Acer Aspire One 751 reviewed – beauty only skin deep
May 6, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Pocket-Lint has posted the first English review of Acer’s 11.6-inch Aspire One 751 netbook. Now whether one classifies an 11.6-inch device as a netbook rather than notebook is debateable. However, considering that Acer has bunched the 751 with the Aspire One family and Asus will be doing tagging their rumoured 11.6-inch device to its Eee line, it’s a definition that consumers should get used to.
Overall, whilst they loved the design decisions made by Acer, which includes striking angles in a skinny form-factor, they felt it was let down by a poor keyboard and weak performance. Whilst they welcomed the higher resolution not normally seen in netbooks at 1366 x 768 pixels, they felt it was underpowered, limiting the ability to watch HD content. They awarded the 751 a 6/10 and felt that “it looks great out and about, but has so many issues, it is a nightmare to live with“. Check out the key points of the review after the jump.
Key points from Pocket-Lint’s Acer Aspire One 751 review:
- The 751 is a perfect example of the more adventurous designs coming to netbooks. Rather than traditional straight lines, it comes with a number of angled corners that look good. A nice touch is the battery that is designed to slot under and between the screen hinges. It is very sleek and slimline measuring just 1-inch at its thickest point.
- The 751 doesn’t feel like a premium product. The screen can be distorted by bending the lid and the ‘skin’ on the lid feels too light which may need a protective case.
- The 1366 x 768 LED-backlit display has a glossy finish but is bright and crisp. This resolution doesn’t feel too small on this sized display, a lot of content can be seen without the need to scroll too much.
- The 751 does feel underpowered though, coming with a 1.33GHz Z520 Atom CPU, the US15W chipset and 1GB RAM. It refused to play HD content on YouTube despite being fine with SD content.
- The 751 does a slot for a 3G card if needed.
- The full-sized keyboard suffered from pretty bad flexing and they described it akin to “typing on the back of a sponge”.
- The touchpad could have been bigger, not allowing you to navigate the entire screen without several touches. The multi-gesture input on the trackpad didn’t work too well either.
- Battery life stood at around 3 hours on the 3-cell 2200mAh battery.
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