Customer Reviews

Acer Aspire AS1410-2920 11.6-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I spent weeks looking for an affordable travel companion and Acer 1410-2990 turned out to be the perfect choice for me. The computer arrived as described. I like its design - simple and business friendly look. Definitely doesn't feel cheap. Fingerprints are less noticeable on a blue cover. HD streaming from Hulu, ABC and such works perfect. HD Youtube streaming sucks but as I understand it's due to Adobe Flash not being available for 64 bit systems (yet) and not because of the processor which seems to be quite powerful. This notebook is very quiet and doesn't get as hot as my older 15" Acer Aspire laptop. Battery life is pretty respectable; I get steady 5 hours with various tasks performed. I also like the touchpad a lot (though it is smaller than that of a regular size notebook)

Some of the cons:

- RAM comes in two sticks 2x1GB so upgrading to 4GB is not cheap
- Webcam, though of a very good quality, is a low resolution one (640x480 for both video and images) which kind of sucks because 1.3MP resolution (standard these days) would fit the screen perfectly
- Bluetooth supported by hardware but not included. However, you can purchase Acer internal Bluetooth module from ebay for 20$ and install it yourself. I ordered it already, will report back once I get it.
- Keyboard is very flat, takes time to adjust

Overall, I think this model is powerful enough to serve as a primary computer for many. Any other notebook similar to 1410-2990 will easily cost at least 100-150$ more so it is really a bargain.

I have had a slightly different version of this system (Acer Aspire AS1410-2801) for almost two weeks now - and I love it!! The only difference I can see between this version and mine is that this one has a 250-Gb HDD versus the 160-Gb HDD on mine. I have resisted buying an Acer for years because I have not had any confidence in them. The Aspire 1410 has made a believer out of me! I am very happy with it - it has a bright and high contrast LCD, firm keyboard, very solid build quality and Windows 7 runs great on it. The Intel SU2300 processor allows this system to literally run circles around netbooks that are using the Atom series processors. I am especially happy with the solid build and build quality since this is a low-priced system. This system also comes with Intel 4500HD graphics versus the older battery-burning Intel 950 graphics still found on many recent netbooks. It also has an HDMI graphics output, but I have not tested that capability. As with other manufacturers, it does not get the advertised battery life - but I am getting a solid five+ hours out of mine using Wi-Fi with the screen set to medium brightness. It does come with some shovelware and too many un-needed Acer utilities, but almost all Windows systems arrive that way nowadays. In my mind, there are only two minor cons for this system. First, mine came with a 6-cell 4400 mAh battery - whereas the more expensive Aspire 1800 series systems come with 5600 mAh batteries. Not a deal-breaker - but more battery life is always better! Second, the touchpad is pretty small. A larger one would be better but that would probably involve making the keyboard smaller. I almost always use a wireless mouse anyway so the smallish touchpad is not a major problem for me. I have one other system in this same category, an HP Mini 311, and I would rate the Aspire 1410 as an order of magnitude faster and better than the HP (but, in fairness, the HP has an Atom processor). Overall, this is a solidly built system with great battery life at a price slightly above the average netbook. I stongly recommend it and I am thrilled with my purchase!!

I purchased the Acer AS1410-2920 in January 2010, and it rocks. After doing countless comparisons and research I decided that any Acer 1410 series WITH THE CELERON DUAL CORE SU2300 processor would work. In a nutshell, the main diffrenece between the ending #'s (AS1410-29xx# represents different colors, black, blue, red, or different HD size, 160 GB or 250 GB.
Other than that the machines are identical. Again, as long as they say they have the SU2300 processor. I settled on the 1410-2920 because I wanted a black case and the other black models with the smaller HD were just not available anymore.

OK, now to the test. I got this computer to act as my main bring along computer. Work, vacation, chillin. I wanted to be able to watch HD videos and stream from HULU, etc... and his seemed to fit the bill according to posts that I read.
The true test was to bring my computer into my job and have the head IT guy work it out. He was somewhat skeptical as he had recommended any netbook with an Nvidia ION chip for HD videos.#which would have worked also but I wanted a dual core processor# He said your computer willprobably choke on HD videos but we'll test it anyway. Well, he hooked up his 250 GB external HD and started playing some HD movies. Bam...NO PROBLEMS. Worked like a charm. Surfice to say he was surprised and impressed. Overall he loved the speed of the computer, size, feel, and the power it had.Felt it was a good value. I value his opinion and the fact that he was impressed was confirmation that I got a great computer. #He runs the IT department with over 500 computers)

Now about the computer.
Keyboard is fine. Nice size, feels good, silent touch.
Size and weight. Perfect. Not to small, like 10" inch netbooks, not to big like 13" notebooks.
Screen size. Excellent, again, not to small, just right.
Speed, very responsive, zips around internet, runs my stock programs with faster speed than my 5 yr old desktop. Excellent.
Mouse pad is fine. No issues.
Bloatware was not bad. Used Revo Uninstaller (freeware) to rid computer of bloat.
WIFI links seemlessly. Fast, easy, automatic.
Battery life is fine. Guessing about 5 hour range.
Black case does attract finger prints. Buying an ivisible shield protector which shoud take care of that. (see link below)
[...]
Bluetooth - none installed, fixed that with a $10 bluetooth dongle. Plugs into USB port when needed. Works great.
Windows 7. Very happy. some cool features.

