Acer AO751H REVIEW (same as Acer LT3000) (Acer Aspire One 751)
With so many netbook manufactures now breaking into the 10-inch+ screen limit, Acer was no way going to left behind in the business where it actually rules. The Acer A0751H is the first Acer Aspire One to sport an Intel Atom Z520 processor that is clocked at 1.3GHz. However, the best part of this netbook is its resolution: 1366 x 768 px, which gives it an obvious edge over its competitors. So, was it able to impress us? Read the review to find out!
Design
The Acer AO751H is a very nicely designed netbook. Although one can immediately feel the size difference between 11.6-inch netbook and 10-inch netbooks.
On the left of 
AO751H, you will find two USB 2.0 ports and earphone and microphone jack.
On the right, you will find a multi-card reader (reads SD, xD and Memory Stick), Kensignton Lock and VGA out (top-right)
Display
The Acer AO751H comes with a 11.6-inch display, which packs a lot of pixels: 1366 x 768. Most of the netbooks come with just 1024 x 600 pixels screen, which is adequate for 10-inch displays, but I certainly do expect more pixels when I’m moving to a bigger display size and that is exactly what Acer AO751H offers: 1366 x 768 pixels. The screen of Acer AO751H is gorgeous to look at. Colors looks vivid and images look sharp.
However, the display is glossy and not matte, which is found in most of the EEE PCs (except the newer ones like 1008HA and 1005HA). The display is lovely to look at indoors and pretty much useless for use when outdoors.
Keyboard
Bigger size also brings the possibilities to include a bigger keyboard and Acer made full use of this opportunity. It comes with a keyboard with big keys similar to the one found in HP Mini and Mininote. The keys have excellent tactile feedback. The shift key is of full size, which is always a nice thing to know.
I am very sure that somebody who regularly types on a regular notebook will immediately feel at home when using the keyboard found in Acer AO751H.
TouchPad
The Touch pad is wider in width and shorter in height than the one found in Acer Aspire One D150. The Touch pad supports gestures too.
Bootup and Shutdown
Bootup and Shutdown times are extremely important factors for someone who is buying a netbook. The netbook should boot up fast. There is no point of having a mobile device, which boots in 2-3 minutes (yes, I’m pointing towards VAIO P). So how is the boot up time for the Acer AO751H? Unfortunately, they are not so good. Acer AO751H took nearly 55 seconds to boot up, which is quite slow!
Here is a video where Acer AO751H is restarted so that you can get the idea of how much time does it takes to shut down and how much time does it takes to boot up again.
Sorry, somehow youtube destroyed the quality of the video, but you get the point. Right?
Performance
The Acer AO751H comes equipped with a Z520 processor, which is simply slower than N270 processor in all areas. All of a sudden, my EEE 1000H and EEE 1000HE, which are no speed deamons feel a lot faster than the Acer AO751H, which comes with a slower processor.Thankfully, it comes with Windows XP Home. Had it come with Vista, it would have been a sheer disaster.
Overall, I was not impressed with the performance of this new CPU. N270/N280 are the way to go.
Battery Life
Acer AO751H comes with a 6-cell battery (5200mAh) which protudes horizonatally front behind. The Acer AO751H runs on a power-frugal Z520 Intel Atom processor, which gave us nearly 5.5 hours of battery life with WiFi with brightness just two notch above the minimum brightness. Without wifi, you may be able to stretch it to 7 hours. Of course, the usage patterns also play a major role in deciding the battery life. So your mileage may vary.
Final Verdict
The Acer AO751H is a great device if you are looking for a netbook with 11-inch screen packed with a lot of pixels. Acer AO751H offers great battery life and satisfactory performance with XP. The roomy keyboard is great for those who write a lot on-the-go.
