Mini Laptop Reviews Blog

Thin, light and powerful, February 16, 2011

I just received this laptop yesterday and have begun putting it through its paces. I’ll update the review in the future but as there are no reviews yet I wanted to get it started in case there are others that are considering this model.

I’d consider myself a moderate user. General office programs (word and powerpoint for classwork), internet browsing w/HD video streaming, netflix streaming, some photo editing, music, etc. I wanted something thin and light that also offered more oomph than a mobile ulv processor. The i3 in this laptop just screams compared to an AMD Neo 1.5ghz powered Toshiba that I tried out before settling on this model. Battery life after the initial break-in charge and drain and refill has been outstanding. I have 5:31 remaing with 89% battery while I type this. Mind you I’ve been using it since 100% for about an hour installing 180mb’s worth of Windows updates and a reboot. I have it on balanced mode with the screen brightness set to 80%. Wifi on and Word running in the background while researching and typing should yield over 7 hours with the settings I have. To me that’s impressive and the Timeline series is living up to its claim. HD video plays well, despite not having a dedicated graphics card. I think that’s why you’ll find the price on this model to be a little lower than other comparable Acer and ASUS models. I debated between this model and an ASUS that was near the same price point. However the ASUS models near this price point had an ULV processor, so the Acer won out. Build quality is solid, no flex in the keyboard. The screen is bright and vivid. So far I’m quite happy with the choice. As I said to open, I’ll update this later.

UPDATE:

Now that I’ve spent some time with the keyboard and track pad I find both to be easy to use. The mutli-gesture track pad works well and the swirls gesture makes scrolling down long web pages or easy. It’s great if you’re a tumblr user and want to scroll down your dashboard. The keyboard has great tactile feedback and the reaches are a little short but I found it quite easy to adjust coming from and excellent Fujitsu keyboard. I left the battery setting where I had previously mentioned and have had no trouble hitting 7 usable hours of battery life with wifi some HD streaming and light word usage. Still a 5 star product and the price point is great.

Pro’s

-Build quality

-battery life

-keyboard

-display

Con’s

-426 GB of usable HD space, 463 of actual space with OS loaded and the bloatware. I’ve been around long enough to know that HD space is never as it’s listed, but Acer, where did my 37 GB’s go?!?

Windows experience index….

Processor – 6.7

Memory – 5.9

Graphics – 4.5

Gaming Graphics – 5.2

Primary Hard Disk – 5.8

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 Comments (13)

Portable Power, April 4, 2011

By 

A. Meller “alexmeller” (Union City, CA United States) – See all my reviews

  

I was searching for a pretty portable laptop for travel that was still fast (so not a netbook)and wasn’t very expensive. So after looking around on newegg, I came upon this laptop for 0. ( Another laptop I own is also 13.3 in., Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.5 Ghz, 4 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, and it was 0). At first I was a bit sketpical due to the fact that I haven’t bought an acer before, and I never thought of them as a better company, and due to the fact there was a very limited amount of reviews on the laptop. Regardless, after not finding anything to be even remotely as good a deal as the acer, I bought it (Once again, very good specs and price). So after using it for over a week ill just give my likes/dislikes. The laptop is very fast, the boot time is VERY fast (May slow down when more stuff is installed, but even now its still pretty impressive). The laptop is good for HD video and simple things, but it doesnt have a dedicated video card (built into the processor). The laptop is very thin, weighs pretty light due to the fact that it DOESNT have a DVD drive (That could be a con). One thing that I don’t like, is that while the laptop looks very nice, the front side (with the acer logo in the middle) is a HUGE fingerprint magnet, there are tons of marks on it as soon as you touch it (this is just cosmetical and they give you a cloth to wipe it off). One last thing, was that in the pictures I noticed that the trackpad is not centered, but to the left. I thought the trackpad would be annoying, but its actually not as bad as it looks in the picture, and hasn’t bothered me at all. Those are pretty much my biggest complaints, so theres not really much.

Summary

This is a very fast and portable laptop. It is not for gaming, since it doesn’t have a video card. Its a great value, though its now more expensive on amazon (not newegg yet)

Pros: -Bang for the buck (Though I got it cheaper, the same laptop is still 0 on newegg)

-Very fast with a good processor and fast memory. (Core i3 @ 2.55Ghz, 4Gb DDR3 RAM)

-Very portable (The 13.3 is in my opinion the best size for portability)

-Will load and show HD video just fine.

-comparatively lighter compared to bigger laptops

Cons: -Cover is a fingerprint magnet

-No video card at all (so gaming is very hard unless its based on the processor more)

*-No DVD drive, you can consider a con but it also removes a lot of weight and bulk, and I dont mind it at all, havent needed to use it at all since I got the laptop* (I bought it because it was light and portable, so I was looking for laptop with no DVD Drive)

*-Trackpad is to the left, once again this isn’t really a con, but be aware. I ended up not even noticing the positioning.*

Overall, if you’re skeptical, but you’re looking for a portable,light, fast, and relatively cheap laptop, this is for you. I will update this review if I find something else that I like or dislike, or if something goes wrong.

Thanks

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Not perfect, but great for the price, April 5, 2011

Good:

Lightweight, fast, thin, hard drive, memory, battery life.

Bad:

Trackpad, screen, and bezel around the keyboard.

I bought this laptop to replace my old dying one as a junior at UC Berkeley studying econ. This laptop is small and fast (using STATA and other econometrics and statistical analysis programs are really fast). The battery lasts 4-8 hours depending on use. If you’re listening to music, writing a paper and reading .pdfs the battery will last around 6.5 hours. If I’m just reading a .pdf it will last 8 hours. The trackpad on this is pretty bad, it was almost unusable when I opened the box. The program allowed me to tweak the settings and it’s much better but not perfect. The screen on this isn’t very good. It’s hard to use outdoors in bright sun (it’s doable but not as easy as more expensive laptops). Also the bezel around the keyboard scratches really easily. Overall, this is a perfect laptop because I paid 0 and I expected it to come with flaws, and these flaws are very minimal for the specs and overall quality.

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