The one thing they've all lacked vs my EEE 1005 (premium netbook) is battery life. When it was new I could get 10-13 hours of light use on it, while every non-atom option I've looked at has been done by someone who decided the 5-7 hours of the stock netbook is good enough; draining the 6hr battery on my first netbook semi-regularly was the main reason I paid extra for the 1005 so I rather strongly disagree with that premise.
Some of the clovertrail tablet-dock combinations announced recently at least offer similar to better battery life and with the user of narrow bezels some have even matched the physical size too; but I've yet to see anything with a faster CPU able to do the same.
LOL ! the competitor to this notebook isnt an e-350, its a Llano, or better yet Trinity, both of which blow this laptop out of the water for graphics and multithreaded performance. Couldn't find any for the review ? What an unbelievable sham this site is. Why don't u guys just join the Intel marketing dept.
Yeah, but there just aren't that many low power llano's or trinity's on the market. You would think that new low power 19W trinity (the a8-4555m quad core,which even comes with the full graphics portion, just underclocked to hit the tdp, I think) would be a great option in this market, but you just don't see them in wild that often. You just keep seeing the trinity chips in the 14 to 17.3 inch market.
What did they do to the battery life on that thing? I had an 11.6" Acer 1810T, which is a predecessor to the notebook being reviewed. I got it when notebooks in this form factor were called ultraportables instead of ultrabooks and this was before the 11.6" MacBook Air was released. I liked it over the common netbooks of the time because it offered much of the portability of netbooks while having a decent CPU (1.4GHz dual core Penryn Core 2 Duo), a GPU with hardware h.264 acceleration (GMA 4500MHD), while offering just enough battery life to make it through a day of light use ~7 hr. Plus it was only $500 CND. The Acer Aspire V5-171 having only ~4 hrs battery life just doesn't have the same usefulness even if the specs and price are right.
It's got a pretty small battery - look at the Wh ratings in the battery life charts. Having said that, are there extended batteries available? If so that would fix the most glaring issue that can be fixed with this notebook.
The 1810T is listed as having a "62W" (presumably they mean 62 Wh) battery; that's 67% more capacity. Unfortunately Acer chased smaller rather than longer lasting in the current model.
We have the 1810 with Intel Core 2 Solo CPU. For it's age it runs Windows 7 with ease with the stock 3GB of RAM and 250GB HDD. My wife is the primary user but during university I was able to take this on campus and stretch the usage out for a solid 8 hours I actively managed the screen brightness, wifi usage, and the number of applications that I was running.
This guy even served as our HTPC for a time and played back 720p content with ease.
Sound it ever get slow I'll drop in an SSD for a breath of fresh air and look at a someone selling RAM on Kijiji to bring it up to 4GB.
It looks a reasonably priced piece of kit but I do question its usefulness.
I own an Atom notebook. Battery life is around 6 hours. I can surf the web, log into my office and do some work/read emails, play movies and old games. I have had it for 3+ years.
I could do all of the above just as well using a tablet and maybe an add on keyboard (sadly I am becoming a fan of the MS design) or a docking station when I will get better screen quality and longer battery life.
So an ultrabook has to fill a niche that a tablet cannot. 11.6" mediocre screen on ultrabook versus a 10.6" high quality screen on a tablet is already a win for the tablet at least until you get a 13" screen for an ultrabook.
There are only two niches that I can see this sort of ultrabook being useful for - really cheap, substantially undercutting the tablets and secondly for those people on the move that require a lot more power than the tablets provide.
For power users on the road, the screen quality and lack of battery life becomes a major issue.
Which brings me back to the question - who the heck does Acer expect will buy this ultrabook?
You make it sound like the battery lasts a whole fifteen minutes and the display borders on illegible. Neither of these is the case.
Four hours of useful running time isn't dire; my X100e ran for less during CES this year and still never ran down completely.
And yeah, the glossy display kind of sucks, but it still works and gets the job done.
