The Acer Aspire 1825PTZ is a portable computer that aims to marry laptop design with tablet usability. While it doesn’t cut it as a perfect tablet (Check out our portable power review to find out why), what’s it like as a laptop? Read on and we’ll tell you just what it’s capable of in this part of our Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review.
Read the rest of our Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review:
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review: Tablet tested
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review: Portable power
With a compact 11.6-inch screen, the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ was never designed to be a portable powerhouse, but it’s still capable of carrying out most everyday tasks. Our review sample uses a processor from one of Intel’s CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) ranges – the Intel Pentium SU4100 chip. Intended for entry-level mini laptops, this low powered processor is ideal for devices such as the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ, balancing the performance with a decent price point.
Running at 1.3GHz, the SU4100 is quite slow by most modern laptop standards, which is highlighted when first starting up the machine. It takes an age to load up all the software – we literally wandered off and made lunch while waiting – although once everything is configured things are a lot better on subsequent boot ups.
As long as you don’t ask anything too demanding of it, however, the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ is surprisingly capable. Running programs like Photoshop show its limitations, with lots of lag while waiting for the app to start, but again there’s plenty of speed once it’s going. Less intensive apps – such as Microsoft Word – work a lot better, and the fact the Pentium SU4100 is a dual-core chip even lets you carry out a degree of multi-tasking, further aided by 4GB of memory.
As we mentioned in our full Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review, it’s battery life that this machine is really designed for, however. The processor requires just 10W to power it, compared to 35W for processors such as Intel’s Core 2 Duo range. Along with a bulky 6-cell battery, it helps the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ to achieve a battery life of over seven hours with the Wi-Fi turned off. You’ll also have to dim the display slightly to get that sort of run time, but it’s still impressive for such a fully functional machine.
Graphics are handled by an integrated Intel GMA X4500 chip. As long as you’re not looking for a gaming or video editing machine, this compact device is a surprisingly capable machine when it comes to multimedia playback. We had no trouble when playing either 720 or 1020 HD video samples at 30fps, with no sign of dropped frames. Letting you take full advantage of its multimedia capabilities, there’s also an HDMI port for hooking up a HDTV.
Try playing the same video clips back in a web browser, or when carrying out other tasks, however, and the Acer Aspire 1825PT starts to struggle. It’s not an issue on its own – just don’t think you’ll be able to get away with connecting a big monitor and using it as your desktop replacement machine.
Unlike devices such as the Apple iPad, the Acer Aspire 1825PTZ uses a traditional mechanical hard drive over flash memory. It’s a lot cheaper, and also more capacious – at 250GB – but it also has some downsides. Using flash memory would have made the Acer lighter, and with no moving parts it would also have been more robust. Speed and power efficiency is also improved with a flash drive.
The Acer Aspire 1825PTZ is a capable but uninspiring performer then. It can cope as your main daily machine – if it has to – but as soon as you start cranking up your requirements it will start to struggle. That said, as long as you stick to single tasks, it’s surprisingly capable for such a low budget machine.
Review sample supplied by saveonlaptops.co.uk
Read the rest of our Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review:
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review: Tablet tested
Acer Aspire 1825PTZ review: Portable power
