Acer Aspire V5-171 Notebook Review: The Death and Rebirth of the Netbook
by Dustin Sklavos on November 21, 2012 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Acer
- Ivy Bridge
- Aspire V5
- Ultraportable
- Notebooks
Conclusion: A Killer Bargain
While I try to approach my reviews without much bias, or at the very least leave that bias checked at the door, I'll admit I haven't had the best impressions of Acer's products when I've reviewed them, and I certainly never imagined I'd ever buy one for myself. When I read about the Acer Aspire V5-171, I approached it with a heady mix of skepticism and optimism: I was pretty sure there would be some dealbreaking problem with it (I'm incredibly picky when it comes to the computers I personally use), but I was hoping that it would be a diamond in the rough.
The V5-171 is not without its faults, many of which undoubtedly stem from Acer's push to get it to market at the remarkably low price tag it's currently at. The chassis is plastic, and at the outermost corners it's not the firmest build in the world. While the chiclet keyboard is a huge improvement over the old floating island keyboards Acer used to employ, it's still a bit on the mushy side. Relative battery life is at least competitive, but absolute battery life is pretty poor. In an era where we can get five to six hours of running time out of most notebooks, just barely scraping four useful hours surfing the internet is brutal. Finally, I still remain absolutely perplexed by manufacturers who smartly eschew glossy plastic for the majority of the build...and then put it on the screen bezel, the number one place where fingerprints are going to be picked up.
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With all that said, there's a hell of a lot you can forgive if the price is right. Just like I'd happily take home an AMD E2-1800-based netbook if they were priced appropriate to their performance (read $300-$350), I'm willing to put up with some of the V5's problems simply because of the stellar price-performance ratio. If you take the questionable battery life out of the equation and uninstall most of Acer's bloatware from the hard drive, you're left with a bargain notebook that really doesn't have any major usability issues. The keyboard, clickpad, and display aren't great, but they aren't awful either. The distance between the user and the metal isn't painful to cover.
The V5 hits almost the exact notes for my usage patterns. I do videography semi-professionally on the side, and the ability to take a three pound notebook with me to a show, shoot a performance, then convert the footage to a YouTube-ready format with QuickSync in under two minutes and copy it to the performer's flash drive that night makes me tremendously more efficient. Being able to comfortably indulge in my casual game of choice, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, while off the mains is wonderful, too. And finally, it's thin without being so thin that you start to make compromises when it comes to key depth, system noise, heat, and serviceability the way you do when you get to true ultrabooks.
I think either the i3-based version (currently only $399 on Amazon) or this i5-based model are potentially excellent companions for end users who need something portable and don't mind the truncated battery life. The savvy user will probably be able to eke out five hours of useful life just by knocking the brightness down a bit more, which makes it a little more palatable. The V5-171 isn't flawless, but it's a pretty powerful little system and a surprisingly worthy replacement for my venerable ThinkPad X100e.
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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?