Travel Laptop - less than £400

sjt269

sjt269

sjt269

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Hi all,

I'm in the market for a small, portable laptop for travelling with and using to give presentations. I was aiming at netbooks (with the outside choice of an Android-based tablet if I could figure out how to give presentations on it), but I've recently discovered the Acer Aspire V5-171. It's £350 from everyone's favourite purple shirted brigade (cheapest price I can find), and packs an i3, 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD into a package with an 11.6" screen. Aside from the fact that it looks a little boring, it's pretty much fantastic. Would love to swap the HDD for an SSD if possible though.

Does anyone have any experience with or opinions of this laptop? Most reviews criticise its battery life, but most reviews are for the i5 model (which I assume is more power hungry?). I'm put off netbooks by the (unjustified) idea that they might be a little sluggish to use.

The only other real options are:

Asus Transformer Pad, £400 - slim, fast, portable, it would be neat to have a tablet, looks good, has everything I could want, but it runs on Android. I really should be sticking with Windows so I can run Powerpoint presentations properly, since presentations and talks are pretty important in my line of work.

Netbook, ~£200 - a little smaller, not much (any?) thinner, lower powered, but with better battery life and a lot cheaper. Still runs Windows, so good for presentations, but I worry about how responsive netbooks would be in day-to-day use.

I've also checked the Dell Outlet for small netbook/ultrabooks, but haven't seen anything on there that's grabbed me, though I know their stock can vary from day to day. I've been advised to wait for the Win8 tablets with keyboards, but I don't know how expensive (or stable) they'll be upon release.

Essentially, unless someone convinces me otherwise, I'm going to buy the Acer on Monday or Tuesday. So, can anyone convince me otherwise?

Thanks,
Steven
 
Try the SONY VAIO E Series SVE1111M1EW :) or failing that an ACER Aspire V5-171 as you have already stated.

Even shop about for a 11.6 Lenovo E-350 or E-450 model.

Regards.

C.
 
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The Sony looks good, but the Acer still has the lead at the moment. It's cheaper, and better looking than the Sony, with similar components. Do you have any personal experience with the Acer?
 
sjt269 said:
The Sony looks good, but the Acer still has the lead at the moment. It's cheaper, and better looking than the Sony, with similar components. Do you have any personal experience with the Acer?
Click to expand...

Have had a few Acers in my time you get more for you money, however some corners in build quality can be cut.

The i3 will perform better wrt CPU intensive tasks. And Obviously HD content won't be a problem.

Regards.

C.
 
Think I'm going to go with the Acer, since extensive searching isn't throwing up any flaws with it. No particularly glowing reviews either, but it's hopefully going to be a solid (if uninspired) little laptop that'll do me well for professional use. I'm going to order it tomorrow morning, need to do it through the department.

Thanks for the help. :)
 
sjt269 said:
Think I'm going to go with the Acer, since extensive searching isn't throwing up any flaws with it. No particularly glowing reviews either, but it's hopefully going to be a solid (if uninspired) little laptop that'll do me well for professional use. I'm going to order it tomorrow morning, need to do it through the department.

Thanks for the help. :)
Click to expand...

Did you go for it? If so, how is it?
 
I ordered it last Tuesday, still hasn't arrived yet. Remember that I am ordering through a university though, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's currently working its way through our IT department since they sometimes do that. I was hoping to bypass them, but I can't think why else it would have taken so long.

To be honest, if I find out it's not IT causing the delay, I think I'll cancel and get the Sony that's on OcUK for £250. Still, I live in hope that it'll finally arrive today. :)
 
That Sony looks nice but from what I read there's a massive performance gap between the i3 in the Acer and the AMD E450.

Have you read differently or are you happy to sacrifice it for £100 or so?
 
So it turns out the order hasn't gone through properly, so we've cancelled it. I can re-order the Acer, go for the Sony (plus an SSD) or rethink things. I'm currently looking dreamily at the Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook for an extra £200 over the V5 I'd been looking at, though I suspect I'll end up re-ordering the same laptop again.
 
For the moment, things are on pause over the weekend since I haven't decided yet and can't order through the department over the weekend because most people (researchers aside) don't work Saturdays. Also, I'm away on Monday, so I'll be ordering on Tuesday at the earliest.

I'd love to see them both side by side so I could test them out, but that's unlikely to happen. I love the look of the S3, but I dislike the bulky power adapter it comes with (though the one with the V5 isn't that much smaller). The V5 still looks solid but uninspired, while the S3 seems to be sleek and powerful, but at a steep price over the V5.

One thing that's concerning me more than it should is the lack of a VGA output on the S3 - a lot of the projector equipment I'd be connecting to is probably VGA (certainly in our department), so I'd need to get an HDMI-VGA adapter with a proper D-A converter. Then again, all the Mac afficionados have to carry about all manner of adapters when giving presentations, so it's perhaps not a huge issue.
 
Well, I've just bought the V5. On it now.

The only thing that made me hesitate was the poor build quailty. All the ones I'd looked at in shops had sharp edges on the screen and felt flimsy.

This is no different but it was worth trying before I give in and buy a Macbook air.

Will let you know how I get on if you like.
 
As above, please do post some thoughts when it arrives.

Very close to ordering one next week, would be interested to see what you make of it.

I'd be using it for Uni library word processing. Keyboard seems larger than most 11.6 ultrabooks, I had a type on one and very comfortable. Screen seems ok for such tasks as well.
 
Screen is nice. Some people don't like the gloss but I like it.

Changed the drive for a Crucial M4 SSD so can't comment on the performance with the standard drive but so far with video and web I'm very happy with the performance. (Boots in 15 seconds from cold which is nice)

The only thing that lets it down is build quality but then it's £350.

It aslo took a while to get it up and running on the new drive. Windows didn't have drivers for the wireless chipset or LAN. The wireless drivers I downloaded from Acer didn't seem to work either so I put the old drive in a caddy and searched for them on there. From there either the Acer site or windows update provided drivers for the rest. I presume it's for the i5 version.

The confusing thing is that there are different configurations of the V5-171. The Acer site doesn't seem to acknowledge this though. For example you can download "turboboost" for the V5-171 but this i3 doesn't have it.

Also when searching for the model number on a particluar website to upgrade the RAM you cannot find the exact one. The inspection software for that site also returns a totally different model.
 
Interesting - I'd been considering swapping the hard drive for an SSD (exactly that one, actually) if I'd gone for this one. Sounds like it was a worthwhile move. What's it like in terms of portability, battery life etc?
 
sjt269 said:
Interesting - I'd been considering swapping the hard drive for an SSD (exactly that one, actually) if I'd gone for this one. Sounds like it was a worthwhile move. What's it like in terms of portability, battery life etc?
Click to expand...

No impressions of battery life yet, portability is very good. Hardly any more impact than my Asus tf300.
 
Useful tip if putting a Crucial M4 in.

I thought I was going to have to buy a new drive because it only accepts 7mm drives.

As it turns out the 9mm Crucial just has a plastic spacer. Undo the screws (voids warranty), take spacer out and re assemble. You'll need shorter screws though.

Regarding battery life, today I've been using for 2h05m with brightness low but comfortable, watching videos from my NAS,flash content on the BBC, Youtube and general browsing. Wifi on all the time.

Windows reports 59% battery left which translates to 3h26m at currrent state.

So far then, very happy with speed and general performance. Just let down by build quality but then I knew that before purchase.
 
WEI for the V5-171 after adding 8Gb of Crucial RAM and a Crucial M4 SSD :)

I thought the graphics would be the weak link.:p

8077163083_3fd0151671.jpg
 
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