Acer’s White C720p Chromebook Touch Hands-on: Worth $299?

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Review: Acer's C710-2457 Chromebook is a basic, bargain browsing machine

Acer C710-2457 Chromebook $230.00 The Acer C710-2457 is a bargain among Chromebooks, but there's little else about it that makes it worth buying—or that will convince a smartphone or tablet user to convert.

The main reason I’m reviewing the Acer C710-2457 Chromebook is because it’s cheap. It costs $230 from Acer’s Web site, and a close cousin of this model that's available only at Walmart costs a mere $199.

Unfortunately, bargain pricing continues to be the main reason to consider a Chromebook. Vendors want to tempt Web-centric consumers away from their tablets and smartphones with the promise of a decent-size screen and a bona fide keyboard. Most of the current Chromebooks are so basic, however, that they’re can't offer the better experience that would help their case.

The Acer C710-2457 Chromebook is yet another example. All it provides is a bargain browsing machine that could knock around the family room or a kid’s backpack without causing parental trauma.

The unit is made entirely of hard plastics, with a thick, shiny black bezel around the display and a lightly textured keyboard and touchpad. It feels pretty sturdy, with just a touch of flex in its keyboard and display panels.

It measures 11.2 inches wide by 8.0 inches deep and 1.1 inches thick, and it weighs 3.04 pounds. It uses a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 dual-core processor with 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 16GB solid-state drive. You get ethernet and IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, a trio of USB 2.0 ports, and an SD/MMC port for media cards. Acer says the 4-cell, 2500mAh Li-ion battery lasts 3.5 hours, but it ran for just 3 hours in our tests.

The 11.6-inch TFT LCD display has native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. It looks nice when you view it straight on, but the image degrades if you tilt it much in any direction. Brightness is decent (200 nits, per Acer's spec), and color was nice—I actually liked the healthy pink of its flesh tones. VGA and HDMI ports are available for display output.

Videos played pretty well on the Acer Chromebook, but the sound from the dual speakers was awful: very tinny, with no bass and little volume range. Plugging in headphones improves the experience.

The full-size keyboard is adequate. Travel is short, and the island-style buttons are a little small, but the keys are widely spaced so you don’t feel cramped. The large, clickable touchpad supports two-finger scrolling.

The hard feel of the plastic keys is one of the main reasons this machine feels cheap, but the key arrangement also has its drawbacks. The top row of function keys are half-size. The page-up, page-down, and cursor keys are even smaller and are squished into the lower right corner. The right- and lefthand Chrome Search buttons (with magnifying-glass icons) on either side of the spacebar will likely be hit by mistake when one tries to press the , , or keys on the same line.

There’s nothing wrong with the Acer C710-2457 Chromebook, other than its being as unremarkable as nearly every other Chromebook now available. Low prices don’t seem to be the answer, given that HP’s Pavilion Chromebook, which sports a 14-inch display, is a strong seller even though it costs about $100 more. Maybe if a few more vendors stuck their necks out to improve the user experience, they’d find more willing buyers.

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Review: Acer's Aspire U (model A5600U-UB13) is a stylish AIO with a few minor flaws

Done up in black and clear plastic, the Aspire U has a clean, modern look. The computer looks like an oversize picture frame, supported in the front by a clear plastic panel running its width and in the back by an articulating kickstand. This design lets you angle the Aspire U from nearly flat on the desk to nearly straight up. It’s an effective design if you have plenty of desk space or table area to work with. If you want to buy an all-in-one to maximize storage area in a small workspace, forget it: The area behind the Aspire U is completely blocked off.

ROBERT CARDINThe clear front panel gives the Acer Aspire U a modern look, but it prevents you from sliding the keyboard underneath the PC when you’re not using it.

The styled-to-match wireless keyboard and mouse bundled with the Aspire U are both pleasant surprises. The keyboard has a slightly sloppy feel, but the keys offer plenty of travel and feel quite nice overall. The up and down arrow keys are half-size, which makes them difficult to use, but the keyboard includes a numeric keypad that you can use for navigation (when Num Lock is turned off). The mouse has a nice heft, and it tracks well on just about any surface.

The touchscreen display responds well to finger movements, and the Aspire U has one of the nicest webcams out there. It’s HD, and it provides very smooth video—significantly smoother than usual. The Aspire U can also respond to hand gestures via said webcam, though in truth it's a rather strenuous and inaccurate way to navigate Windows.

The A5600U-UB13 model of the Aspire U that we tested was sprightly enough, subjectively—once the Windows 8 operating system worked its caching magic. Until things were cached, however, the sluggish 1TB, 5400-rpm hard drive caused windows and applications to open rather slowly. This is a machine that you’d rather have hibernate or sleep than shut down, lest all that caching go for naught. Acer doesn’t offer an SSD option, which would have worked miracles in both perceived and actual speed.