In exchange, you have a system with a tremendous amount of performance on tap in a very portable form factor, with great thermals and noise and a low price. It's also far more responsive and enjoyable to use than an Atom netbook, and its IGP doesn't have the teething issues Atom's does.
Note also that this is NOT an ultrabook. It's simply an ultraportable, and for me at least, it's pretty ideal.
I think the money might buy you dual channel DDR (or interleaved or whatever it's called). If this is the case, there is quite a bit of extra graphic performance to be had, I think. Anyway, $200 is probably overpriced even so
The tested version already has dual channel (there are no 6 GB modules..), And most of the price increase is due to the CPU and is directly forwarded to Intel.
So glad that Acer decided to make this easily serviceable. Two DIMM slots, both on the bottom, and an easy-to-access HDD for a quick 7mm SSD upgrade? Love it.
Battery life is a bit of a shame and the display is the usual budget crock, but like you said w.r.t Brazos laptops, if the price is right, you're willing to overlook some of these faults.
It's a joke to compare E-350 with i5 3317U (or E1200). Brazos are for Atom to compare with. Why not to include A6 4455M for comparsion, actually the tdp 17 W is just the same. It would be interesting to look at low voltage Trinity to perform against Intel ULV.
An a6-4455m is a 2 core (1 module) trinity part with 17w tdp, Its base clock is 2.1 ghz and it can turbo to 2.6 ghz. Compare this to an a10-4600m (the best laptop trinity) An a10-4600m is a 4 core (2 module) trinity part with a 35w tdp. Its base clock is 2.3 ghz and it can turbo up to 3.2 ghz. Thus the a10 has double the cores, as well as a 9% faster base clock, and a 23% faster turbo clock.
Well the i5-3317u (17w) is faster than the a10-4600m (35w) in both single and multithreaded tasks (the a10-4600m is faster in gpu). See the anandtech mobile bench. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/727?vs=600
In Cinebench R11.5 (Single-Threaded Benchmark) the i5-3317u scores 1.08 vs the a10-4600m 0.70 fps which makes the i5-3317u 54% faster in single threaded. In Cinebench R11.5 (Multithreaded Benchmark) the i5-3517 scores 2.41 pts vs the a10-4600m 2.05 pts which makes the i5-3317u 17% faster in multithread.
There is no way a dual core a6 with lower clock speed can keep up with an i5 ivy when the quad core a10 is having problems.
--------
Now in graphics the a10 is faster than the i5 ulv ivybridge. But the a6-4455m has a lot less shader power. The a6 has 256 shaders instead of 384 (a10), in other words 66% of the shaders . In addition the a6-4455m has lower clocks 327 mhz instead of 496 mhz (a10), only 66% of the clock speed. Thus if the game is shader limited instead of memory, rop, or cpu limited the worse case scenario for the a6 ulv is that it will perform 43% as well as the a10. (In many games the a6 will perform a lot closer than the 43% since memory, rop, and cpu power does play a factor.)
--------
There are very few computers using the a6-4455m. AMD pretty much only got design wins with a couple hp 15.6" sleekbooks and a samsung 13.3" sleekbook. These a6 sleekbooks computers are all priced at 500 or greater. The i5 in this v5 on the other hand occupies a similar price range yet is in a smaller computer.
AMD just can't seem to gain any traction with the smaller size laptops.
I like this form factor and the benefits a little more z-height brings over Ultrabooks. Personally I'd want higher quality (and would pay more for this), but may recommend this one to others.
I have the Travelmate 8172 with a Core i3 330UM (Arrandale ULV chips). I was considering buying the 1810 back in the day, but didn't like the glossy all over the place. The battery life with this unit is not as good (Arrandale ULV chips aren't that great at using less energy). But it still lasts me between 4 and 7 hours, depending on what I do with it. Build quality is great apart from one key that always fell off (which I could fix in 30 seconds with some pliers). This unit sounds like a great deal, it has a better chip, more RAM and is cheaper (I paid 650€ for my Travelmate). The downsides are the smaller battery and glossy display. If I had any reason to upgrade (I don't right now, hardly use the notebook these days), I would probably buy it or at least something similar. I don't like the Ultrabooks much, too much emphasise on style/size/weight and not enough on serviceability, price, usefulness. Still, I think Acer has come quite a way since they started out as the ultra-cheap vendor. :)
I notice the HDD it comes with is only SATA II. Does anyone know if this Acer supports SATA III? It would seem kind of a waste to put an SSD in it to only get half the performance.
