Acer D150 Review
Following the immense success of the original 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One, Acer’s new Aspire One AKA D150 comes with a bigger 10.1-inch display; slicker casing and an array of improvements over the immensely popular 8.9″ Aspire One. Can the new D150 be the top selling netbook just like the original one? Read the review to find out!
Design
The new Aspire One is built along the design of its older model. That said, there are some (welcome) design changes in the D150. For example: the shiny palm rest is now brushed metal finishing. The hinge has also undergone design change. We will cover these changes and other improvements one-by-one in the review
EEE 1000H and Aspire One D150
On the right side of the netbook, you will find that the rings on the side of the hinge are gone. They are now replaced by teardrop-shaped hinge, which looks great. On this side, you will find the Kensington lock, power port and 2 USB ports.
On the left side, you will find VGA port, LAN port, a USB port, earphone, microphone jack and multi-card reader.
On the front, you will find the WiFi toggle switch.
The Aspire One D150 is much less chunky than the other 10.1-inch netbooks like EEE 1000H and looks better too.
Display
The Acer Aspire One D150 is equipped with a 10.1-inch display which has 1024 x 600 resolution. Unlike most of the netbooks in the market, it has a glossy display. The colors are rich and images look vibrant.
Just over the display, you will find the 0.3MP camera, which I found decent enough for Skype video calls.
Keyboard
Most of the people go for the 10-inch netbooks for two reasons:
- for bigger display (of course)
- for full-size keyboard
The bigger display allows the netbook manufactures to fit-in for the bigger ‘almost’ full-size keyboards. The keyboard of D150 is great to type on. Although, Acer could have fit in a bigger keyboard as there is some empty space on the sides. That said, the keyboard is a joy to use. I’d no problems in typing a document in the wordpad. With the EEE 1000H, I get nearly 90-100WPM and with the D150, I got 85WPM. May be I will improve with the usage.
I also appreciate the full size shift key and dedicated page-up and page-down buttons. In all the ASUS EEEs, you have to use the fn+up arrow combo to use the page-up function. Since, we use page-up and page-down functions quite a lot when browsing through long documents and web-pages, the dedicated keys improve the user-experience.
Another improvement is that the Acer has made the touchpad bigger and the vertical buttons previously found on the sides of the touchpad are now replaced by a single bar which is placed below the touchpad.
Speakers
The speakers are located at the bottom of the unit. They are loud enough for skype calls.
Memory
The Acer Aspire One D150 comes with a 160GB HDD and 1GB RAM. How do the HDD performs? Let’s see that in the benchmark test.
Benchmarks
Here are the results obtained by Crystal Disk Mark test:
..and for comparison, here are the results of EEE 1000H followed by EEE 1002HA (both use HDD):
As it can be easily observed, most of them performed similarly in the Crystal Disk Mark test. Here are Crytal Mark benchmark result:
Upgrading
Upgrading HDD and RAM in the older Aspire One was not an easy job. Acer listened to the complaints of the users and have made upgrading HDD and RAM extremely easy in the new D150 Aspire One. The RAM is upgradable to 2GB.
Connectivity
The D150 comes with all the latest connectivity radios that you would expect from a modern netbook. This include WiFi and BT (older aspire one did not have BT). However, the Aspire One D150 that I reviewed came with something extra: WiMax slot. Yes, if your network supports WiMax, just put in your SIM and boom! You can now enjoy mobile broadband.
Battery Life
Gone are the days, when the users cared less about the battery life. People expect to carry these netbooks everywhere they go and nobody wants to carry the charger with them as it just kills the point of mobility.
The D150 ships with 6-cell 5200mAh as standard in most of the countries, which simply gives mind-boggling battery life. In casual wifi surfing, it crossed 6 hours with ease and still had some juice left. This is better than the most of the 6-cell netbooks like EEE 1000H and MSI WIND U100.
It protrudes out from back though.
Charger
Charger should be as compact as possible in the netbooks. Older Aspire One came with a huge power brick. Acer has made the power brick smaller for the D150, which looks a lot like the one which is supplied with the latest EEE PCs.
sorry for the blurred image, but that does not matters here. Right? ;)
Addons
The ACER bundles a nice neoprene case which does a much better job than the pathetic case that the ACER bundled with the older verison of the Acer Aspire one.
