1976 was the year when a Multitech International company in Taiwan was founded as a small unit with just few employees and that company was later named as Acer. If it could reach such great heights, it is because of its quality and good design. Since its formative years, the products sport out a uniqueness. One among those in the line is the Acer Aspire One 722. If you look at this particular product’s specifications, you would probably come to a conclusion that it is a notebook. But then, what truth holds is that, it is a netbook. Yes, this 11.6 inch netbook has many features that match to that of an average notebook. This netbook has been recently added to acer’s list of netbooks with looks that carries a typical acer look. With just few features that might make it seem like a notebook suffice to qualify it as a good netbook? What does this product actually hold for its users? Get an answer for these questions by reading our review on the “Acer aspire One 722” netbook.

Design:

The first word that your mind would come across the moment you look at this netbook is, “Ultra portable”. This Aspire One 722  11.6 inch netbook is very slim and too light-weighted that is obviously visible from its appearance and this is a big plus for the netbook. This makes it easy to be carried in your backpack. Just toss it in and you will not know that it is inside and it is as light as 1.35 Kg. This good travel companion has the “aspire one” tag printed on its front side and there is the ripple like texture. This texture is something innovative because the design is really lively, as in, the ripples look realistic. The netbook comes with three colour choices, blue, black or red, or more perfectly the colours can be explained as Aquamarine blue, diamond black and Burgundy red respectively. Like most of the acer netbooks, it has a glossy finish which attracts finger prints easily. Though the netbook has a wide 11 inch screen it does not look that bigger. However, the screen is HD widescreen LCD display type with a clean resolution of 1366 x 768p. This makes it wonderful to watch movies. This kind of a resolution is unimaginable in a netbook, particularly of this price range. The netbook is very cheaper in price and is therefore pretty much affordable.

Keyboard:

It is better to be warned and informed before itself, the netbook’s keyboard is all set to disappoint you. One, the keys are little crammed up that makes certain keys uncomfortable to use, while the other reason is that the keys are very light and feeble. You touch the keys and you can feel the keyboard area going up and down. It gives a plastic feeling and this is one point that needs to be looked at. There is no separate numeric keypad and this said, you need to use the general number keys for typing the numbers. The up and down keys are really small and the palm rest area is not adequate.

Touch Pad:

Right below the keyboard in the centre is the Touch pad. This pad provides for vertical scrolling on its sides and has a single button for the usual left and right mouse button operations. Now there are two sides for this single button design, for and against because you need to use a single for doing two different jobs and it can be ambiguous at times.

However, the multi-touch gestures can be quite exciting to use.

Ports:

There are no ports on the front and back side of the netbook which naturally means that the ports can be found distributed on the left and rights sides of the device. On the right, two USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, multi-in-one card reader that can read data from cards like SD and the like. On the other side, there is the VGA, Ethernet port, power adaptor, USB 2.0 port and HDMI. If you are happy that there are three USB 2.0 ports, then it must be exciting to know that this netbook comes with the HDMI ports. Most of the netbooks generally do not include HDMI as one of their ports. But this netbook includes it and it means you can watch the contents in a HDTV.

Netbook features:

There are a number of features in this Acer Aspire One 722 netbook that are equivalent to those present in a midrange laptop. The fact that this machine can play HD content is amazing since most of the netbooks do not provide this option. In addition to this, the netbook is a great video streamer. It plays the contents streamed from sites and infact the quality is way better than many other netbooks. Moving on to the viewing angles of the screen, they are really wide. The netbook can be pushed back to a wide angle and the quality would still remain unaltered. This would be delightful for those who watch movies with friends. The netbook has poor stereo speakers. May be this is the area acer decided to constrain its budget on. The speakers are not very loud and clear and it becomes quite difficult to listen to the audio when the surrounding is little noisy. So users would find themselves using the headphones more often than these speakers. The camera on top of the screen is not very clear but of course, it can be used for video chat or conferences, skype chats, etc.,