Overall, I am very happy with my ACER 1410-2920 for $449. I would highly recommend.

I had done some research on these notebooks and this is by far the best 1410 you can buy right now. it runs the su2300 which is a dual core processor, much better than the su3500. 2 gigs of ram is plenty to get by on, i was worried id need more. i read some reviews saying HD youtube didn't run smoothly and it had problems streaming high quality video... but thats completely wrong. it streams video flawlessly on this little notebook. i connected it to my 42" lcd and used it to play movies off netflix, they ran completely smooth and at good quality. its extremely quiet and doesn't get hot at all. i installed Warcraft 3 on it for fun and it runs great even at full graphics! today i tinkered with the power settings and brightness and managed to get about 7 hours out of the battery life on web browsing. this notebook is a great desktop replacement and its so light and portable i can take it around in my backpack and hardly notice its there. my girlfriend has a $1,500 asus laptop and is completely jealous of this little guy. 5 stars hands down! love it!

I needed an ultra-portable, but realized that a 10" screen was not going to cut it, so I spent weeks researching the 12" market.

I won't dwell on the technical specifications or the price, since you can read them anywhere and they speak for themselves as value for money. At the time of writing you will not find more for less: hence my 5 star rating. My only niggle is that they took off the market a model which had a 160 GB HD (big enough for many of us) and cost somewhat less than this model.

Here are the things, though, that I discovered in the week after receiving the machine:
- Keyboard quality is variable. I was lucky and have a keyboard with very little bend. I have seen other computers of the same model where the keyboard seems to curve upwards a little in the middle.
- Chassis quality is pretty good. No give. The hinge doesn't slip either.
- The viewing angle is indeed narrow. The same colour appears a different shade on different parts of the screen, depending on which angle I am viewing it from. And the glossy screen means you have to think about where to place it to work.
- Some of the keyboard locations (home/end/page up/page down/ctrl) may not be what you are used to.
- The bloatware is actually quite light and easy to remove by today's standards
- The computer's pretty, or at least the women in my house, to whom I naturally defer, seem to think so.
- The touchpad's sensitivity, at least until you adjust it, means that you sometimes register scrolls or double-clicks when all you want to do it touch it once.
- They weren't lying about the 6 hours' battery life. If you use it for browsing and Office applications, as I do, you can get significantly more.
- With Windows 7 and applications running, I'm usually using around 50-55% of the 2 GB installed memory.
- You can make a system backup on 3 DVD-Rs.

I'm happy I bought it.

For the past 11 years my company has met my computing needs by supplying me with Lenovo laptops. They are fantastic, high quality, albeit expensive machines. When the time came to buy something small and portable for my wife, I naturally thought of Lenovo. I knew I wanted something a few notches above the plethora of slow Atom 10" netbooks littering the tables at Starbucks, yet the small netbook form factor remained high on the list of must-haves. So, I started my search with Lenovo only to find nothing really fit. Most of their small machines were Atom based, and the ones that weren't cost too much. Disappointed, I turned to some other trusted brands: Sony, HP, Toshiba, even Dell. Same result - plenty of cheap Atoms, but if I wanted an Atom I'd get an Asus like the rest of the world.

I almost ended my search for a small, fast, portable 12" sub-notebook with a CULV processor that wouldn't break the budget. In fact, I'd decided to go with ASUS 1201N, one of the newest Atom based machines featuring HD capability. Then I stumbled upon this Acer!

