Acer Aspire One AO751 Review

Looks like Acer was the first one to let out a 12-inch netbook in the market with the 11.6″ Acer Aspire AO751. After using one for a couple of weeks, I got to the bottom of things. Check out our full review after the jump.

The large 11.6″ screen is a big plus for the AO751 with a large 1366×768 pixel resolution only the Sony Vaio P can beat. Despite the size, it did not sacrifice the weight and dimensions to separate itself from the regular 12-incher notebooks — still under 1 inch thin and weighs just about 2.75lbs (pretty thin and lightweight for its size actually). Biggest advantage here is the almost 100% full chiclet-style keyboard.

What’s in the box? You get an Intel Atom Z520 @ 1.33GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB HDD, Intel GMA 500, Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11b/g. Pretty nice specs IMO. The only biggest concern here is the seemingly underpowered CPU. While 1.33GHz isn’t really that slow, you will still feel that the pre-installed Windows Vista OS is dragging it.

Here’s what the Windows Performance Index looked like:

Obviously, the CPU has the lowest subscore (1.9) among all other components of the netbook. SuperPi 2M took about 4m 56s. As a point of reference, an N270 1.66GHz takes 3m 45s on SuperPi 2M and has a subscore of 2.2 on Windows Performance Index. It would have been nice if a 1.6GHz Z530 was in here or maybe even a 1.66GHz N280 but the latter would have needed an exhaust fan.

As for the GPU, Acer used an Intel GMA500 which turns out to be better than the GMA945 for Windows Aero (2.9 vs. 2.0). The screen is glossy which makes the display bright and crisp (similar to the AOD150). What I found somewhat buggy is that the screen turns black when launching apps (outside the app window) and doesn’t refresh back to normal display immediately.

Battery life is impressive, just like its earlier siblings (6-cell 5200mAh), and ranges between 5.5 to 6.5 hours depending on the brightness level of the screen. I haven’t been able to squeeze it anywhere near the promised 8 hours but the 6.5 hours on regular use (with WiFi) is already a good number.

I’m still a bit disappointed that the 3G SIM card slot isn’t there (the label says it’s WAN-ready only so I don’t know what it means). That would have made the retail price of Php27,500USD 469INR 39,727EUR 446CNY 3,413 a great bargain.

Just a fair warning — since the Acer Aspire One AO751 runs Windows Vista Home out of the box, you will most definitely experience a laggy performance. I somewhat avoided that by upgrading to Windows 7 RC (Windows XP should also do the trick). What this model gives you that no other 10-inch netbooks out there cannot give is the larger screen and higher resolution (1366x768pixels). That and the full-sized keyboard.