Customer Reviews

Acer Aspire AO521-3530 10.1-Inch Netbook (Onyx Black)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the first 10" netbook I've come across with some real horsepower. The ATI graphics and the dedicated 384mb of graphics memory not only let it slice through HD video like butter, but play a fair game of Portal as well. 3D games will want to run at 800x600 because of the vertical screen resolution, but the two (albeit older) games I tried, Portal and Tron2.0 ran perfectly fluidly at full settings. The Wifi radio is quite good, getting 2 bars where my phone and MacBook barely get any. I haven't run off of battery for very long, so I can't confirm the battery life, and it wasn't a concern for me at purchase.

One of the first things I did was wipe the bloatware-infested Windows 7 Starter in favor of a clean Windows 7 Pro. I also upgraded the RAM to 2GB. The removable panel on the bottom grants access to the hard drive, RAM and WiFi card. I initially tried a Patriot 2GB DDR3-1333 module from Frys, and it wouldn't even POST. A replacement module also failed. A Crucial module of the same spec DID work flawlessly, however. The machine comes with no disks, so be sure to use the Acer restore/drivers disk burner software it comes pre-installed with to make them on an external drive before wiping.

I love this little laptop and plan to use it as an auxiliary work machine to shuttle home instead of my bulky MacBook, and also save the trouble of dual-booting.

This is the best performing Netbook I have ever touched. I had the Intel Atom based Acer AO532h and it was very good on battery life but poor on graphics performance and general computing. This Acer AO521 blows it away in almost every category except battery life. I can get about 4-5 hours off of battery. The coolest thing is that if you have an HDMI cable, connect this sucker to your HD TV and watch it play web video in full HD resolution (Hulu,Youtube) with no stuttering or lag. The design is not amazing but unless you are trying to make a fashion statement the "Onyx Black" shell gets the job done. I give it the highest rating because it fulfills every need I had. It can also play lightweight games pretty well too. It may cost a little bit more that your average entry level netbook but it outperforms almost all other netbooks on the market. Don't be scared because it says AMD processor, just buy it!

Pros: The video and graphics are lightyears ahead of the competition for a netbook for this price. Played back 720p on YouTube with no problem. Played back 1080p video files with not a hiccup. It comes with an HDMI out and three USB outs.

Cons: The amount of bloatware is just incredible. It took a couple of hours for the bloatware to auto-install and another couple of hours to uninstall it. It's really just ridiculous. Crippled Windows 7 Starter is installed and it's another $50 to $80 to update it to a full version. Only 1 gb of RAM.

Bottom line: If you're willing to spend time unloading the bloatware, it's really the best 10 inch netbook for the price.

Just got this notebook and it is so much lighter than my laptop! It won't replace it but I will use it while travelling to check mail, write a few things and listen to music, read books. I also got a case to go with it which is excellent. My mystake was to buy the 2GB memory card "suggested" by Amazon. Well,they word it very carefully "people who bought the Acer 521 also bought this memory card". Well the CT25664BC106 DOES NOT WORK WITH ACER. You need to get the CT25664BC1339!!!! Returning it is not straight forward, I am now waiting to get a replacement card from J&R. Hope this will help future buyers! ;-D

If you think netbooks are slow and not usable for serious computation, this one may change your mind. It has the AMD's Athlon Neo K125 processor which is significantly faster than the Intel Atom (N270 or N450). And yet it's still small and consumes less power than most laptops. I measured the AC power usage about 9 watt idle and 21 watt playing video. It comes with both WiFi and Bluetooth. It has a SD card reader which allows you to easily and quickly read the memory cards from your digital cameras. If you use it to watch movies, you'll be ok for standard definition (DVD) files and HD video up to 720 resolution. At 1080i or 1080p, it has problems. Also note that it has no CD/DVD drive. If you want to carry movies on your trips, you have to convert them to files stored in the hard drive. It is also reasonably fast for scientific/engineering computations compared to desktop machines made 3-4 years ago. The video circuit can drive most monitors (VGA) and HDTVs (HDMI) in their native resolutions. I have it hooked up to a 46" HDTV. One slight drawback is the built-in screen resolution of 1024x600. Some software may refuse to run with that resolution unless you hook it to a larger monitor.

