The Aspire One has become one of the most successful netbook series on the market. The Acer AOD250 is the latest addition and follows its trend with travel-friendly features, lightweight design, and low price. These features can be found on most netbooks however, so the AOD250 has several aces up its sleeve to give it a unique advantage over competing models.
Design
The D250 highly resembles the design of its predecessor, the D150. The default color is dark blue, but the netbook can also be purchased in red, white, and black. At 2.2 pounds and 10.2×7.2×1 inches, it is half a pound lighter, 0.3 inches thinner, and 0.8 inches narrower than the D150. Remarkably, it is nearly identical to the weight and thickness of the famous 1008HA Eee PC by Asus.
Touchpad and Keyboard
The keyboard is firm and simple to type on. However, there is still ½ a centimeter of chassis on each side of this keyboard, representing a missed opportunity by Acer to install a full sized keyboard. Using the touchpad is comfortable, although it is quite small at 2.0×1.5 inches. The mouse button is a single bar, lacking a separating divot between the two buttons.
Audio and Display
The Acer AOD250 has a 1024×600 resolution with a 16:9 display. Despite the small screen size, the colors are crisp and display high quality videos superbly. However, tilting the screen forward will immediately render a distorted image.
The speakers on this machine are common for any netbook. They are not very powerful, yet they still get the job done. The speakers would sound a lot nicer if they were placed on the keyboard surface instead of underneath the chassis, so you may need to tilt the machine backwards to get louder sound.
Webcam and Ports
Despite its slimmed-down size, the machine is still able to hold mic and headphone ports, a 4-in-1 memory car slot, Ethernet, VGA, and 3 USB ports. A 0.3 megapixel webcam on the top provides decent image display while talking with friends over Skype, but it is much darker than the MSI Wind U120’s webcam.
Performance
Like almost every other netbook, the D250 has a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, although the Asus Eee PC 1008HA rates slightly higher with a 1.66 GHz N280 CPU. This makes the D250 a few seconds slower than the 1008HA, but it still has enough power for standard computing tasks.
This machine received high ratings for graphics performance, with its 945 GPU ranking a 741 score in 3DMark03, which is over 100 points above average. It has no problem playing movies and streaming videos off the hard drive. Although it may take a few seconds to render high quality images, it is capable of basic media functions.
Battery Life and Wi-Fi
The 802.11b/g Wi-Fi performed quite well with a 16.9 Mbps at over 50 feet away. At that distance, most netbooks only average 15.7 Mbps. Although this doesn’t seem like a big difference, it can significantly affect website loading time.
The 3 cell battery runs for a little over 3 hours, which is quite low for modern netbooks. Acer also provides a 6-cell battery with 6 hours of battery life. Compared to other netbooks that offer 10 to 15 hours of battery life, the D250 is lackluster in this area.
Verdict
Overall, the D250 is an impressive machine. For $298, it is competitively priced and features quality performance compared to the U123 by MSI and 1008 by Asus, which are both more expensive. Still, it seems odd that Acer created a machine that is identical to its predecessor in terms of performance and price. However, the Acer AOD250 is still a worthy machine that is perfect for the ultra-light laptop market.