Acer launches four budget Windows 8 touchscreen notebooks

Notebooks with touchscreens are becoming the norm rather than the exception, and Acer, one of the leading PC makers in the world, has kept the trend going. The company today launched the new Aspire V5 range, with prices starting from Rs 34,550 and going up to Rs 47,500. At that price, the low-end model is one of the cheapest Windows 8 notebooks available in India.

The Aspire V5 is available in 14- and 15.6-inch sizes and will have processors ranging from the low-end Pentium Dual Core processors to third generation Ivy Bridge Core i3 and i5 processors.

The new Acer Aspire V5

The 14-inch unit is 20mm thick and weighs 2.09 Kg, while the 15.6-inch laptop has a 21mm thick waistline and outweighs its smaller sibling with a 2.27 Kg bulk. Those figures are very close to the requirements for Ultrabooks put in place by Intel, but Acer will be using regular CPUs in these new models. Sadly, neither of them will be shipping with with SSDs or SSD cache drives. There is no mention of the resolution of the laptop, but these are budget offerings and so should equip a display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. Please, Acer. Surprise us with a 1600 X 900 display.

Acer’s Chief Marketing Officer S Rajendran believes consumers are “on the lookout for products that offer ease of use and enhanced user experience. We are confident that consumers will seamlessly adapt to touch technology in their day-to-day use as touch is a natural instinct to mankind."

The notebook features a 10-point touch display with a large trackpad designed with the intention of improving multi-touch gestures, a crucial part of navigating the Windows 8 UI.

Acer is touting the integrated Dolby Advanced Audio technology as one of the best in the market. The company has also integrated a homegrown social networking app called Social Jogger that syncs with Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks. The laptops feature a built-in slim DVD drive.

Another point to be noted is that there is no mention made of discrete GPUs, which will seriously dissuade gamers. Acer does say the laptops will come with Intel’s HD 4000 graphics and you will get the usual complement of USB 3.0 ports, 802.11n wireless (with Acer Instant Connect you can restore your saved networks in just 2.5 seconds), and Bluetooth 4.0+ High Speed. From the pictures, it is evident that the company is using chiclet-style keyboards, which is departure from the usual floating keyboard that Acer had taken a strange liking to.