Acer Aspire One 721 Review

This new Acer Aspire One 721 is a pretty interesting unit. It sits between the Aspire One 751 running the low-power Atom Z520 and the Timeline 1801tz running a dual-core Pentium ULV. Check our full review after the jump.

The Aspire One 721 also has one of the first units to run the new AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processor running at 1.7GHz.

The netbook has this nice mesh-textured finish on the lid cover which is a slight departure from the usual dark glossy ones of the previous 11.6-inchers of Acer.

At under an inch thick, this ultraportable is one of the slimmest and lightest we’ve reviewed in its category. It’s got a full-sized keyboard and a brushed-metal finish on the palm-rest area.

The trackpad area is a bit small and is only separated from the palm-rest by a thin protruding line. The friction from that brushed metal finish on the trackpad area is a bit uncomfortable though (they should have done a polished finish like in the Timeline 1801tz).

The 11.6″ display has glossy finish but is bright and crisp. However, it is also prone to glare in the outdoors or against bright light sources.

With an on-board graphics chip powered by an ATI Radeon HD 4225, the system can do some decent gaming performance (at low resolution). The built-in HDMI is an added bonus if you want to play HD videos and output it to a larger TV or monitor.

Performance is above average when compared to your normal netbooks, thanks to the CPU and GPU combo paired with a 2GB DDR3 RAM. It can even play YouTube HD @ 720p effortlessly although it becomes choppy at 1080p.

The Aspire One 721 sports a single-core AMD Athlon II Neo running a clock speed of 1.7GHz. Windows Experience Index gives it a base score of 3.4 taken from the graphics card but gets a nice 3.7 sub-score for the CPU. This puts the Athlon II Neo way better then previous Neo MV40 (WEI: 3.1) and slightly edging over the Athlon X2 L310 (WEI: 3.6).

See more benchmarks (Passmark) of the AO721 over at the PC Labs.

Battery life isn’t as impressive as the other Aspire Ones but a median time of around 4 hours on a single charge (based on BatteryBar) isn’t bad at all considering you get a more powerful CPU and graphics combo.

Besides, the 6-cell battery is only rated at 4400mAh. It would have performed better if it were in the 5600mAh range.

Acer Aspire One 721
11.6″ display @ 1366×768 pixels
AMD Athlon II Neo K125 @ 1.7GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 w/ 336MB RAM
2GB DDR3 RAM (max 4GB)
250GB HDD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
3 USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port
Windows 7 Home Basic 64bit

The Aspire One 721 is selling in stores for a suggested retail price of Php24,900USD 424INR 35,971EUR 404CNY 3,090 — almost the price of a regular netbook but a performance of an ultraportable. It offers a compromise between system performance and battery life but at that price point, it’s a good alternative compared to the more expensive CULV notebooks.