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I was looking for a lightweight (3 lb or less), touch screen, Windows 8, around the $400 mark laptop for my Mom who is a light PC user, definitely requiring user support often. After purchasing an Asus 10.1 notebook, after about 2 hours I was sure this was not the right notebook and I needed to find something better. The Asus had the Centrino processors which turns out run hot so the fan was loud and the laptop would be hot pretty much the whole time, and it only had a dual processor. Even after optimizing it and removing some power consuming apps, the poor laptop still seemed to struggle to run. Plus the screen was tiny, not a touch screen hence the $300 price tag. After some research attempting to remedy the Asus' shortcomings, I purchased the Acer Aspire v5 after going to Best Buy and actually handling the laptop. I was impressed at its weight, how slick and well designed it felt, and most importantly, it felt like a real laptop not a toy (like the Asus). What a great purchase! After spending 3-4 days configuring it and learning the new W8 OS and all these apps I've never handled, I am a Windows 8 convert and definitely considering buying an Acer Aspire for myself.
Pros
* Price What a great price for such a loaded laptop! Paid only a little over $400!
* Design Solid notebook, slick design with all necessary ports
* Weight Light weight, about 3 lb with the battery
* Touchpad is a dream. You have the mouse click options which are missing on some other notebooks. It is sensitive just enough, it is not in your way when you type, it doesn't jump around your apps when you touch it. Best of all, I did not have to load any additional drivers or updates for the touchpad.
* Touch screen although the resolution isn't super high on paper, what a great crystal screen! Love the colors, vibrant and clear from the box, didn't have to adjust anything. And the screen is so well designed for the touch, it is sensitive just enough to get you around without many errors.
* In the box laptop, power cable, basic manual for start up and warranty, dongle for VGA
* Fan super happy with the low quiet fan and cool laptop, all that with a quad processor laptop! Kudos!
* Sound speakers provide loud enough volume for my aging Mom with slight hearing issues. Good clear sound as well.
Unknowns
* Battery don't know, have not had the battery below 75% so I don't know how long it would take to drain it.
* Performance not sure if this isn't due to everything being new and having to load for the first time, but some apps and screens take 5 to 10 seconds to load. Hoping this would change once everything is configured and used at least once. It could also be due to our W8 inexperience, time will tell. The laptop does start fast from sleep mode, although when you open the top it doesn't start automatically, I have to press the power button for it to wake up. There is probably a setting somewhere about that, but that's not a big issue right now.
Cons:
* Probably the only tech spec that is below the rest of the components on this machine is the camera. Grainy images and video. Oh well, all the rest is great so hard to complain given the price.
* Had to install 30+ app updates which took several hours. The notebook was loaded in Nov 2012 so by July, all loaded apps had new versions pretty much. This is not an Acer or laptop issue though, can't hold it against them since this is something we have to do regardless of what brand and laptop we purchase.
* AcerCloud is a good idea but boy, there was NO information about what and how to use it, and after loading a bunch of its related apps to the laptop and the mobile devices, I had no idea how to move files/photos from the mobile devices to the laptop, just no way to do that based on the few menus in the apps. It was super frustrating, and even research online on the acer forums was useless. After wasting about 2 hours, I moved onto SkyDrive. After 30 min and some research, it still didn't seem intuitive enough so I did some more experimenting and settled on DropBox. What a relief, the app came with a short and sweet guide, telling me exactly how to load my files from one device to the other and the app itself was pretty intuitive as well and didn't require 4 different apps (like the AcerCloud), just one! Plus it kept giving me more and more free space the more I used it and the more devices I added. Hope this solves my file sharing needs long term!
* Would be great if the touch screen laptops came with a Touch Pen also, makes it so much nicer to browse the screen. I used one that came with another purchase I made on Amazon. Again, not really an Acer issue, just a nice to have suggestion.
Other
* Windows 8 bit of a steep learning curve and there were no tutorials or instructions on the laptop or at least not that I easily spotted. There is definite initial frustration with the OS, lasted about 3 days. But after installing Windows 8.1 preview version (which brings back the Start button of sorts), after finally finding the Control Panel (it was frustrating hunting for it or accidentally stumbling on it but not knowing how to knowingly get to it), I was more and more comfortable with the OS and seeing its advantages.
After moderately learning how to get around myself, I setup up the Start screen and apps for my Mom. I then braced myself and showed my Mom how to use her new laptop, expecting a long drawn session. It was quite a surprise to see how well she took to using the touch screen and figured out how to get around! She has always had trouble with the mouse pads and even more with the touch pads, it was a relief to see that she easily handled the gestures on the screen and learned how to get around surprisingly faster than I expected. She loved the screen clarity and the vibrant colors. After that, I knew I had the right laptop!
In conclusion, I am very impressed with this quiet, lightweight, hard working, crystal clear machine! After a bit more tweaking and learning more about the OS and the apps, I am sure it will be even better! Will try to provide an update after some longer term use but for now, we are definitely in the honeymoon phase!
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I got this Acer touch screen computer about two weeks ago and have been really really happy with it. It's extremely portable -so small and light it fits in every bag I have. And the touch screen is cool even if I don't use it much (I typically dock into a monitor and keyboard so don't really need touch). And I am using it as my primary work computer so it's on ALL day with lots of open programs, which the processor is handling no problem. I think the only drawback is getting used to Windows 8. Because I use the computer for work I am in Microsoft Office programs all day and those work in "classic" mode so the switching between tiles and classic is a little annoying. But even with that I'd totally recommend it to others. Am even considering buying another one for my daughter as her first computer!Best Deals for Acer Aspire V5-122P-0863 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Laptop (Chill Silver)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program When looking at sub $500 laptops, it really is hard to find something that will be everything to everyone. If you get a feature here, you lose one there. I went into the Aspire V5-122P thinking I would see this but I had to admit, I am rather impressed.First up, I downloaded all of the Windows Updates and removed most of the bloatware that is loaded on the machine. I also let Microsoft's Windows Defender take over as my anti-virus and spyware protection. There were well over 60 updates and due to the slower nature of the hard drive, it took a good while for me to get in "working" order to my tastes.
