Acer Aspire AS1410 Review

Acer has lauched the new Acer Aspire AS1410 notebook in the US market. The new Acer Aspire AS1410 laptop is now on sale in the US at price of  $449.99. Weighing just over 3 pounds and measures 1.2 inches slim, the Acer Aspire AS1410 packs 11.6-inch LED-backlight widescreen display with 1366 x 768-pixel resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio and 200-nit high brightness, 1.2 GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 processor, a 250GB of SATA hard drive, 2GB of RAM, Intel GMA 4500MHD and the latest Microsft Windows 7 64-bit operating system which designed for faster and more reliable performance.

 

The Acer Aspire AS1410 also has a Multi-Gesture Touchpad, an integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam, 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN, Gigabit LAN, Stereo speakers with Dolby Sound Room audio enhancement, 5-in-1 memory card reader, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port and a 6-cell Acer Aspire AS1410 battery that provides up to 6 hours of continuous use.

 

From the outside, the Acer Aspire AS1410 looks the same as the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T; in fact, at 11.2 x 8.0 x 1.2 inches and weighing 3.2 pounds, it’s the same size and weight. Our review unit had a glossy, Ruby Red lid with Acer’s metal logo impressed in the lower corner; the lid picks up fingerprints fairly easily. The same color extends to the deck, which is offset by the matte black keyboard and glossy black bezel.

 

Unlike the Acer Aspire One 751h netbook, the 1410’s six-cell battery does not bulge out the back. Instead, it bumps out of the bottom, tilting the 1410 at a slight downward angle towards the user.

 

Specifications:

• Processor speed: 1.2GHz
• Processor: Celeron
• Amt of RAM: 2048 MB
• Hard drive: 320 GB
• Optical drive: 160
• Graphics hardware: Intel GMA X4500
• Diagonal screen size: 11.6 inch
• Operating system: Win 7 Home Premium
• Weight w/battery: 1.35 kg
• Wireless LAN: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n

With the rising popularity of social networking, consumers are more connected than ever to the online world,” said Ray Sawall, senior manager of product marketing for Acer America. “When it comes to selecting a notebook, they’re increasingly concerned with size, weight and style. The AS1410 Series is small enough to be carried in a backpack or even a large purse but with enough power for spreadsheets and presentations. Aggressively priced, the Aspire AS1410 battery is an affordable mobile solution for checking Twitter updates, viewing YouTube videos and handling productivity applications on a plane, at school or a coffee house. Those in the market for a netbook should consider this notebook as an option, due to the step up in processing power.”

 

Just one-inch-thin and 3.08 pounds, these systems are sleek and light, but with a full-size keyboard. The full-sized keyboard is comfortable and easy to type on, particularly for taking advantage of productivity applications. The compact size combined with a traditional keyboard comprises a convenient platform for frequent travelers and students. With the needs of mobile users in mind, the AS1410 Series is designed to suit an individual’s own personal flair with three elegant color options - Diamond Black, Sapphire Blue and Ruby Red.

 

Performance was about what I expected. When officially benchmarked, the Core Solo SU3500 is about 20 percent faster than an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, but ‘real world’ it felt about the same. Knowing the difference in real world experience between Vista and Windows 7, I can only imagine that with 7 the AS1410 would be noticeably snappier than its Atom brethren.

 

For media this is certainly a nice little machine, but once again, without a good GPU, some HD Flash content does see stutter and minor delays. Using the rgbFilter Montage! video as a test, the YouTube HD version played back with smooth audio but at about 10-12fps (better than Atom, but not great), whereas the original 720p MP4 had no problems whatsoever. I’m going to chalk part of this up to the Vista OS, as Windows 7 just seems to handle heavy lifting better when coupled with a low-end CPU. As for HD output over HDMI, it looked great on the studio’s 50″ Panasonic plasma TV. The 4500 GPU is certainly much better than the typical Intel GMA 450/500 found in netbooks for video playback, but when it comes to gaming, is still no Nvidia ION.

 

Size 11.6-inch laptop also has a 250GB hard drive capacity and is supported by the connection device such as Wi-Fi. This laptop has been marketed in Makassar by price range Rp6-7 million.

 

Wich makes it look like an enticing bargain. This a point echoed by Liliputing, who felt that there isn’t “another machine that offers as much as the Aspire AS1410 at this price point.” They managed to get around 5 hours out of the battery under normal web use.

 

Netbooked also thought it offered great value for money and “wholeheartedly recommended it.” The large keyboard was easy to type on and the touchpad was well-sized too. The dual-core processor enabled HD YouTube playback out of the box. However, they only managed around 4 hours of battery life in their tests.

 

It seems this laptop is ideal for those who are crazy about collecting merchandise from Olympic organizers.

 

I tend not to use Windows, except when that architecture's support for DRM comes into play (as with Netflix) or I'm locked into using a Windows-only application. I've found very little to argue about with the little Acer's performance under Windows 7, with everything being reasonably responsive and suitable for daily use. Given the integrated graphics, I haven't tried gaming with anything more demanding than Plants vs. Zombies. Flash video from You Tube has played acceptably, although the tinny and underpowered speakers mean that you'll want your audio through headphones.

 

If performance under Win 7 is good, the little subnote excels at running Linux. My first flavor was Mandriva 2009.1 with Gnome not the lightest distro available. Performance nonetheless was outstanding, with 30-40 second boot times and little or no noticeable lag opening most programs. Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04 all worked seamlessly as well, with Lucid booting particularly quickly. My current distro is Lubuntu, which flies, booting typically in around 15-20 secs. I've had no hardware compatibility issues, except between Lucid's implementation of ALSA and the integrated sound, and even that had initially worked.

 

Given the AS1410’s price, we were happy to see any useful third-party software. Acer includes its own eRecovery backup-and-restore utility, as well as Microsoft Works SE 9.0 (with a trial for Office 2007 Home & Student preloaded) and EgisTec’s My WinLocker utility. (The latter includes a file shredder and a “safe” for hiding files from view via password protection.) We were also pleasantly surprised to see that Acer backs the AS1410 with a two-year warranty.

 

With the Aspire AS1410, Acer has raised the bar on low-cost ultraportables. It delivers a decent feature set and respectable speed overall for a $400 laptop. For another $150, you’ll see some faster performance in the Gateway EC1430u, but the difference is relatively minor. The Acer AS1410 battery — and low-priced ultraportables like it—just might blast netbooks out of the running for good.

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