CPU comparison (from [...]):
* Acer Aspire 1410-2990 Intel SU2300 @ 1.2GHz - PassMark CPU Score = 912
* ASUS 1201N Intel Atom 1.6GHz Dual Core N330 Processor - PassMark CPU Score = 538

Pro's:
* Small, light, good aesthetic appeal (and came in red making it a perfect gift for Valentine's day)
* Impressive native resolution for an 11.6" screen. Really a beautiful, easy to see/read/use display. Just right.
* Dual-core CULV
* Handles HD playback very well
* HDMI
* Full size keyboard
* Track-pad mouse with gestures is great
* Decent battery life
* Almost no bloatware
* Windows 7 Home Premium, which includes Media Center (making the HDMI output actually useful for something)

Con's:
* Power cord is bulky. (Although power brick is small and light - why such a fat cord?)
* Didn't come with a sleeve, though hardly a con. Spend $20 on one you like.
* No recovery media. Oddly, Acer supplies a utility to burn recovery media, but it requires a USB DVD burner. eRecovery media can be ordered from Acer if needed. (I just used a PE image with cloning software booted from USB thumb drive.)
* Battery life not on par with that of an Atom based machine, but worth it for the vastly superior performance. 5 hours nothing to scoff at, anyway.
* Home and End keys can only be access via Fn modifier. My wife says she's never used Home or End and could care less, but I use those all the time and it annoys me.
* Fan was makinga "click-click-click" sound for the first couple of days. It wasn't really loud, but audible enough to be annoying in a quiet room. Went away on its own after a few hours of use. <shrug>

Bottom line: This thing rocks. At this price point, Acer is clearly dominating this space with the AS1410. Well designed machine, and a joy to use. I appreciate that the only "bloat" I had to uninstall was: MS Office trial (replaced with OpenOffice 3.2), McAffee trial (replace with MS Security Essentials), and Acer Games. All three of those peeled off with no hassle at all. While, for work, I run Linux on my own laptop, I found Windows 7 to be a pleasant surprise. I've never seen this thing called Vista everyone seems to hate, but I found Windows 7 to be snappy and intuitive. Suspend/resume and hibernate all work quickly and without error, which is really important on a machine meant to be carried about.

Two big thumbs up.

Although I can't fault the performance of this computer, I was amazed to find that I lose about 5% of battery life for every day the computer is not used. Apparently this is a common problem with Acers having the SU2300 processor, at least, and one for which Acer does not seem to have a solution. When I contacted Acer about the problem, their recommendations for addressing the problem proved to be useless. I also seem to be stuck with a hard drive that vibrates excessively, and I worry about a premature death occuring, probably just after the warranty is up. Pity, since the form factor and performance of this computer otherwise are really nice.

I bought this Acer 1410-2990 after extensive research for an ultra-portable notebook for my traveling. The laptop turns out to be exactly what I was looking for, for under $450 with free shipping. There were many others similar to it but with much higher prices. Actually, I had waited and watched for a month before I finally ordered it , hoping a price break on this model, but never happened....in fact, they were sold like hotcakes, the price actually went up in some of the online stores...most stores are out of stock now! From what I learned, the next Acer 1410/1810 model would be more expensive with a faster CPU, which I don't think I would really need, because this Intel su2300 dual-core is plenty fast for what I need to do!

Pros: *A "real" ultra-portable notebook for under $450 (list price). *Very light and compact. *Connects network with ease. *Fast CPU for an ultra-portable notebook (Intel dual-core). *Great screen resolution. *Easy to get around. *Long battery life. *Win7 HP 64bit OS. *Plenty of RAM & HDD space (2G/250G). *Plenty of USB/VGA/HDMI ports. *5-in-1 card reader. *Full-size keyboard. *Built-quality is great for the price.

Cons: *No DVD drive (typical for smaller size laptops). *Win7 has NO OutlookExpress email client (shame on Microsoft!). *Finger print issue (it will happen on any glossy case anyway).

Other Thoughts: *I saw pictures of a "white" one, but somehow no store sells it in the U.S. I assumed Acer just don't market the "white" models here....it definitely would reduce the "finger print" concerns on a white model as for the MacBook. *Win7 looks like an improvement over XP but is not much in common as XP...you need to learn most of its fuctions from scratch...most of all, the omission of OutlookExpress in Win7 (same as in Vista) sucks! *Webcam lens has a tiny clear plastic protective film on it...most people probably did not remove it and complain about the webcam! *I think most people would be very pleased with the Intel su2300 dual-core speed...not sure if the next faster CPU would worth the extra $100+/- from this model???

I've had a chance to play with this netbook for a while now. the performance is what it should be for the type of computer that it is. The ram is sufficient for me to run most of the intense graphic programs that i use. After cleaning up and out the bloatware, and installing antispyware programs it still runs like a charm! I'm no computer guru, but it works just fine as an auxiliary computer for me. I can keep tabs on my email, and networks and still be available for homeschooling my kids.
The battery life is up to 6hrs as well depending on settings and how much you have running. if you're gonna sit and stream videos, you're only gonna get about 3hrs of life, otherwise it holds up if you're just sending emails or instant messaging.
It's also very light weight and fits into my messenger bag very nicely without adding too much more weight.

All around a great buy. Though next time, i'll upgrade the shipping.

Battery life isn't as good as advertised but is still very good. I liked the smaller keyboard as I don't have big hands and can actually type faster on it. No issues with the hardware so far.