With many netbooks teetering on bulky kickstand-style batteries, we were pleased to see the Aspire One present a fairly slim profile. The six-cell UM09H31 battery does bump out a bit from the rear of the bottom panel, but the system is still less than 38mm thick in the back, and less than 25mm in the front. Our review unit was clad in an all-over glossy midnight blue, which looked fine from a distance, but was extremely fingerprint-prone.
The current Acer Aspire One keyboard is a far cry from the tiny finger-cramping keyboards of last-generation netbooks. It has wide edge-to-edge keys, and decent-size versions of Shift, Tab and other important keys. The corners of each key are rounded, rather than square, giving it a mod look. Other netbook makers, such as HP and Toshiba, have moved to flat island-style keys, using slightly smaller key faces with more space between them. Those are a little better for touch typing, but the Aspire version is still one of the best inexpensive netbook keyboards we’ve seen.
The touch pad is where the system’s budget origins peek through. It’s not as tiny as some we’ve seen, but it’s built directly into the glossy wrist rest, with only a faint overlay of patterned dots to demarcate it. There are a handful of MacBook-like two-finger gestures available, but the touch pad is generally too small for them to be useful. The left and right mouse buttons are represented by a single thin rocker bar instead of separate buttons. We dislike that in a netbook at any price, and encourage all netbook-makers to include decent-size left and right mouse buttons.
The important thing to note about the current crop of netbooks powered by Intel’s new 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor is that they all offer excellent battery life, but roughly the same middling performance. and it would run just as fast (although the more expensive one might have an HD screen, better construction, Bluetooth or other extras).
The Acer Aspire One ran for seven hours and nine minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. That’s excellent, but not unexpected, thanks to the very efficient new generation of Intel Atom CPUs. Still, it’s among the longest-lasting 2010 netbooks we’ve seen, second only to the Asus Eee PC 1005PE.
Aspire One 532, the newest netbook from Acer, is equipped wtih a 10.1 inch display and a LED backlight. The 532 is Acer’s first netbook running on Intels new Pine Trail platform. The netbook is also equipped with an Intel Atom N450 processor (1.66 GHz) and an integrated GMA 3150 graphics chip. Additionally, the Aspire One 532 is also the successor to the highly successful Acer Aspire One 531 and so we have no doubt that it is packed with a great many useful features which we will look at in further detail in our review. The Acer Aspire One 532 netbook is available in three different colours: blue, white and red. However, looks are not all that this netbook has. As previously mentioned, the 532 operates an Intel Atom N450 processor with an integrated GMA 3150 graphics chip, which uses significantly less power and thus allows for a longer battery life than the older Atom platform. Additionally, the netbook also uses 1 GB of DDR2 RAM and a 250 GB HDD (Hard Disk Drive). For a few more euros, the user can equip the netbook with a 10.1 inch screen with a native resolution of 1280×720 pixels (HD-ready display) and a Bluetooth module. The “smaller” model with the native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels is available with both a matt or glossy display.
Aspire One 532 Battery Life
ACER UM09H31 batteries, 30% discount
The Intel Atom N450 processor and the NM10 chipset consume 4.3 W less than the older Atom N280 with the Intel 945GSE und GMA 950 graphics chip. This reduction in power consumption is especially noticeable in the battery life.
We used the “Battery Eater” test to find out the UM09H31 battery life of the Acer Aspire One 532. The “Classic Test” allows us to determine the minimum amount of time the battery will last. For this test, we activated the WLAN and the high performance profile and increased the screen brightness to maximum. After 6 hours and 3 minutes the battery was finally empty and the netbook could not be switched on again.
The laptop can last up to 10 hours and 27 minutes when the user is only using the WLAN and has the display set at a mediocre brightness level with a balanced performance profile. This scenario represents the typical, everyday usage of the netbook. We ran the “Readers Test” from Battery Eater to determine the maximum possible battery life. The battery was finally empty after a very good 13 hours and 52 minutes. The Acer Aspire One 532 performed very well in battery life for a netbook using the Pine Trail platform.
