Acer Aspire One 522 Netbook Review

Today, we have Acer’s new Aspire One based on the AMD Fusion platform - the Aspire One 522. This 10.1-inch budget series netbook is targeted towards anyone looking for a trendy and compact netbook under 20K. The recently reviewed Asus 1015PX also falls in the same category so let’s see how well the Acer 522 fares against it.

Design and Build Quality
I quite like Acer’s minimalistic design of the 522, it gives the appearance of a slim netbook without any extra fluff. It’s stylish as well, with a lacquer gloss finish on the lid. It will certainly appeal to the younger generation. Despite its slim profile, it doesn't feel very light weight at 1.3kg. There are a total of three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, VGA port, LAN jack, microphone and headphone jack and finally the card reader. The battery protrudes a little from the back giving the netbook a slight elevation. It’s not too much to cause an ugly bulge though.

Good paint job

Opening up the lid, we have a glossy 10.1-inch screen with a rather high resolution of 1280x720, not a common occurrence in netbooks of this size. The glossy effect does introduce reflections but it’s not too bad since the brightness is sufficiently high to cancel most of it. The chiclet keyboard packs in slightly larger than normal keys for a netbook which is good for those with fat fingers. There’s just a power button up top with a blue LED light around it. The Acer bundles a carry pouch and charger along with some instruction booklets and the warranty card.

Overall, I really liked the build and finish of the 522. It’s crafted well from good quality plastics and you wont find any creaks even if you press it.

Features
At the heart of the Aspire One 522, we have AMD’s Fusion APU, the C-50, which is a dual-core running at 1GHz. Rest of the specifications include 2GB DDR3 RAM and a 320GB hard drive, good enough for a budget netbook. The OS is Windows 7 Starter which offers all the basic options you’ll ever need on this machine.

Looks smart!

Acer also throws in some bundled software like McAfee Antivirus (Trial) and Office Starter Edition. They also have some of their own software like Crystal Eye Webcam which lets you capture and record videos and Acer Game Zone which is a collection of mini games. The 522 is also “AMD HD Internet” certified which means the netbook should handle HD media streaming and playback with ease. Finally we have Bluetooth and WiFi ‘n’ built-in as well. Next let’s see how it performs.