Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It’s probably best to start by clarifying what this laptop isn’t. It's not a desktop replacement even for an office environment. The 32GB hard drive just isn’t enough to operate at the core of your workflow, even if your workflow is mostly spreadsheets. It’s not a premiere media consumption device, the screen isn’t good enough and the speakers leave much to be desired. It certainly won’t be able to handle any gaming outside a very limited sphere of low spec games, even then I wouldn’t recommend it. With all that out of the way, what does the Aspire One do a good job at? It can handle office tasks, web browsing, and media consumption. The build quality of the laptop is great for the price point. The keyboard is good and the trackpad is okay. The only major letdown of the actual construction are the enormous bezels around the screen. In 2017, they’re almost comically large. The screen is also a letdown with terrible viewing angles and colors so off it’s difficult to tell you’ve found the right viewing angle even when you try. I understand the prestige the engineers were going for when they offered a full 1080p display on a laptop at this price point, but I would have gladly sacrificed the screen resolution for better colors. One of the only redeeming factors of the screen is its brightness, allowing for usage outside on a clear day, if you’re willing to squint just a bit. The webcam isn’t much better, offering just enough definition so that you can safely identify who you’re talking to. The microphone is grainy and can’t handle even a slight breeze, though it does compensate for changes in volume very well. When it comes to raw performance the laptop is surprisingly good. Due to the SSD, the boot time is excellent and the tasks it can run with its limited memory are always snappy. The WIFI card is good enough for taking advantage of 30 Mbps plus internet speeds and the Bluetooth pairs quickly. By far the biggest bottleneck with this device is the limited memory. Even when you’re being conscious of your activity, running no more than two office applications at once, be prepared to encounter at least one warning a day from windows about your RAM limitations. PROS: Good Processor Fast Hard Drive Great Boot Time Excellent Battery Life Full Version of Windows No Bloatware CONS: Poor Screen Limited Ram Lackluster Trackpad Bad Speakers Noisy Webcam A student might reasonably ask, can I get by on just this laptop? The short answer is yes, but that’s a bit risky. Even if your major isn’t film production and you don’t need to edit 4k footage on a daily basis, I still wouldn’t recommend it. If you chose to make this laptop the core of your workflow you will be forced to kiss any serious multitasking goodbye, along with large amounts of local storage. You’ll end up keeping close tabs on your files, pushing a lot of them to an external drive or cloud storage. It would be a good idea to pair the laptop with even an entry level desktop or just find a way to get a higher end device. With that said, if you only have two hundred dollars, go for it. It’ll handle all your office tasks. Buying budget products today is filled with uncertainty. Even when an item has the specs to do what you want, there’s always a lingering anxiety that the day may come when you need it to perform and it will let you done. This is especially true for something like a laptop, the center of the mobile workplace. Despite its price, the Acer Aspire One doesn’t disappoint, it handles office tasks well and operates okay as a media consumption device. What more can you ask for the price?