Refine search for Laptops

Acer Aspire One Netbook Review

Author	Ardjuna Seghers
Published	24th Sep 2008
Manufacturer	Acer
Price	£199.99 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£229.99 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price

Design
Features
Performance
Value
Overall

Watch Video Review discuss this article

24 comments Email

TrustedReviews Newsletters

The speakers are another area where Asus' Eee PC soundly thrashes the One, so in the unlikely case that multimedia without headphones or an external sound system is important to you, you know which netbook to choose - i.e. not this one.

The Aspire One uses a custom version of Linpus Linux Lite (based on Fedora), that's rather attractive and quite intuitive to use. The screen is split into four customisable sections, each of which have three shortcut icons you can replace with others from that section. The four sections are titled Connect, Work, Fun and Files. Firefox is the standard browser and OpenOffice takes care of productivity. Acer has a pretty handy custom feature that combines your log-ins for various chat/IM, mail and web-mail accounts into a single profile, so you only have to sign in once, potentially saving you quite a bit of time and effort. Fun takes care of media management (photos, videos and music), Paint and a neat little Webcam application that allowed me to test the integrated 0.3-megapixel webcam and which is about as mediocre as you would expect.

While not everything is as immediately accessible as on the Eee PCs, I prefer the One's OS. It is cleaner and more logical in its layout, more customisable, and feels a tad more professional. Like most other netbooks running Linux, it boots up in under half a minute (20 seconds in this case) and shuts down almost instantly. All the tasks I threw are it were performed fast and snappy, despite 'only' having 512MB of RAM.

Now we come to the Holy Grail of netbook superiority: price. Because netbooks are an emerging market and new players enter the scene on a monthly basis, it's difficult to recommend One over another. For its screen size, the Acer Aspire One is pretty much the cheapest netbook out there - but does this make it the best value? In its lowest £230 configuration, it's a whole £45 cheaper than the Eee PC 901. On the other hand with the Eee you get double the RAM, a 12GB SSD drive compared to the Aspire's eight, a higher resolution Webcam, Bluetooth, Wireless Draft-N and a six-cell battery that will probably last more than twice as long, leaving the One's only advantages its superior keyboard and expandable storage.

However, £250 will get you the best Aspire One available in the UK, which negates the storage arguments by giving you a gigabyte of RAM and a 120GB hard drive, plus £25 change. Then it becomes a toss-up between a better keyboard or better battery life… until six-cell Aspire Ones become available and maybe drive the pricing on current models down that little bit more.

Verdict

If you want the cheapest 8.9in netbook out there with the second-best keyboard, the Acer Aspire One is currently the one to go for - though the Asus Eee PC 901 offers better value if your budget stretches further. However, if the 120GB HDD, 1GB RAM version of the One becomes available with a six-cell battery, at a price that still undercuts the Eee, Asus will have a serious battle on its hands. The future possibility to upgrade to 3G/HSDPA, if it becomes reality, is also a strong selling point, meaning the Aspire might yet become the One to rule them all.

Latest 4 of 24 Comments

Have your say: Leave a comment below about this article.

angeladeville said on 2nd January 2009

For questions about the three dongle (Huawei E160G) on the Linux (Linpus) version of the AAO there is a thread at http://www.linux.com/forums/printtopic/2807?theme=print from Septe... more

Nikki Jay said on 12th January 2009

Got this with XP and 1gb RAM. Absolutely loved it. Did everything I wanted it too and more. Took it virtually everywhere with me. Then just after I had finished raving about it... more

S Noe said on 2nd June 2009

I have just had my second failure on my netbook that I bought on March 15. I now have ship it back to them a second time. I have treated it with kid gloves because these things a... more

mhz said on 24th August 2009

I am a bit concerned about this decision I have to make. I am very interested on getting a very small 8.9in great netbook (at regular budget category...not the vaio P series budget... more

See all 24 comments on this article.

Add your comment

You must be logged in to comment. Login or register here.