Battery runtime (UM09G31 batteries)
The power consumption stays low thanks to the theoretical difference in power consumption of 4.3 W in comparison to older systems. In normal use, the Aspire One 532 can use up to 4.5 – 7.5 W. When under heavy CPU usage, the netbook can use between 10.3 to 12.6 W. These values are not unusual for Intels newest Pine Trail platform. When the netbook is switched off, the power consumption lies at 0.0 W.
Case
The display makes a good impression at a first glance. The stylish screen cover, which has a beautiful pattern of dark blue fading to black, is especially pleasing. The netbook is also available in ruby-red or white. Thankfully the bar which covers the buttons for the mouse is also the same colour as the netbook. However, sadly Acer does not offer a black version of the netbook.
The lacquering of the 532 is very well done, but the shiny coating of the display cover can easily accumulate scratches and fingerprints. The workmanship of the netbook is of a high quality and we could not find any faults in it. The whole case is made of a synthetic material and due to the lacquer and the workmanship it has a very nice appeal.
The case is very sturdy. It distorts very little when pressed upon with the hand. Only when one puts a lot of pressure does the case give way. The keyboard is a matter of taste. The individual keys are not properly screwed in and are thus a bit wobbly. The synthetic material used for the keyboard feels cheap and not of very good quality.
The two display hinges are firmly bound to the case and do a good job of holding the screen up.
The Acer Aspire One 532 weighs 1.22 kilograms with the battery put in. Overall, that is a good value for a 10.1 inch netbook which measures 25.9 x 18.5 x 2.5 centimetres (B x L x T). The power supply delivered with the 532 weighs 180 gramms.
Connectivity
There are no special ports on the Aspire One 532 and one must satisfy him/herself with the usual ports found on netbooks.
On the left side of the netbook, there are two USB ports, an analogue video output (VGA) and the power outlet. Sadly, the positioning of the USB ports makes them rather hard to access, and one must use a bit of force to put in, for example, a USB stick. The integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics chip restricts the resolution for external monitors connected to the netbook via the VGA port to 1400 x 1050 pixels. This resolution can be rather restrictive when using bigger monitors or TVs (Dell Studio Series laptop battery).
The right side has two more USB ports, the audio and microphone ports, a Gigabit RJ-45 LAN port (Atheros AR8132 PCI-E Fast Ethernet), a Kensington lock and a Multi-in-1 cardreader (SD (SDHC), xD, MMC, Memory Stick Pro (Duo)).
As the case is very thin near the front there are no ports in the front. Only two stereo loudspeakers are placed there. The back side is similarly free of ports as the big 6 cell battery with 63 Wh capacity takes up all the space there.
The 532 also has an Atheros AR8132 PCI-E Fast Ethernet LAN module and an integrated WLAN module installed. The Atheros AR5B95 chip supports WLAN with 802.11b/g/n. Bluetooth is only available in the slightly more expensive version with the HD-ready screen (1280 x 720 pixels) which costs around 349 euros (DELL Studio XPS 1645 computer batteries).
The available ports are not unusual for netbooks. However, the multi-in-1 card reader is a pleasing feature which allows for a variety of cards to be read by the netbook. However, the hard-to-access USB ports are not so nice as they require the use of force and the Kensington lock is not placed well either.
 Left side: 2 USB, VGA, power outlet |
 Right side: 1 USB, RJ-45, Kensington lock, audio ports (headphone and microphone outlets), Multi-in-1 cardreader |
Installed Software
Acer delivers the 532 netbooks with Windows 7 Starter (32-Bit) preinstalled, which should enable the netbook to efficiently use system resources and work faster. Additional software is also delivered alongside the Windows 7 OS. For example: Adobe Reader 9, Adobe Flash Player 10, eSobi, Microsoft Office Personal 2007, McAfee Internet Security Suite (60-day trial) and a few other programs from Acer itself.