Pros:
- 11.6-inch display
- 1366 x 768 pixel screen
- Great Keyboard
- Full right shift key
- Windows XP as bundled OS
- Multi-Touch Touchpad
- 160GB HDD (upgradable)
- 1.25kg (lighter than ASUS EEE 1000HE)
Cons:
- Slow boot up
- Slower than netbooks with N270 processor
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Normally, Gadgetmix looks just fit in the 1024 x 600 resolution, but looking at its display picture, i can clearly see the advantage higher resolution screen.
Nice review BTW
Why do netbook companies give you one thing that gives you an edge over others and then, at the same time, take out something which works already so nice and replace it with something crappy? There is no point of using a z520 processor instead of atom n280 or n270
Is the processor technology going backwards? My good ol eee 701 takes 20 secs to boot XP!
Wow. That keyboard has BIIIIGG keys. Almost like my 17 inch HP laptop!
Its resolution is more than my 14 inch laptop. But its performance seems to shabby. Good review Kamal
[...] to Nintendo DS) over at GadgetMix spent a short amount of time with the newest Acer netbook and comes away with a mixed bag. The AO751H offers higher resolution of 1366 x 768 on its generous 11.6″ display, so [...]
Looks like the peformance just won’t cut it.
You are right. I tried one from Walmart and returned it after a week because the processor was sooooooo slowwwwww with Vista Home Basic, even after stripping useless bloatwares and before installing anything new.
Plus I disliked there misleading labels showing 3G, BT and 8 hours whereas the actual battery life (3 cell) was barely 2.5 hours, and no BT, no 3G.
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[...] appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 09:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email [...]
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[...] appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 09:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Author: Darren Murph [...]
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BS upgrades!!!! Ok the new resolution is nice but come on after so many upgrades why cant they add HDMI + 3G + a the option to remove the damn glossy screen on all new models. I refuse to buy another new laptop without them.
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[...] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Post tags: Acer Aspire, Atom, Battery Life, Engadget, Fri, Impressions, Laptops, Nbsp, Netbook, Real World, Rundown, Speed Demon, Sport One, Tap, Vmedia Posted in: Gadżety | | [...]
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[...] Not to be mistaken with the Vmedia-equipped Aspire One 571, Acer’s Aspire One 751h has just been handled over at GadgetMix. The machine, which rocks a pretty unorthodox setup for a netbook, was said to sport one of the best displays ever put on a netbook, but that lethargic Atom Z520 CPU made the standard fare N270 feel like a real speed demon. Of course, such a sleepy processor allowed for nearly 5.5 hours of real-world battery life, and the multi-touch trackpad definitely sweetened the deal. Have a look past the break for a bootup video, and tap the read link for the full rundown of pics and impressions. Read more [...]
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Nice resolution and keyboard, but definitely could be better in performance. Like Reza, I’d also prefer a non-glossy screen. I’ll probably stick with my EEE 1000HA for a while.
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[...] maskinen allerede i marts men der var der tale om preproduction model. Og nu har GadgetMix et engelsk review af den færdige model [...]
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[...] Read Share this on del.icio.usShare this on RedditBuzz up!Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUponShare this on TechnoratiShare this on MixxShare this on FacebookTweet This!Email this to a friend? Posted in Gadget News, IT [...]
[...] The guys at GadgetMix have taken Acer’s Aspire One 751h for a ride and thankfully, fixed a short boot-up video you [...]
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[...] Acer’s new AO751H netbook comes with an 11.6–inch HD screen (1366×768 pixels) and a better keyboard. Unfortunately, the Intel Atom Z520 it sports is slower than the common N270 on netbooks. But with more than 5 hours of battery, this is still a good netbook. [...]