Acer has bundled eRecovery software for easy restore and backup of the HDD image. It lets you:
- create a factory default disk
- create drivers and apps disk
- restore system to factory defaults
- restore only OS (user data won’t be deleted in this option)
- reinstall drivers and apps
It also comes with eSobi, Google Desktop, trial of office 2007 and McAfee Security Center.
Some comparison pictures with the other popular netbooks
EEE 1002HA and ASPIRE ONE D150
EEE 1000H and Aspire One D150
EEE 1002HA, ASPIRE ONE D150 and EEE 1000H
Final Verdict
The new Aspire One D150 offers a elegant and stylish design along with enough power to satisfy for your daily as-well-as mobile computing needs. And with the 6 hours-plus battery life and extremely affordable price ($350-$400 for 6-cell battery), it is a great bang for a buck. We recommend it.
—
Pros:
- Great battery life
- Cheap for what you get
- Looks nice
- Brushed metallic palm rest
- Zippy performance
- eRecovery software is handy
- Full sized shift key and dedicated page-up/down buttons
- RAM and HDD upgradable
- Better bundled case (compared to older Aspire One)
Cons:
- Keyboard could have been bigger.
Sponsor: If you live in New Delhi, you can get yourself a D150 for extremely low price from Acer Mall (+91-9899905555)(Sumit Anand)
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So when do u think it’ll be available in India n for how much ?
It is already available in India with in built WiMax for less than 22,000
fwiw, not all packages are the same. my d150 did not come with BT, a case or any rescue DVD. purchased new off of Amazon 1 month ago.
There is no rescue DVD included in my package too.
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I’ll try to get one with the wimax here. Great review btw
[...] One D150, GadgetMix, mobile, netbook, Passionemobile, Technology, ultramobile, UMPC trackback GadgetMix ha effettuato la recensione del Netbook Acer Aspire One D150 [...]
I’ve an year older Acer Aspire one and I am really thinking of upgrading to d150. The D150 does not look much bigger than my aspire one and I think it will fit in the custom case that I’ve for my older Aspire one.
Excellent review. Just wanted to know if my 500GB HDD would work in in.
Thnx
In case I need to do software restoration, is external DVD ROM is detectable for Aspire one D150? Please advise suggested ways.
@ Isaias Yes
@ Chad: If it is a laptop HDD, then it would work without any problems
This is a nice review about the mini-laptop. But what about if you’re using Ableton Live? Is the processor be ok if it use 1.5 Ghz?
I mean it’s like 1.66Ghz and if you’re using example MSN too in the background? What kind of effect will it be?
Ofcourse 1st thoughts are slow and waiting. But what kind of experience do people here?
Greetz
This is a great review. I just wish you could tell me how to activate the Bluetooth as I can’t figure out how to do that, and I can’t find any information on how, anywhere online or in the very minimal instruction’book’ that is following the netbook.
Beside of that annoying fact (can’t turn on bluetooth) I’m pretty impressed of the product so far.
If anyone can help solving the bluetooth problem, I would be happy indeed.
Regards
Michael Johansen
Are you sure, your modell actually got BT?
You see, even though no review, and not even Acer them selves, metion this fact, the Bluetooth is not given, but depends on your specific modell.
If you do have Bluetooth on you aspire one, then it should be quiet obviously where to turn it on, as there should be a ‘large’ button in the uper left corner which will light up when pressed / activated.
Regards
Christian Emil
mine has the bluetooth and connects well when turned on. my problem is it shows me files are being transferred but I cant find the transferred file ? the salesguy mentioned I need to buy an adapter for that, is that true?
michael, just press the bluetooth on the upper left side corner. then it will try to detect bT from any unit you have nearby. try opening your celfone. then register your celfone with your acer. It will match. just keep trying. im no technie but I was able to make it function in 15 mins.
Hi,
ACER D150 is exactly matching to my requirement.Only I have one query …Will 1.66GHz affect the data transfer speed duting internet operation.Only this question is holding me from buying ACER D150.pl let me know.
@ Sumedh: No. it won’t affect the data transfer speed
sir,
wat is on board GPU
WHAT ABT THE BATTERY LIFE?
@ Sumedh: This netbook is fine for everything unless you wish to play modern day games on it.
