Netbook Review: Acer Aspire AO751H

[soccerballtux]

Two years ago a computer like this would have run you $2000 from Sony.

I just got one of these for $305 + money for RAM from Tigerdirect with 12.1% Bing cashback.

TLDR Version: An all around great netbook (solid replacement for a notebook). Very light. Plenty fast with 2GB of RAM and Win 7 (Vista much slower apparently). Hardware accelerated 1080p video with tweaking. Very impressed; happy with purchase.

The Basics

• Once you upgrade the RAM to the chipset's maximum supported 2GB (1x2GB stick), MAN does this thing fly. It was fast before if you're only using a few applications, but once you get 2GB in there it's just about fast enough for any amount of multitasking you want to do. I notice the processor's limitations when I type something into the Search bar...returns results a bit slowly (this is with everything indexed, including C: drive)
  
  The US15W chipset with the GMA500 graphics chip is just fast enough to run Aero smoothly without transparency.
  
  Phenomenal battery life (6-8h, depending on my usage), make sure you get the 6-cell.
  
  Weighs only 3lbs with the 6-cell battery
  
  Atom z520 @ 1.33Ghz, GMA500 handles all the window drawing (makes feel faster). Overclocking is easy-- just get SetFSB, choose the right chip to change the FSB on (ICS9LPRS365BGLF), and set it to 142 (1.42Ghz) and you're good to go. Need to make Task to re-run this on Logon and Unlock (for resuming from suspend/hibernate/etc).
  
  11.6" Screen+full-sized keyboard--This screen size feels just perfect for a netbook. I've used a 10.1" Netbook before (1024x600 resolution) and it was simply frustrating to use. When viewing a PDF in Firefox, for example. you only had about 400 pixels to work with (the rest were taking up by toolbars in Firefox, Adobe, etc.), and that's with the taskbar on the side of the screen (not the bottom). This can be improved some, but having the 28% extra vertical viewing area is very nice.
  
  Screen lit by LED backlighting so you don't have to worry about wearing down the CFLs. (This was always a concern of mine.)
  
  With the right driver and program in Win7/Vista, this thing can accelerate 1080p videos with ~50% processor usage. Driver support from Intel is lacking...they need to improve their drivers, because there's a lot of tweaking to get everything to work right. I had to use the Microsoft DTV-DVD Decoder for AVC1 video in KMPlayer to get everything to work right. Can't get it to run Step Into Liquid 1080p from KMPlayer yet-- have to go through DXVA Checker to get it @24fps. So the ability is there in the hardware, drivers just need to mature.

Thoughts:
On Overclocking

• It seems to lock up at a lower frequency when OC'ing with the 2GB ram stick in than the 1GB stick. This might be a chipset thing, not sure; only difference between these RAMs is latency-- the 1GB stick that came with it was 5-5-5-12 DDR2-667, the one I bought is 5-5-5-18 DDR2-800. With the 1GB stick I got up to 1.7Ghz before it locked up on me-- but I couldn't push past about 1.5Ghz anyways and maintain stability with Orthos or other programs-- Explorer.exe, etc would start to fail.

On Drivers

• GMA500 with PowerVR by Imagination Technologies is the tech behind the hardware video acceleration. While currently difficult to get working (see link above for the guide), his GMA500 is slated to be put into a lot of other devices-- specifically the next Macbook [something-- Air?].
  
  I put my taskbar on the side and there's a weird flashing occasionally when you mouse over something in an Explorer window in Win7. I just set the taskbar to autohide and I don't see it anymore. Probably a driver issue.
  
  There's another driver issue where after logging on, you have refresh the desktop. Solution I used was DesktopRefresh set to run in Task Scheduler any time a user logs on or unlocks the workstation.

On Sound

• Headphone quality great-- no hissing from processor or while harddrive working.
  Built in speakers on the bottom are pretty weak-- was fully expecting this. They get the job done, though.

Misc

• RAM accessability is great-- unscrew 2 screws on the bottom, slide the cover down and pull up, and replace the RAM.
  
  
  The 160GB HDD this comes with is pretty fast. 75MB/s (beginning of drive) to about 35MB/s (end of drive) in HD Tach, 20ms latency. Thanks to the 7 precaching it doesn't seem bad at all. Other users have replaced with an SSD (cheaper variants though) and didn't notice a performance improvement. You'd have to get an OCZ, Intel, etc drive, and at that point you're substantially increasing the end price.
  
  
  Ony the $380 models (I got the $350 model, the only one available on TigerDirect (and subsequently with 12.1% cashback)) have Bluetooth. Would have been nice to have bluetooth for a headset for this with Google Voice on the go. Oh well.