Next up, was to set up an account for my 5 year old daughter with Family Safety, which I highly recommend to anyone with kids.
After I got it where I want, it was time to put this thing to the test. The first thing I did was load steam and downloaded 2 of my favorite games: Portal and Portal 2. I knew Portal would run fine but I was rather surprised that Portal 2 ran with near the highest settings with hardly a stutter. The graphics card handled the game quite well.
Next up, I connected my Bluetooth mouse for gaming. Strangely, the Bluetooth device was disabled in the device manager so I had to enable it. Once enabled, I selected the Bluetooth icon in the system try and it opened up the "Modern" Bluetooth manager. I powered on the mouse and I was in business. Worked like a charm. (using the Microsoft Sculpt mouse.)
Microsoft Office ran well and the "modern", Windows 8 apps opened with decent speeds.
The screen is nice but when compared to say, the Microsoft Surface, it isn't the greatest. The colors were better than expected and the touchscreen was very responsive. I found myself using the touch screen much more than the track pad. Don't expect to use this outside much as it isn't terribly bright and it has a lot of glare.
Audio was OK and even at 100%, it could have been a little better.
The processor is only a 1GHz dual core AMD. I've always been an Intel guy, so this is my first AMD. It scores a 2.9 experience rating and I did see some issues with video playback on Facebook as it was choppy. It is 64 bit and allows access to all 6GB of memory, so for general use, this lap does fit the bill.
About the only gripe is the hard drive speed. It does seem to take a good while for some applications to open. It is 5400 and in tandem with a slower processor, it will make for a slightly sluggish experience.
Bottom line, I can recommend this laptop. Compared to an ASUS in the same price range, it beats it hand down as far as having brighter colors and having a better GPU. Windows 8 honestly should only be experienced with a touchscreen and you will get that and more with this ASPIRE V5-122P.
Honest reviews on Acer Aspire V5-122P-0863 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Laptop (Chill Silver)
UPDATE (15 July):Amazon did a price drop about 3 weeks after I bought this, and when I tried to get a price match, I was told they only do price matches up to 7 days after the ship date. To me that's just poor, poor customer service!!!
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UPDATE (1 JULY):
Just installed an SSD Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/240G to help improve system performance and what a difference! Webpages load faster, downloads are quicker, copying to or uploading from a flash drive the speed in which these things are done have all dramatically increased!!!
Best browser to use with this laptop? Firefox & Chrome. IE is slower for some reason; the webpages load slower and IE locks up a lot. If I don't close the tabs in IE, then I get the "not responding error." With Firefox, I can just minimize the browser and not have to close all the tabs out!
I suppose I could have tried to buy a $800 laptop that had an SSD or an i5 or i7 processor, but it's hard to find one that comes with both. You usually have to choose and pay more. Also, this subcompact laptop comes with a touchscreen & a backlit keyboard! Not to mention that it's a joy to type on the keyboard and the portable size is what I was looking for.
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INITIAL REVIEW (27 JUNE):
PROS:
lightweight
6GB SDRAM
backlit keyboard
touchscreen
very quiet (no loud fan noise)
processor works quite well for light gaming, web surfing, Facebook/Twitter; MS Office tasks
option for a 2nd battery (not yet available, though...)
includes adapter (ACER Converter Cable) for VGA connection
CONS:
processor can't handle heavy programs: AutoCAD, etc.
downloads take longer than usual, especially if you're trying to download a large file... or if you are trying to download multiple files at the same time.
can't have many tabs open in IE10
only one (1) USB 3.0 port
no HDMI/Ethernet port; need adapter (ACER Converter Cable sold separately)
This works for me because I don't 'do' gaming; I only use this laptop for a little bit of this and that: school work and web surfing. Battery life is about 5 hrs on the Power Saver setting. The 11.6" screen doesn't bother me. Also, I am a proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 (16GB, White) which I probably use more than this laptop! So between this laptop or my Samsung tablet, I have plenty of "processor power."
For those looking for a cheap, portable laptop to do general everyday tasks, then this subcompact laptop is a good choice it's really great for those who have a desktop or larger laptop and just need something more portable for around the house or for a trip to the coffeehouse.
For those who need more horsepower, an Ethernet connection and a bigger screen, should look elsewhere for their computing needs.
Hope this review helps, folks! ;-)
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Acer Aspire V5-122P-0863 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Laptop (Chill Silver)
I purchased this Acer Aspire about a week ago, and am definitely impressed with what this device brings to the market. It was very hard to find a super affordable, Quad-Core, Touch-Screen, Windows 8 Laptop/Ultrabook that I was comfortable with buying. I am a software developer, so I have to have Visual Studio and SSMS SQL Server installed on all my machines to be able to work on projects and what not. I was worried Visual Studio would take forever and not perform on this device, but I was wrong. So far this device has been able to easily and efficiently handle all the tasks I have thrown at it. Now don't get me wrong, it's not a super blazing fast machine, but it is by no means slow. I would call it efficient. And you can't beat the fact that you have a touch screen Win8 laptop for under $400 now. I totally recommend this device for all uses, other than a gaming laptop and video editing.There are two semi-minor cons with this device, one is the touchpad (not a fan, it's just a bit awkward to use), and the screen resolution makes icons and Windows (Browsers, etc) too large for the screen. Other than those two gripes no worries, I just attach a wireless mouse, full keyboard, and second monitor to it and my two minor gripes are gone!
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