With the basic Intel Atom/1GB RAM/XP setup, you'll get a similar experience to using a netbook such as the HP Mini 1000 or Lenovo S10, but there are a handful of trade-offs for the Aspire One D150's price. Although the keyboard is large enough for comfortable typing, the tiny touchpad and mouse buttons (on a flimsy rocker bar) are painful to use. Also, while the extended six-cell battery runs for up to 6 hours, it makes the whole package relatively heavy. Note that our test unit had a slightly beefed-up six-cell battery compared to what it will finally ship with.
Netbooks were originally intended as cheap, no-frills travel machines, and the new Aspire One D150 fits that bill well, but there are also plenty of slightly more expensive options that add polish.
The new D150 is available in blue, white, red and black. Our review unit was 'sapphire blue', with a glossy lid and a matte, slightly textured finish on the keyboard tray. Although the new Aspire One has a footprint similar to other 10in. netbooks, such as the MSI Wind, it's significantly thicker than the slim HP Mini 1000, and also heavier, thanks to the bulky battery.
Acer's £299 Aspire One D150 boosts the screen size from 8.9in. to 10.1in.
The first Acer Aspire One we looked at was a 9in. Linux model, and while the D150 model has a larger chassis and screen, the keyboard is virtually identical. Despite not having as comfortable a keyboard as the Samsung NC10 or HP Mini, we did appreciate the inclusion of dedicated PgUp and PgDn keys.
The touchpad is one of the few giveaways that this is a budget netbook. It's tiny and square, with a very small rocker bar below it, instead of traditional left and right mouse buttons. Getting it to properly register a click is a pain: you need to press really hard, as the contact seems to be deeply embedded in the chassis.
The 10.1in.,wide-screen TFT display offers a native resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels, which is standard for netbooks. It's certainly readable, but most documents and web pages will require some scrolling. Bright and clear, the new bigger display is the main selling points of Acer's updated Aspire One.
The Aspire One D150 has a typical set of ports and connections for a lower-end netbook. Trading up to a more expensive system from Lenovo or HP can net you useful extras such as Bluetooth, an ExpressCard slot or even faster 802.11n Wi-Fi. Bluetooth is especially useful for syncing a smartphone for mobile broadband connectivity.
With Intel's 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, specifically designed for low-power netbooks, you get enough computing power for basic tasks, such as web surfing, working on documents and some basic multimedia playback. As expected, the Aspire One D150 performed on par with more expensive recent netbooks, such as the HP Mini 2140 (and slightly faster than Sony's Vaio P, which is saddled with Windows Vista). We'll soon be seeing the first notebooks with a faster version of the Intel Atom, the N280, which may expose some major fault lines in netbook performance (or not, as small clock-speed bumps are often inconsequential).
With the six-cell extended battery, teh Aspire One D150 weighs 1.33kg.
The system ran for an impressive 6 hours and 17 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. Note that our test unit had a slightly beefed-up battery (5,800mAH versus 5,200mAh or 4,400mAH options on the spec sheet), and we'll retest with an official six-cell battery when we get our hands on one. The trade-off, of course, is the system's weight and size; the extended battery is heavy and sticks out from the back.
The Aspire One D150 includes an industry-standard, one-year warranty; telephone support is available for both in-warranty and out-of warranty products (the latter charged at 50p per minute).
Play video