The A5600U-UB13 is a middle-of-the-road performer, which is why PCWorld decided to use it as the reference machine for Desktop WorldBench 8.1 tests. It’s powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5-3230M mobile CPU (all-in-ones often use mobile components because they don’t require as much cooling) and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory. As is typical of lower-priced AIOs, the A5600U-UB13 relies on the Intel HD 4000 graphics processor integrated into the CPU, so don’t expect to play hard-core games on this machine. Although it managed to squeeze out 47.5 frames per second in Dirt Showdown (at a dialed-down resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and with visual quality set to low), it ran Crysis 3 under those same settings at less than 18 fps.

The 23-inch display has a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and it offers both an HDMI input (a convenient feature for connecting a gaming console, a cable/satellite set-top box, or a Blu-ray player) and an HDMI output (great for connecting a second display). A tray-mount DVD burner (not Blu-ray) sits on the right side.

ROBERT CARDINA tray-mount DVD-burner sits on the right side of the Acer Aspire U.

You’ll find two USB 3.0 ports, a card reader, and microphone and headset jacks on the left side. As the front edge of the Aspire U is always in contact with the desktop, you have to turn the unit around or lay it on its face to access the ports in back, namely three USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, and the aforementioned HDMI connections. The machine is outfitted with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 adapters, so you can keep cable clutter to a minimum with just the one cord running to the external power brick.

Movies look very nice on the Aspire U. In the owner’s manual, Acer describes a remote control and coax input, but the U.S. models have no TV tuner, and the coax input is missing in action. Standard input-select and up/down navigation controls are on the lower-right side. Sound from the Aspire U is clear, but thin. Acer would do well to copy Vizio’s example of providing a subwoofer with its all-in-ones.

Most AIOs are difficult to open, but with only two screws on the back of the Acer A5600U-UB13, I decided to see if it was upgradeable. Acer says this voids the computer's warranty, but there are no anti-tamper stickers, so there's little warning to consumers who buy one.

There's an mSATA slot inside, hidden on the back of the motherboard, and easier-to-access mini-PCIe and SODIMM slots on the front of the motherboard. The hard-drive caddy is in plain sight, held in place by a single screw. Upgrading the memory or adding an internal TV tuner would be easy. Upgrading to an SSD? No so much.

ROBERT CARDINYou need remove just two screws to take off the Aspire U’s back. Unfortunately, doing so will void Acer’s one-year warranty.

Replacing the hard drive is no problem, but you would need a very capable cloning program that understands UEFI. The Aspire U is one of those rare computers with a UEFI BIOS that doesn't support booting from legacy MBR media. That means you can't boot from a flash drive or even normal optical boot discs (although it did boot using a factory-pressed Windows 8 DVD). There is a utility called Rufus that will create UEFI boot media, but the lack of legacy boot capabilities is a serious barrier to repair, recovery, and testing other operating systems. Acer does make a non-UEFI BIOS available on its website, but we were unable to cross-grade to it.

Because of the warranty and boot issues, Acer said that consumers should contact the company about replacing failed components, such as a hard drive. Perhaps you can live with that for the warranty period, but the UEFI BIOS issue could be problematic after that.

When all is said and done, the Aspire U is an attractive mainstream family computer with average to good components, performance, and features. It's a good pick for those on opposite sides of the spectrum: People who never see themselves repairing or upgrading their own computer, and tech-savvy types who want an upgradeable AIO and are capable of working around the UEFI issue.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Review: Acer's Predator is relatively toothless

Acer got a few things right and a number of things wrong with the Predator (specifically, Predator model AG3620-UR12). On the “right” side of the ledger, it has one of Intel’s better processors—a 3.4GHz Core i7-3770—and 32GB of DDR3/1600 memory. With those components, the asking price of $1299 is very reasonable.

On the “wrong” side of the ledger, the Predator has an AMD Radeon HD 8760 video card (the OEM version of the milquetoast Radeon HD 7770), a chintzy custom motherboard with just one PCIe x16 slot (occupied), and a miniscule 16GB SSD that serves as a cache to the 2TB, 7200-rpm mechanical hard drive.

Don't buy the Predator if you plan to do much in the way of upgrading down the road. There's just not much room inside the case. 

The all-steel case is wrapped in painted satin black, with glossy black accents on top. Three doors in its face flip down to reveal 5.25-inch drive bays. Of these, one is occupied by a 16x DVD burner, and a second has a slide-out tray with SATA power and data connectors in the rear of the bay. Though this isn’t a hot-swappable drive bay, it does provide an opportunity for data backup that you can remove to an offsite location.

This slide-out drive tray is a cool idea. While not a hot-swappable bay, it has SATA data and power connectors at its back.

