A Review of the Acer Aspire One 533

Acer’s featherweight Aspire One 533 Netbook is fitted with the Atom N457 chip and boasts the quicker DDR 3 ram chip, so it is no slouch. The Aspire 533 uses the same 250 GB hard drive as its predecessor and features Intel's 3150 graphics card. Our test machine shipped with Windows 7 Starter edition.

The Aspire 533 looks good; the compact design has a glossy finish and comes in a choice of colours, and refreshingly, the shiny casing seems fairly resistant to collecting too many fingerprints. If it does become a problem, however, there is a cleaning cloth included in the box.

Size and weight
The Aspire One only weighs 1.25kg, so it is light enough to be carried around all day and since it only measures 27mm - barely over an inch thick - it's small enough to fit into a handbag.

The six cell battery supplied with our 533 did protrude slightly, but underneath rather than at the rear making the keyboard tilt slightly forward. However we did not object to this as it may be keyboard more comfortable to use and the build quality, especially the hinge, appears to be very good.

Keyboard and Trackpad
The trackpad is quite large and is slightly raised making it easy use, and unusually, there is a vertical scroll bar to the right (although we found this fiddly to use).

If we were using this Netbook for real instead of just testing it we would probably want to add a cordless mouse for better control, but we usually would with most notebooks anyway. The button bar is once again slightly awkward to use as it needed downward pressure to be effective - regrettably, the 533 is not alone in this.

The keyboard is almost full size and the mottled finish on the keys makes them ideal for typing. The keys are well spaced and feel very solid but they are quite flat and sometimes a little indistinct when trying to touch type.

Some extra function buttons are sprinkled across the keyboard so that settings like a screen brightness can be adjusted without resorting to the menu system.

Monitor
The backlit LED screen is clear and bright, and it's 1024x600 pixel resolution uses excellent graphic qualities; Acer also claim that it is antiglare.

We didn't find this particularly true when we tested it; although it was visible by more than one person due to its wide viewing angle we couldn't determine any antiglare or anti reflection property, certainly not in daylight conditions.

The screen has a built in webcam.

Connectivity
The Acer is a bit better off than most in terms of connections, and includes three USB 2.0 ports (great for adding external drives or cordless mouse) , Ethernet, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)and Bluetooth 3.0, which is handy for transferring content from your Smartphone.

Battery strength
Battery life is always an issue with notebooks, the manufacturers claim is often being wild exaggerations of the reality; however in this case the eight hours claimed by Acer for its six cell battery was actually quite accurate, and we regularly had more than seven hours continuous use from the 533 in test conditions.

A nice additional touch with the Acer laptops and notebooks is that the charger supplied is very compact and with juices charging times by up to one third.

Final verdict
This is a great little netbook and one to consider if you need to work for lengthy periods while away from your home or office, or any power sockets. Verdict: 5/5

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