|
The Acer Aspire V5-431P-997B4G50Mass (that really is the full name Acer has given this product on its site) has a complete configuration that makes it useful as a machine for home or school work. It comes with a built-in DVD burner, as well as three USB ports (one of which is USB 3.0), HDMI, a headset port, and an SD card slot and compact Acer Keyboard . There is also a proprietary port for a dongle that can supply VGA output and Gigabit Ethernet. The weight is 2.2kg and, while it feels quite heavy, it is a relatively slim laptop. The base is about 16mm thick on its own, but it tapers at the edges, and this is one of the reasons the Gigabit and VGA ports have been relegated to dongle status. Not only that, there really isn’t that much room left on the edges when you take into consideration the other ports, the optical drive, Laptop Keyboard Cover , the speakers (which should not be relied upon for high-quality listening) and the cooling vent. Indeed, it’s a base that’s chock full of gear already, while on the inside it also has Bluetooth and dual-band, 802.11n Wi-Fi (an Atheros AR5BWB222 module). Despite being an inexpensive unit, it looks quite stylish and its build quality is not awful. The finish of the palm rest is smooth and the area is large, giving you plenty of space to rest your hands as you type. The touchpad is 97x66mm and it feels smooth. However, it’s set to perform two-finger scroll gestures in the reverse direction by default, and we couldn’t get it to scroll normally, despite disabling the reverse direction in the driver. The performance of the pad overall was decent, but the cursor did jump off the spot occasionally during double-tap actions, and the Windows 8 swipe-in gestures were a little too sensitive. It’s a very similar pad, in terms of how it behaved, to the pad on the Toshiba Satellite P840 — although that’s meant to be a premium laptop with Compatible Parts . We like the keyboard on this laptop and think it’s very comfortable to use for long periods of typing like the IBM Thinkpad T400S Keyboard . The chiclet styling leaves plenty of space between the keys and they are soft and responsive to hit. We like the space that’s been left around the arrow keys, and also the slight gap between the Backspace and Enter keys, and the Page and Home keys on the far right column. With a 14in screen, the V5 is more portable than the 15.6in models that are usually found at this price point, and it’s also a 10-point touch-enabled screen. This means you can use both the touchpad or the screen to navigate the Windows 8 system. Being an inexpensive laptop though, the screen’s quality isn’t great: you have to put up with narrow viewing angles, lots of reflections, and also plenty of rippling along the edges when the screen is touched — don’t be too rough with it when you touch it. Nevertheless, for basic tasks around the home or in a classroom, it will be fine. Conclusion We were a little concerned when we looked at the specs and saw the Pentium CPU topping the list, but we ended up enjoying this Acer Aspire V5 ( Acer Keyboard Cover ) model a lot. Its performance turned out to be decent (even for viewing Flash-heavy Web sites and Internet video streams) and it also ran at a cool temperature throughout our test period. Even when it had been processing Flash video for hours from NBA.TV, with CPU usage at 30 per cent, the base did not get warm. This performance, along with the good array of connectivity and overall user comfort make the V5 a laptop worth considering, particularly if you want something smaller than a 15-incher, but with a similar feature-set. Its touchscreen also adds some extra versatility. We only had issues with its touchpad (it’s far from terrible, but could still be better) and also with the quality of the screen, but we expected that at this price point.
Related Articles -
Acer, Aspire, V5,
|