The interface would only bottleneck large sequential transfers (to/from a USB 3.0 drive that's fast enough, for instance), it wouldn't hamper an SSD's biggest strength (random I/O which makes the OS & programs more responsive).
I'm actually in the market for something exactly like this --- having read this review, this Acer actually ticks a lot of boxes but surely there's something out there from the competition with better than a mediocre 4hrs internet surfing. Doesn't cut it for me when my Asus UL30A from a few years back gets 10hrs...4hrs is so 2005.
Yeah, something with a larger battery and a better display wouldn't necessarily have to be much more expensive... Or inversely, aa thicker ultrabook with cheaper build quality but better battery life and a lower price tag. That middle market is vastly undeserved, and I gotta think it'd mostly intentional.
The whole ultrabook initiative is about pushing brands and the consumer upscale... I'll eventually fall victim to it as my old Acer netbook is getting very long in the tooth but I'd really want something higher res.
I am debating between this and the 11.6 inch Asus Vivobook. The Acer has more muscle, but the Asus has a touchscreen, which is great for Windows 8, and a much better design. What do you all think?
Never buy ASUS, bad quality (had a UX32VD Zenbook with several issues) and almost non-existent service (they couldn't repair the Zenbook) and now I still have to wait for weeks to get my money back.
Share a website with you , ( socanpower. ca) Believe you will love it. laptop battery,CPU fan,AC power adapters.DC power adapters and laptop keyboard. I bought two. Cheap, good quality, you can go and ship with there.
Funny, how reviewers like the $549 Acer and hate the $199 Acer Chromebook that utilizes the same shell and say the Chromebook is cheap looking..
If the reviewer thinks this is a deal @ $549 then the Chromebook version is a steal @ $199.
People seem to think that paying more for something makes it better. I'm very happy with my Chromebook and the FEW compromises that I need to endure for only $199. LMAO
Actually, the extended battery is available. Considering that Acer used the same chassis design for 4 distinct products (Aspire One AO756, Travelmate B113, Aspire V5-171 and the Chromebook C700/710), some ot the Travelmate B113s (TMB113s) shipped overseas arrive with the 5000 mAH battery to go with their Core i5 based models.
Google for the Sanyo AL12X32 battery (Acer part ID NP.BTP11.008). Acer US won't sell you one, but a certain well known US hardware vendor does have it...and it's not that expensibe)
My V5-171-9661 only shows SATA II (3Gb/s) speed with Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Latest BIOS v2.15, AHCI, latest Intel RST drivers. Could someone please confirm or refute?
My V5-171-9661 delivers only SATA II (3Gb/s) speed with Samsung 840 Pro SSD (~250MB/s read). It has the latest BIOS v2.15/AHCI mode and the latest Intel Rapid Storage drivers. Both Samsung SSD Magician tool and Intel RST tool report SATA II, while the HM77 chipset is SATA III (6Gb/s) capable. Is this laptop really a SATA II system??