One thing from all reviews I’ve read about Acer’s AO751H is it’s poor performance. I recently bought one with the Intel Z520 that runs @ 1.33MHz with 2GB RAM & 250GB SATA on Vista Basic. I’ve noticed the same underpowered CPU performance in running simple word processing tasks, emailing, chatting & web-browsing. After removing all unnecessary applications that came preinstalled with the attractively designed netbook including MacAfee (replaced by Avira AntiVir & ZonAlarm Firewall Free Editions, MS Office 2007 Trial (downgraded to 2003) and other Acer softwares (which I thought I never needed) and changing many system settings gearing it towards faster performance and finally having Firefox 3 over IE8… the next thing is happy On-The-Go computing for me with 6-cell squeezing more than 6 hours (set to High Performance power option) before I saw (!) sign on the battery icon, Bluetooth + EDR and the lovable Dolby output sound quality from the plugs (much more if I had XP over Vista). Z520 is dual core based (the reason you will see 1.33GHz 1.33GHz in System Properties) and gives credit when you multi-task / multi-process (which N270/N280 won’t barely give you). Startup time is just one thing… but what’s next? I’m pretty sure the next Z5++ series of Intel Atoms will be much favored in the coming years for netbooks.
(I’ve posted this in the comments at Liliputing.com already, but I hope you don’t mind the repeat. I know there aren’t a lot of reviews on this machine yet so I thought it would be helpful.)
** Quick Review **
I hope you guys don’t mind me spouting about this. I picked the Aspire 751h in a Walmart several days ago. Not all stores will sell them yet at this time, so you just have to show up and get lucky and hope they didn’t code it for sale after “XXXX” date.
This is the form-factor I’ve been waiting for, even if it’s not perfection in terms of hardware. Great screen and a truly full-size keyboard. The higher resolution (1366 x 768) display is a godsend compared to normal netbooks. I no longer feel like I’m looking at the web through a mail-slot! It’s the full picture! Great for working in MS Excel and much more pleasing for web browsing and multitasking.
And the full-size keyboard is nice, though the keys are very flat, meaning you can’t easily feel where one key ends and the next begins. Still you get used to it quickly. It bothered me at first, but now I really like this keyboard. The touchpad rocker-button is pretty bad, however. You have to jam your finger below the level of the case to get it to click. Honestly, it’s just barely acceptable. I usually click by tapping the touchpad surface, but it annoys me when I have to use the rocker-button to click-and-drag, like when resizing a window. Also, the surface of the touchpad isn’t as slick as I’d like, but if you turn up the pointer speed it works well. I have the touchpad speed cranked up the maximum and it now moves along quickly enough for my taste.
With the flush-fitting 3-cell battery, I got about 3 hrs and 15 minutes of battery life on the first charge while web browsing and installing software with brightness at 2-clicks above the lowest. Very reasonable for a 3-cell. You can obviously get much better battery life from a 6-cell (this also has a 6-cell version), but I honestly didn’t want to make this computer any larger, since the 6-cell battery would have stuck out the back. Plus Walmart only sells the 3-cell version as far as I can tell.
Mine came with 2GB of RAM, 250 GB HDD, and Windows Vista. I almost didn’t buy it because of Vista. But I’m quite relieved to learn that it’s fine once you remove all of the bloatware and trial antivirus software. For the most part, it feels equally ‘zippy’ as an MSI Wind (with 1.6 GHz Atom processor) running Windows XP. It opens Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc in about 3 seconds each. Quite reasonable. The place where it feels really slow is when a major task is happening. If you are installing software for instance, and want to open the control panel, be prepared to wait! If you want to move a window while loading another program, you have to wait a few seconds. Not awful, but you can feel the “lag” a little bit more than if it were running XP on a typical netbook. I have not tested it yet with full-screen YouTube video or with Hulu. I don’t know how it will perform there. But for regular web surfing and office productivity I have no speed complaints.
Overall, the benefits of the form-factor still outweigh the imperfections of the hardware. Working on an 11.6″ screen is worlds better than working on a 10-inch 1024×600 netbook display.
One early review (not this one) said the keyboard was “flexy”. I disagree. It feels on par with other netbooks I’ve used. That same review also said the screen was easy to distort while moving it on the hinge. I have not seen that at all. Maybe they got a pre-production unit? This feels at least as solid as the MSI Wind U100. Very reasonable for a budget computer. Aesthetically, it looks more expensive than it is.
