TAG: Acer, Notebook, Aspire One, Review
Post a Comment