Also included are two empty 3.5-inch drive bays (accessible only from inside the case), but you’ll need to supply your own SATA cables and Molex-to-SATA power adapters if you decide to populate them (leads from the 500-watt power supply are available).

The top of the case has a media-card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports. You’ll find two more USB 3.0 ports and four more USB 2.0 ports in back. The video card has three connectors, one each for DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort (full-size), and I was surprised to see antennas for a wireless network adapter card (802.11b/g/n, plus Bluetooth 4.0 support) sticking out from the back. That’s a nice touch, although I imagine having the antennas near the floor must really cut the adapter’s range.

Acer pitched this machine as a “take no prisoners” gaming rig, but the benchmark results belie that claim. While the Predator did produce a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 227, the system we use to establish our 100-point baseline is an unassuming all-in-one desktop PC powered by an Intel Core i5-3230M, with integrated graphics and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory.

The Predator can deliver Crysis 3 at 60 frames per second, but only if you’re willing to reduce the game’s resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels and clamp its image quality at low. When we tried playing the game at the native resolution of a typical 23- or 24-inch consumer monitor—1920 by 1080 pixels—and boosted image quality to Ultra, the Predator delivered a slideshow-like performance of just 6 frames per second. We had a better experience with Civilization 5 and DiRT Showdown (the latter at Ultra quality level), achieving 28.2 and 31.6 frames per second respectively at a resolution of 1920 by 1080.

The Predator is a better-than-average family PC, but hard-core gamers will find it to be weak tea.

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
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Acer’s Timeline M3 Review: Laptop Could’ve Been a Contender

The Acer Timeline M3 is a study in polar opposites. Its thin, elegant chassis and superb performance for its class suggest that the M3 might be a true category leader, but an painfully poor LCD panel prevents the Acer from achieving that goal.

At 4.5 pounds, the Timeline M3 is very light for a 15-inch laptop, and even with the 65W power brick factored in, it weighs only a scant 5.25 pounds. Acer dubs this machine an Ultrabook, which just goes to show how vague that moniker is. Still the M3 is sleek and quite light for so large a laptop.

It's no slouch in the performance department, either. The combination of a Core i7-2637M low-voltage processor, Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics, and a 256GB solid-state drive yields an impressive WorldBench 7 score of 155--one of the highest performance scores we've seen for a machine in the ultraportable laptop category. The M3 also lasted for more than 8 hours in PCWorld's battery life test.

So what's not to like?

The LCD--the most visible component in the system--is a 15.6-inch panel that delivers a puny resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. That might work for a 13.3-inch Ultrabook; but at the M3's larger screen size, you'll notice the "screen door" effect of individual pixels while watching video content. On top of that, the range of satisfactory viewing angles is quite narrow. If you watch content from outside that range, you'll see substantial color and contrast shifting. This system cries out for a true 1080p, IPS LCD panel.

The system incorporates Nvidia's Optimus power-saving system, which allows the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics to run during normal use, but fires up the Kepler-based GT 640M GPU when the demands of 3D gaming render the Intel graphics inadequate. You can specify which GPU to use in key applications, so we tested both Nvidia and Intel graphics when playing back DVD and HD video. In those tests we noticed distracting levels of mosquito noise while playing our The Return of the King DVD with Intel graphics. The noise disappeared when we switched to using the Nvidia GPU, but the overall image suddenly looked washed out and excessively bright. HD content fared slightly better, but visible noise persisted in our Magic of Flight test clip.

The keyboard isn't top-notch, either. The layout is good, and the keyboard comes with a full numeric keypad; but key travel is very short, and the keys aren't sculpted, which invited frequent typing errors. An overly sensitive trackpad exacerbated the situation, to the extent that the cursor was rarely in a predictable location.

The system ships with all of its key expansion ports located on the rear: Two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, one ethernet, an HDMI 1.4a output, and a lone headphone jack are built into the rear. The SD Card slot and the DVD tray are on the left side. Connectivity is available via 802.11n Wi-Fi or gigabit ethernet; no provision exists for 3G/4G wireless broadband, and the Timeline M3 lacks Bluetooth support.

One other area where the Timeline M3 shines is storage. A 256GB solid-state drive coupled with a DVD burner makes for a good storage combo, and the SSD provides fast boot times and speedy application loading.

Game performance was robust in our tests, with frame rates ranging from 16 frames per second (Shogun II) to 26 fps (DiRT3) to 44 fps (Dawn of War II), all at the full panel resolution, with medium or high detail settings. You'll want to use a real mouse for gaming, however, since trackpads are inadequate for most PC titles.

The Acer Timeline M3 offers excellent overall performance and an elegant-looking package, but with less than optimal input devices and an eye-gouging LCD panel that left us cold. You can adjust to an odd keyboard feel, and you can tweak trackpad settings, but nothing will save your eyes from a display that's not up to snuff.

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