Delivery Contents and Optional Accessories
The package in which the netbook is delivered only includes the most necessary things. The package includes a fitting power adapter, a guarantee card, an extensive user manual, and a quick start guide. The software for a system backup is not already installed on the netbook, and so the user must create a recovery medium of his own with the software delivered alongside the netbook. The power adapter is very practical as it can be equipped with various plugs so that the user can use it in different countries (ACER AS10H31 batteries). However, this is not a free feature and the user will have to pay extra to get it.
The optional accessories are extensive in range. Acer offers a protective cover for the netbook (19.90 euros), an additional battery (99 euros), a power adapter (39.90 euros), an external hard disk (99 – 149 euros), an external USB-DVD optical drive (79 euros) and an extension of the guarantee on the netbook to 2 or 3 years, for 35 or 55 euros. However, Acer does not offer a Broadcom HD-Decoder which allows for better playback of HD videos even though the netbook still has a free mini PCI-Express slot.
Input Devices
Keyboard
The keyboard leaves us torn between two opposite opinions. The keys have a comfortable stroke distance and the slightly rough surface of the keyboard offers a good feel (Eee PC T91 batteries). The keys are 16 x 16 millimeters in size. Due to the standardized layout of the keyboard, the user can use touch type easily. However, the thin and wobbly (due to the loose screwing in of the keys) design of the keys is a very annoying feature of the 532. The synthetic material used for the keys seems very thin and cheap when compared to the material of which the case is made. The Fn combinations are coloured a stylish light-blue so as to be easily perceivable, and can be activated via a Fn key on the bottom-left side of the keyboard.
Touchpad
The touchpad is positioned directly under the keyboard. The touchpad has a separate vertical scrolling bar on the right side, despite a big diagonal of 7.3 centimetres. The knobbly surface is very useful as it is not too rough and thus allows for precise and simply navigation. A great feature of the touchpad is the multi-touch gestures (scrolling, rotating, changing the page and zooming) due to which the use of the netbook without an external mouse is much simpler. The touchpad can be configured in many different ways. The mouse keys are hidden under a stylish blue bar in our test model. They offer a good pressure point and the clicking noise is not too loud.
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Display
Our test model of the Acer Aspire One 532 netbook is equipped with a matt 10.1 inch screen with a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. Acer also offers a glossy display for the netbook and for 16 euros more one can order the 10.1 inch HD-ready screen with a native resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.
The screen offers a good brightness level despite the matt surface. In the right area of the screen the brightness can reach up to 241 cd/m² and the average overall brightness of the display lies at 216 cd/m². The screen also has an illumination level of 82% which is good. The colours and the picture quality are also clear.
The colour black is slightly greyish due to a high black value of 1.48 cd/m², and so, sadly, the netbook does not offer a satisfying black, and because of the black value the contrast is very low despite the high brightness. The netbook has a maximum contrast of 163:1 in the lower region of the 10.1 inch screen. The 532 also has a 0.3 megapixel integrated webcam, which offers a picture resolution of 640×480 pixels, for video calls. There is also an integrated microphone next to the camera for voice recording and transmission.
All-in-all, the 10.1 inch display of the laptop with LED backlight left us with a positive impression. The only things we can criticize about the screen are the high black value and the thereby resulting low contrast. The native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels may restrict the users overview of the desktop and so it is recommended that the user pay the extra 16 euros to get the HD-ready display, which has a higher resolution, and can thus display the full width of most internet sites. This will make it easier for the user to surf on the internet as s/he will not have to scroll so much.
Performance
We have tested many other netbooks running on the new Intel Pine Trail platform and, after having compared the results with other netbooks which run on the older Intel platform, we came to the conclusion that there is no major increase in performance. The 45 nanometer structure of the Intel Atom N450 processor runs at a clock frequency of 1.66 GHz. However, the processor now supports both the memory controller and the graphics engine (Intel GMA 3150), due to which the power consumption has fallen by 4.3 watts.