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32 Comments
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DanNeely - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
The one thing they've all lacked vs my EEE 1005 (premium netbook) is battery life. When it was new I could get 10-13 hours of light use on it, while every non-atom option I've looked at has been done by someone who decided the 5-7 hours of the stock netbook is good enough; draining the 6hr battery on my first netbook semi-regularly was the main reason I paid extra for the 1005 so I rather strongly disagree with that premise.Some of the clovertrail tablet-dock combinations announced recently at least offer similar to better battery life and with the user of narrow bezels some have even matched the physical size too; but I've yet to see anything with a faster CPU able to do the same.
joe30987rr - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - link
LOL ! the competitor to this notebook isnt an e-350, its a Llano, or better yet Trinity, both of which blow this laptop out of the water for graphics and multithreaded performance. Couldn't find any for the review ? What an unbelievable sham this site is. Why don't u guys just join the Intel marketing dept.Novaguy - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
Yeah, but there just aren't that many low power llano's or trinity's on the market. You would think that new low power 19W trinity (the a8-4555m quad core,which even comes with the full graphics portion, just underclocked to hit the tdp, I think) would be a great option in this market, but you just don't see them in wild that often. You just keep seeing the trinity chips in the 14 to 17.3 inch market.ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
What did they do to the battery life on that thing? I had an 11.6" Acer 1810T, which is a predecessor to the notebook being reviewed. I got it when notebooks in this form factor were called ultraportables instead of ultrabooks and this was before the 11.6" MacBook Air was released. I liked it over the common netbooks of the time because it offered much of the portability of netbooks while having a decent CPU (1.4GHz dual core Penryn Core 2 Duo), a GPU with hardware h.264 acceleration (GMA 4500MHD), while offering just enough battery life to make it through a day of light use ~7 hr. Plus it was only $500 CND. The Acer Aspire V5-171 having only ~4 hrs battery life just doesn't have the same usefulness even if the specs and price are right.MadMan007 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
It's got a pretty small battery - look at the Wh ratings in the battery life charts. Having said that, are there extended batteries available? If so that would fix the most glaring issue that can be fixed with this notebook.DanNeely - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
The 1810T is listed as having a "62W" (presumably they mean 62 Wh) battery; that's 67% more capacity. Unfortunately Acer chased smaller rather than longer lasting in the current model.liem107 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
Yep i had the 1810tz but it had a 6cell battery and it was about 200 g heavier i think.creed3020 - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
We have the 1810 with Intel Core 2 Solo CPU. For it's age it runs Windows 7 with ease with the stock 3GB of RAM and 250GB HDD. My wife is the primary user but during university I was able to take this on campus and stretch the usage out for a solid 8 hours I actively managed the screen brightness, wifi usage, and the number of applications that I was running.This guy even served as our HTPC for a time and played back 720p content with ease.
Sound it ever get slow I'll drop in an SSD for a breath of fresh air and look at a someone selling RAM on Kijiji to bring it up to 4GB.
prdola0 - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
Glossy screen on a portable device? Thanks, but no. I don't want it.cjs150 - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
It looks a reasonably priced piece of kit but I do question its usefulness.I own an Atom notebook. Battery life is around 6 hours. I can surf the web, log into my office and do some work/read emails, play movies and old games. I have had it for 3+ years.
I could do all of the above just as well using a tablet and maybe an add on keyboard (sadly I am becoming a fan of the MS design) or a docking station when I will get better screen quality and longer battery life.
So an ultrabook has to fill a niche that a tablet cannot. 11.6" mediocre screen on ultrabook versus a 10.6" high quality screen on a tablet is already a win for the tablet at least until you get a 13" screen for an ultrabook.
There are only two niches that I can see this sort of ultrabook being useful for - really cheap, substantially undercutting the tablets and secondly for those people on the move that require a lot more power than the tablets provide.
For power users on the road, the screen quality and lack of battery life becomes a major issue.
Which brings me back to the question - who the heck does Acer expect will buy this ultrabook?
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
Well, me, for one.You make it sound like the battery lasts a whole fifteen minutes and the display borders on illegible. Neither of these is the case.
Four hours of useful running time isn't dire; my X100e ran for less during CES this year and still never ran down completely.
And yeah, the glossy display kind of sucks, but it still works and gets the job done.
In exchange, you have a system with a tremendous amount of performance on tap in a very portable form factor, with great thermals and noise and a low price. It's also far more responsive and enjoyable to use than an Atom netbook, and its IGP doesn't have the teething issues Atom's does.