Processor, Graphics and Memory:

There are great promises from the APUs that have recently found their birth. The Accelerated Processing Unit combine the CPU and GPU on the same die for providing faster transfer of data and high speed operation. With this new technology taking its formative steps, this 11 inch netbook includes the AMD C50 processor that is of APU type with a speed of 1.0 GHz. Now this might be a good processor when compared to other Atom netbooks and many others too. But then, it does not satisfy the heaped up expectations. Yes, it manages multitasks pretty decently and provides best video resolution possible. But that is it. It is not exactly a gaming netbook because all that this device can handle is light gaming, going beyond which the netbook will not do justice. The Acer Aspire One 722 netbook includes a dedicated ATI Radeon HD 6250 for graphics. This means that videos will be lot better compared to the conventional ones. For all the larger memory lovers, cheers! Because this acer aspire 722 netbook comes with 4GB of RAM and 500GB of hard drive. This is something that you can not find in most of the netbooks and thumbs up to acer for being so generous as this means so much to those who are in need of good memory space from netbooks.

Connectivity:

The whole world is becoming an Internet junkie. Very less population of the world is still oblivious to the net while the rest of the population has completely got indulged in it. We are dependent on the net for almost all our activities. This netbook provides internet access for its users for surfing, downloading or stuffs that depend on the global network using both the wired and wireless connectivity. As said earlier, there is the RJ45 ethernet port that aides the wired connection, while the Wi-Fi 802.11bgn supports wireless access. This means that you can chat for hours with your dear ones, regardless of where they are.

Heat and Noise:

The Acer aspire 722 netbook has been positively designed without much noise. The noise level is very low that it does not irritate your senses and the heat level is also tolerable. There are fan vents on the sides of the netbook that take proper care to avoid the hotness from staying inside the device itself.

Battery:

It is a known fact that netbooks usually survive longer than the larger notebooks. This Acer aspire one 722 netbook has a 6 cell 4400mAh battery and the company boasts of 7 hour battery life. However, the users can be guaranteed of 5 hours and few minutes on an average definitely if the processor is up to only light browsing and simple application processing. There is nothing to be awed with the battery life or its performance, but there is nothing to be disappointed too, it does its job satisfactorily.

Performance:

The Acer Aspire one series includes a wide range of netbooks that differ from each other in their specs. This particular 11 inch netbook is just an average performer because its processor is a mid-range one. Though the netbook has dedicated graphics, it is not intended for gamers as it can not handle it efficiently and once again the processor is the reason for this. However, for all other general purposes the netbook is really good.

Warranty:

There is nothing special about the warranty usually. The standard one year period is covered for it and Acer provides good service to its customers. They can approach the company for any queries either through their sites or toll free numbers or by going to the service centre directly.

Verdict:

Acer aspire one 722 netbook is a budget netbook as its cost is very less. But then it has a number of features that are possessed solely by the desktop replacement notebooks. So if you are on the chase for a “netbook” that is very economical, has large memory, HD screen, capability to connect to HD TV, good number of ports and a decent look, then this could be the one that you are after. But for others, there are a number of other netbooks and notebooks as well, that can perform way better than this one.

Acer Aspire One 722 Netbook – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer Acer
Model Name Acer Aspire One 722
Weight 1.35 Kg
Type Netbook
Display
Screen Size 11.6 inch
Screen Type HD Widescreen CineCrystal LCD Display
Screen Resolution 1366 x 768p
Internal Components
Processor AMD Processor C-50 (1.0GHz speed, 1MB L2 cache)
RAM 4GB DDR3
Hard drive 500GB
Keypad Very small but good response
Touchpad Yes, with Multi touch facilities
Multimedia
Speakers Built-in stereo speakers
Communication Setup
Wireless support WLAN 802.11 BGN
Memory card slot Multi-in-1 card reader
Connectivity 3 USB 2.0 ports, Audio line in, Audio line out, 1 HDMI,
1 VGA video output
Warranty 1 Year complete warranty

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