The netbook is also equipped with 1 GB of DDR2-667 RAM from Hynix and a 250 GB S-ATA-HDD from Hitachi which runs at 5400 rpm (rotations per minute). The RAM can be upgraded up to a maximum of 2 GB as there is only one RAM slot in the netbook.
We ran a variety of benchmarks on the Aspire One 532 to see how it performed in comparison to other systems. We ran all the benchmarks with the netbook in the high performance profile of Windows 7 and with the energy saving option deactivated. The processor runs at a speed of 1.66 GHz during this mode.
The Pine Trail platform does not perform much better than older platform in the performance benchmark. The Intel Atom N450 reached 525 points in single-core and 865 points in multi-core rendering in the CineBench R10. The netbook also scored 1325 points in the PCMark 2005. The Acer Aspire One 532 does not perform much better when compared to the older netbooks, and as we conducted further benchmarks we found that the results became progressively smaller until there was no perceivable difference at all between the older and the current Intel platforms.
The Aspire One 532 netbook is not designed for games. This is clearly noticeable in the synthetic game benchmarks. The 532 reached a mere 2761 points in the 3DMark 2001SE! and the results in the other, newer versions of the 3DMark benchmark series fell progressively lower towards 0. For example, in the 3DMark 2006 the netbook scored a pathetic 144 points (CPU: 493 points). Systems with integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics (ION) offer a much better performance in this area.
Even the results in the WPrime, SuperPI and SiSoftware Sandra benchmarks are low and show no real increase in performance when compared to older systems which ran with the Intel Atom N280 processor. The 1M-calculation from SuperPI required 92 seconds (32M: 4256 seconds) and the 32M-calculation from WPrime lasted 117 seconds (1024M: 3252 seconds). The Intel Atom N450 in our test model can reach 4200 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) and 3506 MFLOPS (MegaFLOPS) in the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark.Acer uses the 250 GB big Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 SATA-HDD (hard disk drive) for the 532. The result we got from the benchmark of HD Tune Pro 4.01 showed us that the hard disk can perform well. The data transfer rate lies between 32.4 and 84.3 MBs per second. On average the data transfer rate lies around 62.8 MB. The access time is about 21.3 milliseconds and the data transfer rate is a high 161.5 MBs.
Last but not least, we checked the latency times while running Windows 7. For this we used a small tool named the DPC Latency Checker, which displays the latency times graphically. If these times are too high this will lead to problems when peripheral devices are connected to the netbook. The most common problem is the faulty sound delivered by an external sound card. The values of the latency times were mostly fine for the Aspire One 532, but there were a few aberrations, above 1000 µs, which kept popping up repeatedly. This could theoretically lead to problems when the netbook is connected to peripheral devices.
Video und Gaming Performance
The new Intel Atom N450 with the integrated GMA 3150 graphics in the Acer Aspire One 532 does not offer enough performance power for HD-playback and current games, and is thus not suitable for either of those. The playback of HD videos is not possible with the “smaller” version of the 532. However, the free mini PCI-Express slot next to the hard disk can be a great help in this case. A HD-decoder could be built into this slot and this decoder(for example, Broadcom Crystal) costs around 50 to 80 euros in shops depending on the seller.
Further details for the playback of HD videos and the gaming performance of the new Intel Pine Trail platform can be found in our in-depth test report of the Asus Eee PC 1005PE.
Emissions
System Noise
The noise emission of the small cooler fan lies well within bounds. During normal use of the netbook, the fan causes 28.7 to 32.6 dB(A) and this makes the netbook barely audible. The in-built hard disk drive turns at 5400 rotations per minute and can emit up to 32.8 dB(A) when it is being accessed for a data file. These are well within the usual norms of netbook hardware. When the CPU is under heavy usage, the noise emission can rise up to 33.6 dB(A), however the cooler fan quickly gets the temperature back under control and reduces the noise output.
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