Note also that this is NOT an ultrabook. It's simply an ultraportable, and for me at least, it's pretty ideal.
Calin - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
I think the money might buy you dual channel DDR (or interleaved or whatever it's called). If this is the case, there is quite a bit of extra graphic performance to be had, I think. Anyway, $200 is probably overpriced even soMrSpadge - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
The tested version already has dual channel (there are no 6 GB modules..), And most of the price increase is due to the CPU and is directly forwarded to Intel.Anonymous Blowhard - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
So glad that Acer decided to make this easily serviceable. Two DIMM slots, both on the bottom, and an easy-to-access HDD for a quick 7mm SSD upgrade? Love it.Battery life is a bit of a shame and the display is the usual budget crock, but like you said w.r.t Brazos laptops, if the price is right, you're willing to overlook some of these faults.
Matti - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
It's a joke to compare E-350 with i5 3317U (or E1200). Brazos are for Atom to compare with. Why not to include A6 4455M for comparsion, actually the tdp 17 W is just the same. It would be interesting to look at low voltage Trinity to perform against Intel ULV.Roland00Address - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
An a6-4455m is a 2 core (1 module) trinity part with 17w tdp, Its base clock is 2.1 ghz and it can turbo to 2.6 ghz. Compare this to an a10-4600m (the best laptop trinity)An a10-4600m is a 4 core (2 module) trinity part with a 35w tdp. Its base clock is 2.3 ghz and it can turbo up to 3.2 ghz. Thus the a10 has double the cores, as well as a 9% faster base clock, and a 23% faster turbo clock.
Well the i5-3317u (17w) is faster than the a10-4600m (35w) in both single and multithreaded tasks (the a10-4600m is faster in gpu). See the anandtech mobile bench.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/727?vs=600
In Cinebench R11.5 (Single-Threaded Benchmark) the i5-3317u scores 1.08 vs the a10-4600m 0.70 fps which makes the i5-3317u 54% faster in single threaded.
In Cinebench R11.5 (Multithreaded Benchmark) the i5-3517 scores 2.41 pts vs the a10-4600m 2.05 pts which makes the i5-3317u 17% faster in multithread.
There is no way a dual core a6 with lower clock speed can keep up with an i5 ivy when the quad core a10 is having problems.
--------
Now in graphics the a10 is faster than the i5 ulv ivybridge. But the a6-4455m has a lot less shader power. The a6 has 256 shaders instead of 384 (a10), in other words 66% of the shaders . In addition the a6-4455m has lower clocks 327 mhz instead of 496 mhz (a10), only 66% of the clock speed. Thus if the game is shader limited instead of memory, rop, or cpu limited the worse case scenario for the a6 ulv is that it will perform 43% as well as the a10. (In many games the a6 will perform a lot closer than the 43% since memory, rop, and cpu power does play a factor.)
--------
There are very few computers using the a6-4455m. AMD pretty much only got design wins with a couple hp 15.6" sleekbooks and a samsung 13.3" sleekbook. These a6 sleekbooks computers are all priced at 500 or greater. The i5 in this v5 on the other hand occupies a similar price range yet is in a smaller computer.
AMD just can't seem to gain any traction with the smaller size laptops.