If this machine had a flush-fitting 6-cell battery and a better rocker-bar for the touchpad, it would be ideal. As it is, it’s a machine with a few flaws. For me, the benefits of a larger, higher-resolution screen (1366×768) and a full-size keyboard outweigh the negatives. But that may not be a trade-off everyone is willing to take.
Pros:
- Beautiful screen with great horizontal viewing angles
- Full-size keyboard
- Lightweight (2.7 lbs with three cell battery)
- Only slightly larger than many 6-cell netbooks
- Very sharp looking system
- Reasonably solid in terms of build quality (contrary to one early review)
Cons:
- Slower 1.33 GHz processor (not very noticeable speed difference)
- three cell battery only gives a bit over 3 hrs of runtime, while the long-lasting six cell battery sticks out the the rear of the case
- touchpad rocker button is lousy
- touchpad surface has some drag
- keyboard keys are very flat (though I got used to this and grew to love the keyboard).
- arrow keys are tiny, despite full-size keyboard
- ships with lots of bloatware and trial software pre-installed
- Graphics chipset is not Linux friendly. Don’t expect full graphics acceleration in Linux anytime soon.
Overall: It’s the first 11.6″ netbook available in the U.S. and the *form-factor* is a winner! However, you’ll have to live with a few quirks. For me, the benefits of the larger screen and keyboard outweigh the downsides. I can never go back to a 10″ netbook again.
I agree with the original review. The Z520 is a disaster with Vista Home Basic, and I’ve removed all crap trial software. I’m seriously considering downgading to XP or even installing Linux.
I jsut got this machine and AO75h from costco. I currently have a asus 8.9 inch with and atom 1.6 and the 1024×600 screen. I am very unsatisfied
I actually was looking forward to the larger screen with mor resolution. I watch netflix and hulu in bed when i spouse sleeps so i wont wake them. My smaller machine works much better. They both have 9
801.11g but streeming sucked on the newer Acer AO75h.
I am a developer at MS so i do have an understanding of what i bought..or i thought.
The Acer also boasts a HD 1366×768 screen (calles it high deff) what the heck are they goign to view on it? You canot streem anything HD, it requires more processing power. I am taking this back very very dissapointed.
Hi Jeremy! So are you able to run VS 2008/2010 without any problems on it?
i’m looking for a small laptop to use with linux so processor power won’t be a problem. i might use it sometimes for programming though. basicaly i’m looking for something cheap to store my “digital library” of pdf,and make a program sometimes.so my questions are…
1)compatibility with linux?
2)is the screen as good as it is said to be?
3)battery life? (6 cells)
4)keyborad size?
1) Yes, UBUNTU should run fine on it
2) Screen is great. Crisp and sharp (glossy)
3) Battery life is 6h+
4) Keyboard is full laptop size
what about this comment?
“Graphics chipset is not Linux friendly. Don’t expect full graphics acceleration in Linux anytime soon”
There are hacks to make the graphics chipset work. Till now, there are two problems when running Ubuntu on 751:
1) Screen resolution: It stretches the screen to 1024 x 600. Here is its workaround (taken from ubuntu forums):
- add the following line at the end of /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
- execute the following commands from command line:
sudo gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv 0×99d6b21cc6598a30
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-psb
- reboot
2) Videos: Watching videos can be a pain in the ***. However, if you install KMplayer via synaptics manager and after selecting “Soft Frame dropping” from advanced settings, things are much better
[...] Read More By Kamal DS on May 28, 2009 | Comments 45 [...]
[...] Read More By Kamal DS on May 28, 2009 | Comments 46 [...]
[...] Read More By Kamal DS on May 28, 2009 | Comments 47 [...]
[...] at 1.4kg. It’s looks like it is successor of Acer Aspire 751H, which had already reviewed on GadgetMix.Com [...]
[...] Read More By Kamal DS on May 28, 2009 | Comments 49 [...]