Acer Aspire One AO532h

Acer laptops are known for offering value for money and awesome price-performance ratio, and the same trend is seen in their netbooks as well. The new Acer Timeline X series of laptops are fine examples . They’re powerful, affordable and portable. Then there’s the new eMachines em350 netbook, which offers very good value for money , and now, the new Acer Aspire One AO532h, which not only features Intel’s Pine Trail CPU, an N450, but now comes with built-in broadband for seamless connectivity on the go. Is this one as competent in terms of price and performance? Let’s find out.

Design
Acer seems to have kept to the old-school design of an all-plastic body which is not only common to the previous models, but also to the Aspire 4000 and 5000 series of entry-level laptops. While there isn’t much to rave about it in terms of design, this netbook undoubtedly looks good with the gradient dark blue-to-black lid and the piano-black wrist rest. However, something really bothersome is the all-glossy finish so essentially, it’s a finger print magnet. So, you either keep the unit in the sleeve, or keep the lint-free cloth handy, both are bundled with the package.

One of the best things about the design is the slim form factor and light weight. At merely 1.25 Kg, carrying this 10-incher is quite convenient. Slide it into your bag and you won’t even know it’s there. Despite the plastic body, the overall build quality is decent, except that the mouse clicks can be heard more than required, which is a bit tacky. Overall, the netbook looks stylish, neither too loud nor too serious, it’s just about good for home users, students and even traveling professionals. In terms of ergonomics, it pretty much matches up with other netbooks which have a slim form factor, light weight body, good chiclet keyboard with large and well-spaced keys and a decent touch pad. The 'Enter' button is a bit smaller but the Shift keys are well-sized. Overall, a decent netbook to type quick emails or letters on.

Features
The new Acer Aspire One AO532h is priced at Rs 19,499, and it features built-in broadband (optional 3G) and offers two months of complementary usage of Reliance NetConnect Broadband Plus service worth Rs 2,198. It packs an Intel Atom N450 CPU, has 1 GB RAM, a 160 GB hard drive and comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 Starter.

It has the latest connectivity options like Wi-Fi N, gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth. Common to most netbooks, you’ll find three USB and a VGA port, two audio jacks, So as you can see, the highlighting features are, mainly the processor and the built-in broadband.