@ Ramesh: As mentioned in the review, it is 6 hours-plus
I’ve been looking for a netbook for on the go stuff. I’m strongly leaning towards this Acer but I was wondering how would it fair w/ Linux (Ubuntu flavor) on it?
Ubuntu Netbook Remix version would run fine on it
I installed Ubuntu remix 9.04 and it was a PAIN to get XP reinstalled because I didnt dualboot. Took me 2 days to get XP back up. You’ll need an external CD/DVD drive to create those recovery disk’s…gah! Battery life on low usage is roughly 2-2.5h mine came with 3 cell. Ram can be upgraded to 2Gig with ease and the Wifi card as well. Overall decent netbook.
Lame. The model I purchaseed from Newegg does not have BT. Check the fine print.
@ Jack: Some come with built-in BT and some don’t.
Hey I just bought one from buy.com, and I love it. (And mine didnt come with BT either…) Here’s a question that “NO ONE” was able to answer… Does it supprt DDR2 PC6400 (800 bus speed one) rams? I know the CPU’s bus speed is only 533 but I would like to have a 2GB of faster ram if that’s possible. I just don’t want to go thru returning and stuff if it doesn’t supprt. ;p Thanks in advance!
@ JKSKRN: Chances are that it should work. Transcend worked and that one should also work
Just letting you guys know that i just installed DDR2 2GB OCZ PC6400 and it works like a charm. This is Def. faster than when I had 1GB of Samsung PC 5300 stick. I also bought a 320GB 7320rpm HD just now, and I’ll let u guys know if there’s nay problem or decrease in battery life (I’m pretty sure it will decrease like 20%).
Finally! my new hd is on… Word of advice, DO NOT UPGRADE the hard drive unless you know what you are doing… I know a good amount about computers and still took me about good 12 hours to get this running without using an external dvd player. By the way, it has 6 gb of Acer hd partition for recovery on the stock HD, and IT IS USELESS… I just ended up installiing Windows 7 on this, and works pretty good. the lowest vista windex score that I got is the Graphic score which is 2.1. Other than that, it looks fine. I didn’t have to install any drivers from Acer website after installing Windows 7. The battery life only went down about 10% due to the faster HD which is pretty sweet, so I’m getting about 6 hrs still right now. My next upgrade is internal bluetooth. (Who knows how long this is going to take :( ) I will let you guys know about more later. Thanks
Thanks for the information JKSKRN. I was too planning to upgrade to Windows 7 and it is nice to hear that you did not have to install anything to get the machine working.
Windows 7 is working like Ubuntu: no need to install anything yourself!
[...] Read this detailed review to find out more about EEE 1000HE! By Kamal DS on April 01, 2009 | Comments 33 [...]
[...] Read this detailed review to find out more about EEE 1000HE! By Kamal DS on April 01, 2009 | Comments 34 [...]
[...] Read this detailed review to find out more about EEE 1000HE! By Kamal DS on April 01, 2009 | Comments 35 [...]
[...] Read this detailed review to find out more about EEE 1000HE! By Kamal DS on April 01, 2009 | Comments 36 [...]
I have a 11.6 inches screen Aspire One, it has a bluetooth switch on the left of the front of the netbook. But when I tried to switch it on, the bluetooth sign would pop up with an “x” on the bluetooth sign. Can anyone tell me how I can use bluetooth with this netbook? Thanks!
do u have the drivers installed? Which OS are u using? Also, this review is about Aspire D150. The one which you are talking about is Aspire 751H, reviewed here:
http://gadgetmix.com/index/acer-ao751h-review-quick-review/
can ne1 help me with installing win & on aspire d150 ? how did u install …memory sticks ?
via Internet
my acer netbook says it comes with built in bluetooth yet i cannt find it anywhere
check device manager and see if it is enabled
[...] Touch pad is wider in width and shorter in height than the one found in Acer Aspire One D150. The Touch pad supports gestures [...]
Hi,
i have a acer aspire one. in the booket it says that my laptop has bluetooth i tried to find out how to turn it on but it comes up with the bluetooth sign but with a red cross by it i press Fn and F3 together but it obviousy doesnt work so how do i turn on my blueooth i want to connect my phone a sony ericsson W995
cheers molly.
Molly, the booklet is same for all models. Also, does you device manager shows Bluetooth serial port?