MrSpadge - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
I like this form factor and the benefits a little more z-height brings over Ultrabooks. Personally I'd want higher quality (and would pay more for this), but may recommend this one to others.jeffkro - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
The best replacement for the netbook is the new chromebook laptops, nice light OS on light hardware. This thing is just a cheaper ultrabook.Death666Angel - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
I have the Travelmate 8172 with a Core i3 330UM (Arrandale ULV chips). I was considering buying the 1810 back in the day, but didn't like the glossy all over the place. The battery life with this unit is not as good (Arrandale ULV chips aren't that great at using less energy). But it still lasts me between 4 and 7 hours, depending on what I do with it. Build quality is great apart from one key that always fell off (which I could fix in 30 seconds with some pliers). This unit sounds like a great deal, it has a better chip, more RAM and is cheaper (I paid 650€ for my Travelmate). The downsides are the smaller battery and glossy display. If I had any reason to upgrade (I don't right now, hardly use the notebook these days), I would probably buy it or at least something similar. I don't like the Ultrabooks much, too much emphasise on style/size/weight and not enough on serviceability, price, usefulness. Still, I think Acer has come quite a way since they started out as the ultra-cheap vendor. :)Ignatius - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
I notice the HDD it comes with is only SATA II. Does anyone know if this Acer supports SATA III? It would seem kind of a waste to put an SSD in it to only get half the performance.Impulses - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - link
The interface would only bottleneck large sequential transfers (to/from a USB 3.0 drive that's fast enough, for instance), it wouldn't hamper an SSD's biggest strength (random I/O which makes the OS & programs more responsive).PaloAltoWorldView - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
So this is basically the $550 Windows version of Acer's $199 Chromebook. That's almost a 3 for 1.Evil_Sheep - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
I'm actually in the market for something exactly like this --- having read this review, this Acer actually ticks a lot of boxes but surely there's something out there from the competition with better than a mediocre 4hrs internet surfing. Doesn't cut it for me when my Asus UL30A from a few years back gets 10hrs...4hrs is so 2005.Impulses - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
Yeah, something with a larger battery and a better display wouldn't necessarily have to be much more expensive... Or inversely, aa thicker ultrabook with cheaper build quality but better battery life and a lower price tag. That middle market is vastly undeserved, and I gotta think it'd mostly intentional.The whole ultrabook initiative is about pushing brands and the consumer upscale... I'll eventually fall victim to it as my old Acer netbook is getting very long in the tooth but I'd really want something higher res.
GOMAB357 - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
I am debating between this and the 11.6 inch Asus Vivobook. The Acer has more muscle, but the Asus has a touchscreen, which is great for Windows 8, and a much better design. What do you all think?profdre - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Never buy ASUS, bad quality (had a UX32VD Zenbook with several issues) and almost non-existent service (they couldn't repair the Zenbook) and now I still have to wait for weeks to get my money back.batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Sharea website with you ,
( socanpower. ca)
Believe you will love it.
laptop battery,CPU fan,AC power adapters.DC power adapters and laptop keyboard.
I bought two. Cheap, good quality, you can
go and ship with there.
dave92029 - Monday, December 10, 2012 - link
Funny, how reviewers like the $549 Acer and hate the $199 Acer Chromebook that utilizes the same shell and say the Chromebook is cheap looking..If the reviewer thinks this is a deal @ $549 then the Chromebook version is a steal @ $199.
People seem to think that paying more for something makes it better. I'm very happy with my Chromebook and the FEW compromises that I need to endure for only $199. LMAO
ragefury32 - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
Actually, the extended battery is available. Considering that Acer used the same chassis design for 4 distinct products (Aspire One AO756, Travelmate B113, Aspire V5-171 and the Chromebook C700/710), some ot the Travelmate B113s (TMB113s) shipped overseas arrive with the 5000 mAH battery to go with their Core i5 based models.Google for the Sanyo AL12X32 battery (Acer part ID NP.BTP11.008).
Acer US won't sell you one, but a certain well known US hardware vendor does have it...and it's not that expensibe)
noseratio - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
My V5-171-9661 only shows SATA II (3Gb/s) speed with Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Latest BIOS v2.15, AHCI, latest Intel RST drivers. Could someone please confirm or refute?noseratio - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
My V5-171-9661 delivers only SATA II (3Gb/s) speed with Samsung 840 Pro SSD (~250MB/s read). It has the latest BIOS v2.15/AHCI mode and the latest Intel Rapid Storage drivers. Both Samsung SSD Magician tool and Intel RST tool report SATA II, while the HM77 chipset is SATA III (6Gb/s) capable. Is this laptop really a SATA II system??deana_troy - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Hi,Can a 9.5mm high drive be installed and used instead of the built-in 7mm. disc?
Thanks for your help