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I very rarely review items on Amazon, despite being a regular shopper, but the Acer Aspire V7-582PG-6421 is such a stunning example of a Windows laptop "done right" that I just had to leave a comment or two. The preceding review by Gc is excellent and covers almost all of the bases. My point in doing this review is to highlight the "extras" you get with the Acer that I have not found on ANY laptops other than the MacBook Pro. One correction to Gc's review, however the lid is not aluminum, but brushed surface plastic. I checked this directly with Acer, and you can tap the cover with a fingernail and hear it yourself BUT it does not do justice to just say that it is plastic, because it is structurally sound and very good looking. Now, for the "goodies" -
1. The screen is spectacular. I've owned a retina MBPro, and it is nearly that good (glossy though). As Gc said, you can truly review two documents side by side on the screen without a magnifying glass.
2. The "Acer connector" is a displayport connector I am running my WQHD 2560x1440 monitor on it now. It will support the internal screen (1920x1080), the displayport (2560x1440), and a 1920x1080 HDMI monitor, all at the same time.
3. Battery Life: AWESOME. The Haswell 4200U went four hours last night on web surfing, Word editing, and document viewing (no media running) and still had 67% battery left (7:42 estimated remaining time). After being put into sleep mode, seven hours later it still showed 66% battery left.
4. Upgradeable: remove the army of screws (15-18) from the base plate, and you can go up to 12GB ram (replacing the 4GB module with an 8GB module); replace the HDD with a SATA III SSD up to 1TB; AND replace the mSATA with up to a 512GB SSD. My solution was to upgrade to a 256GB mSATA for the OS and programs, and leave the 1TB HDD for file storage the system now screams when loading software and files.
5. Built in Gigabit Ethernet enough said.
6. NVidia GT720M with 2GB ram not a gaming rig, but far from shabby, and pretty rare to get in this form factor on a Windows rig already sporting HD4400 graphics.
7. The touch screen is as smooth operating as a tablet, and you will quickly find that it is a legitimate "third" interface to Windows 8 scrolling, zooming, selecting onscreen elements is very natural in addition to the keyboard and trackpad DON'T LET ANYONE LIE TO YOU ABOUT GORILLA ARMS it is a short 4" reach from the keyboard.
8. Keyboard the key press is shallow, but it is outstanding to have the numeric keypad in this form factor.
Let's talk about form factor for a minute. This year I have tried nearly everything including the awesome MacBook Air 13" (8GB/512GB max rig), and a MacBook Pro 15" (16GB/512GB max rig) the Acer is no aluminum work of art like those two, but from a confirmed Windows user perspective, this is the BEST laptop rig of them all. A little larger and heavier than the Pro (less than 1/2" longer/wider; 0.08" thicker; and 0.35lb ) but the internals are equal to or superior; expandability is only up to your imagination; and the screen, although not retina, is FAR superior to MacBook Air, and not far from the quality of the Retina Pro. ALL FOR $900 LESS than the Air, and $1700 LESS than the MacBook Pro.
That's why I say it is the best bargain going in a full feature, desktop replacement laptop.
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Acer have always been on my s*** list when it comes to laptops, but the Aspire V7 have changed all that. I have been using this laptop for a good two weeks and it seems very solid so far. When I heard years back that Acer was going to be more like Apple, I never thought that could happen, but boy was I wrong. The Aspire V7 offers a lot, but sacrifices very little.Built quality. The top is solid brush aluminum, darker compared to the Macbook Pros, a nicer color in my opinion. The lid is also built with aluminum. The bottom is matted plastic with strong rubber grips that raises enough for the speakers to emanate. It will not burn your lap or get very cold like aluminum. The LCD lid feels like a giant tablet incased with aluminum with strong glass. There is no ugly frames on it, the entirely screen is smooth glass. The trackpad is indeed huge and also made out of aluminum. The keyboard is nicely spread out with more than enough room for a number pad. Obviously there is no flex because of the aluminum. The keys are very low, it's not so bad, but something to get used to. It has one setting keyboard light which should be enough. The hinges are quite sturdy. If you push the screen, the entire laptop will tip over before the screen start bending back.
