Acer Aspire R11 (R3-131T) review

The laptop’s speakers use ‘paper diaphragm’ technology, which is designed to create a minimal amount of distortion when playing high-frequency sounds at maximum volume. We were genuinely impressed with the speakers in our tests; even once we cranked the volume up to 100%, we heard no distortion whatsoever in both music and dialogue, which is a serious feat for such a small laptop. Unsurprisingly, these small speakers still can’t handle low-frequency sounds so if you want to hear every explosion and every bass drum beat, you’ll need headphones or external speakers.

The keyboard’s keys have a light and responsive action, and the laptop’s 13.3in form factor leaves enough room for larger hands. Unfortunately, we had some serious problems with the touchpad once we’d upgraded to Windows 10.

After the upgrade, we started to see significant stuttering, alongside warning beeps from the Synaptics touchpad driver software. Most touchpad gestures, even the most basic swipes and drag-select commands, failed to work on most occasions, resulting in some extremely frustrating situations when attempting to edit documents and send emails. It’s particularly annoying because Acer claims the R11 is ready for Windows 10, and is fully supported for a free upgrade. In our experience, we found this simply isn’t the case.

We were able to partially solve these problems with an update downloaded from the Synaptics website, and although the stuttering mostly disappeared, there were still occasions when the driver software would fail and start beeping. The problem was most serious when the processor was busy with other tasks. Acer has stated in support forum posts (regarding other laptops upgraded to Windows 10 with the same problem) that investigations are ongoing, but as yet a complete solution has not been found.

For this reason, it’s very difficult to recommend the Acer R11 as a Windows 10 laptop. If you buy it and don’t complete the Windows 10 upgrade, you’ll have a competent Windows 8.1 machine, but Windows 10 should be avoided for the moment. For alternatives see our full list of the best laptops you can buy today.

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