Acer Aspire V7 14in review

Unveiled earlier this month, today we also got our hands on some of the Aspire V7 range, of which the 14in model particularly impressed us. This slender, mid-range laptop looks to be going head-to-head with arch-rival Asus’s much-lauded Asus VivoBook S400 – which picked up our Best Buy earlier in the year.

Like the S400, the Aspire V7 14in will be available in a wide range of specifications. The one we saw had an impressive Full HD display, something we’ve ben hoping to see more of on competitively-priced laptops. It also came with a touchscreen, so you can get to grips with Windows 8, if you care to reach over the keyboard.

That Full HD display means that video looked great on it, and you get surprinsgly good audio too thanks to Acer fitting four speakers to this model. It’s still only stereo, no surround sound gimmicks, but the audio is considerably beefier than you’d expect from a slender laptop. Bound to prove useful if you’re keen on a bit of iPlayer or Netflix. If you want to watch on the big screen then WiDi will be an option. Here we also see Aver’s Purified.Voice technology, which uses two microphones to filter out background noise and make for clearer Skype calls and the like.

Most of the ports are on the rear, including a USB port that doubles up as a VGA output using a supplied dongle.

The upper parts come in a number of finishes and we’re not sure which one will make it to the UK, but our best would be the brushed aluminium. The bottom of the laptop is a soft touch plastic, which makes it nicer and easier to carry about when open. The keyboard felt good, with lots of feedback and travel. Plus it’s backlit for working in the dark.

Inside, Acer said it will be using Ivy Bridge processors for now, though we’d bet an update to 4th gen Haswell chips is on the cards. There will be both traditional large-capacity drives and SSD options as well.

It’s not the most exciting design, but based on the popularity of our Vivobook reviews, it’s the kind of laptop that people are actually buying, rather than just gazing it in admiration. If the price is right, and it usually is from Acer, then we should see this going head-to-head with the S400 in the near future.