Controls. I don't have any problem typing on the keyboard. You might have to get use to pressing these short keys, but I don't have any problems typing this review on it. The keys are very quiet, and the click-pad is not too loud either, sounds like rubber tapping on wood. You don't have to worry about the keys being cramped, in fact, it is very spread out. I find myself stretching my fingers to reach the keys when playing games, but works great for typing text. The number-pad is very handy to have as well. This laptop is not as sharp as other ultrabooks near the wrist area, so doesn't feel like my wrist is getting "cut" when I'm typing. The screen is as responsive as the trackpad. The touchscreen may not seem useful at first, but it comes in handy when using the Start Menu applications, zooming, dragging folder, and selecting text when you don't have a mouse. With Windows 8.1 coming soon, the touchscreen feature may become even more useful. My one complaint is that the trackpad has a rough aluminum feel to it, in other words, it is not smooth. The roughness feels weird. Unlike the laptop's body the trackpad aluminum feels unpolished, a bit of random roughness. This problem can easily be solved by putting a custom screen protector on it, which I did and now it is perfectly smooth and just as responsive. You may also want to make some adjustments so it can ignore your palm better since this can get somewhat annoying.
The performance on this laptop is better than I expected. Haswell as I expect, is fast, but Haswell is not about being faster than Ivy Bridge, even though it is somewhat. It is about efficiently. The Aspire v7 when on load only used about 30W, while my Macbook Air 2012 (Ivy Bridge) was at 45W on idle. And we are talking about a 15.6 inch FHD touchscreen with keyboard lights on compared to a 13 incher. For comparison purpose, my PC desktop is about 180-300W, idle and load respectively. The Aspire v7 on non-intensive applications will only use 20w or less. When you are running games on the Aspire v7 using the Geforce card, it will max out at 60W, or 35W using the Intel HD 4400. However, gaming is a big impact on the battery life as usual. If you are just doing simple task, typing, browsing, music, etc. it will last you 6.5 hours as advertised. Playing games with everything else on will drop it to 2-2.5 hours. Games run fast though. I can max out on Portal 2 and still get 30+ fps. Starcraft 2 will run perfectly smooth near max settings as well. You will rarely feel this laptop getting hot even when playing games because the hottest area is at the upper-right. It usually doesn't get that hot anyways and the fan noise is only slightly noticeable when running 3D games.
The 1TB hard drive seems to boot Windows 8 very fast due to the SSD cache, but it has problems multi-tasking so don't expect to copy, and run from too many files at once otherwise the laptop will stall. Remember, the actual hard drive is still a 5400k rpm which will help with battery life, but not with loading speed. I suggest disabling Windows auto updates for installation. Otherwise, under normal usage, there's really no problem if any. As you know 1TB is a lot of space. I have installed tons of games and applications, and loaded in hundreds of movies and shows while still not worrying about downloading or working with large files. I haven't even bother doing any clean up yet. In short, you will always feel like there is an "unlimited" amount of space to work with and that you will "never" run out of space, something that is rare on a laptop.
Okay what about sound? Well, it really exceeded my expectation. The v7 has a dedicated Dolby Home Theater compliant sound card. Pair this up with DFX Audio Enhancer software, and you will be amaze. It sounds better than my iPhone, onboard sound card on my desktop, and Macbooks as well. This is an amazing sound card that they stuck inside the v7. It makes a huge difference in sound quality. The speakers' sound doesn't just come out straight at you, it fills the area where you sit. This makes it great for music and clear for watching movies. The speakers are very good for a laptop of this size, but it sounds even better when I use my ath-m50 headphones.
The screen quality has excellent color at 1080p resolution. It looks really sharp, and 15.6 inch is big enough so that you can see text in 1080p with enough screen space to view two documents at once. I had a 13.3 inch laptop with 1080p and the text was way too small, 15.6 inch is the sweet-spot. As for the color, it rivals any iPad, tablet, or smartphone. As for the view angle, it is as good as any IPS display. I assume the v7 must have an IPS display since it looks so good. The brightness can go really high too, but while indoors, 0 level brightness is enough for me, I go 2-3 when playing games or doing graphical works, just to bring out the colors more. By the way, the screen is good enough for Photoshop work.
Overall, it easily deserves 5-stars. I am currently using it as my main computer.
PROS:
Fast for applications and 3D games
Very power efficient
Design Elegant, solid, great materials, slim, lightweight (for a 15.6 inch)
Screen looks great visually and design
Keyboard lights
1TB is a lot of space
Sound quality
CONS:
Trackpad must be tweak to ignore your palm, but still not perfect, still an unavoidable problem.
Hard drive can get slow (consider SSD upgrade when price drops).
Front camera (worst than my 1st generation Macbook)
UPDATE: I opened up the laptop. It is sealed by many standard size + head screws. It does NOT look like warranty can be voided by opening the bottom. From there you can upgrade the memory and hard drive. The hard drive is a WD Blue 2.5in WD10SPCX. It is a little slimmer than most 2.5in drives, but I have check that most 2.5 SSD have the same dimension, but I do not plan on upgrading until the prices for SSD drops more. There is also a separate, 24GB Kingston mSATA SSD drive which is upgradable. That's right, this laptop has two upgradable hard drives!
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