I am reviewing this as is. I have not upgraded memory or from windows starter. I think that is the only fair way to review this. Let me just say that windows seven starter is awful. If you have the money, I recommend upgrading, but I probably won't. I don't want to give Microsoft any money they don't deserve. If you ever plan on watching dvds with an external drive, beware that 7 starter will NOT let you watch dvds on Windows Media player ( the only viewing device installed on this netbook.) Microsoft deliberately didn't install a dvd codec in the starter, to get you to purchase the premium edition. I downloaded VLC media player ( as has anyone wanting to watch dvds while traveling if they have 7 starter) which is completely free. It opens and plays dvds wonderfully. Problem, but total solution.

This comes with a trial of Microsoft Office and Microsoft works SE which is annyoing since it is add based. Who wants to deals with adds while writing a paper? I'm not going to buy MO when I can download openoffice. It's a free program, better than Microsoft Office. Compatible with this netbook. Works great!

I love the size of this keyboard. Nice improvement from the earlier netbooks. It runs pretty quickly without upgrading to 2 GB, but I am not going to install a ton of programs. I will mainly use this for travel and for school. HD works good, although I did notice a little chopiness with 1080. 720 plays perfectly. Touchpad is great. Very responsive. I LOVE how thin this is. Bluetooth is a great feature. I really love the look of it too, although I wish it wasn't glossy. I may get a clear matte cover for it. The battery life is not as long as some netbooks, but it's still decent.

Basically you are getting a FAST netbook with bluetooth and wifi, great look and portibility for a great price. The biggest downfall as I said was windows seven starter. But with my free solutions I am very happy with this netbook! I reccomend it to everyone looking for a great quality netbook.

I did a lot of research before selecting the right netbook for me. My requirement was maximum speed. I did not care about battery life, but I was pleasantly surprised that I get about 5 hours with this speed machine. I haven't tried playing any graphically intensive games just yet, but can confirm simple games like Jewel Quest are smooth as butter. The best feature so far is video streaming. Gone are the days of choppy, buffering video as I get the best Wi-Fi speeds ever acheived out of any of my previous laptops and the ATI graphics chip does the job right. Start up speed is great...takes about 1 minute from pressing power until ready to browse. I did however uninstall a few bloatware programs that seemed to slow it a bit. Since I bought this I don't even use my Sony Vaio that I paid over 4 times more for.

I purchased this as a replacement for a dead Dell Inspiron 910 that was a bit less than 2 yrs old and lost its SSD access. While I have read the reviews about 'bloatware' and 7 Starter, I decided to stick it out with Starter although I have an upgrade available. I did delete most of the possible bloatware before installation. I have also installed Office 2007, Acrobat 9 Pro, Photoshop Elements, and Mathematica 7 (all requiring only a bit more than 20GB with the OS). I have also upgraded to 2GB which boosted the memory WEI from 3.9 to 5.1.

The machine boots in well under 30 sec and is tolerably fast (perhaps 5-10x the now-dead Dell). I did a full power cycle on the battery 3 times to condition it. Being careful to turn on/off the wireless (via F3)so wireless is only on when needed and reducing screen brightness gives me battery life above 8 hrs, not the 5+ hrs reported on other posts.

All in all, an impressive little dynamo that is very effective when ultra-portability and small size is needed.

I got this Acer Inspire One 521 with the idea of giving up some battery life for better graphics and CPU. Most other Netbooks have the Atom CPU and low end graphics. This unit come with AMD CPU and ATI Grapics.It'll give you 4-5 hrs instead of 9-10.I don't think I really need all those hours anyway. A HDMI slot to easily hook up to your HDTV. Its very light and I just bought a sleeve for it. It doesn't get hot and I will make great use of it. I like Net Books for the light Weight and larger screen than a dang cell phone. One thing that bothers me about the unit is the the mouse pad. It never flows with your finger the way you want it to. There always seems to be this lag, and I'm constantly going over and over with it to get it where I want it to go. However, the fix is a wireless Mouse. But a mini mouse if you will to keep the bulk down. I found a perfect mini mouse for it. It works great! Genius Micro Traveler 900S Gray Super Mini 2.4GHz Wireless Notebook MouseYou won't be disappointed if you get the Acer One 521.

The Acer Aspire AO521-3530 performs video graphic applications solidly, lacking in the Intel atom cpu based netbooks.

The compatibility of all the features function very well with other operating systems and applications.

It has been in use for about one month so far at school, work, home, and in-transit; thus so far fares well in battery life and build quality.

The initial Windows 7 Starter OS does no justice to the netbook's abilities, I highly recommend using windows 7 or any other linux based OS.

The netbook is used mostly for word processing, internet, and 3D engineering design/render.

The lower price of the AMD Athlon II Neo-CPU, netbook is well worth the investment.

PS

I recommend an abundant amount of research to find the compatible 2Gig ram upgrade.