Acer Aspire V3-571G-9435: The Value Proposition
by Jarred Walton on July 4, 2012 4:25 AM ESTAcer V3-571G: Just How Bad Is the LCD?
We’ve made it a habit of pointing out just how bad a lot of laptop LCDs are, and sadly (but not surprisingly) Acer’s V3 laptop does nothing to buck the trend. We’re not even hoping for something like Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro here; I’d setting for just getting a better resolution than 1366x768 on a 15.6” display, and improved contrast would be icing on the cake. The LG LP156WH4 panel sadly provides neither. First, let’s see the results.
You get very poor contrast, poor maximum brightness, and weak colors. Note that we’re reporting color accuracy after calibration—run any of the laptops without using calibration software and hardware and you’ll get a Delta E consistently in the 15-25 range. (That might seem horrible, and it is, but it’s basically the same thing you get with every single tablet right now so keep that in mind.) Viewing angles are also really poor, with massive color shifting when you view the display from above or below.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
But Can You Do Anything About It?
With all the bad aspects of the LCD, I got thinking: can you replace the panel with something better? As luck would have it, I have one of my favorite LCDs from the past several years ready for just such a test, the AU Optronics B156HW01v4. This particular panel comes courtesy of LaptopScreen.com, and you can even purchase your own for just $86 right now. (The original LP156WH4 costs $65, if you’re curious—and LaptopScreens has it in glossy and matte variants if you’re interested; the B156HW01 v7 is the glossy equivalent of the v4 as well, if you prefer glossy.)
I have to say, having had two cracked LCDs on laptops during the past five or so years, the improved availability of replacements (at very reasonable prices!) is definitely welcome. Even better news: the B156HW01 fits perfectly into the Acer V3 chassis. You can see the disassembly process in the following gallery—I used an old credit card to help pry the plastic chassis apart.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
That’s all great news, but sadly there’s not a happy ending to this particular story. Despite a rather complex disassembly process (and the very real potential to break off some plastic clips), even though everything fits the final result was a failure. The original display is a budget 1366x768 panel, and as best I can tell Acer uses a data cable that doesn’t support higher resolutions properly. With the B156HW01 installed, you can boot up the laptop without trouble and even select the 1920x1080 resolution within Windows, but every other column of pixels ends up being white.
.jpg)
Update: The technical explanation is that, much like single-link DVI vs. dual-link DVI, there are single-channel LVDS cables and dual-channel LVDS cables. Single-channel LVDS can support up to 1366x768 (1280x800), but anything beyond that requires dual-channel LVDS. That means if you get a laptop with a 1600x900 display, you can upgrade to 1080p without needing a different cable, but for laptops like the V3 that ship with a native 1366x768 panel you will likely need a different cable. The single-channel LVDS cables have eight missing (empty) wires for the second data channel, which is why every other column ended up blank. Unfortunately, I haven't had any luck finding a compatible cable for the newly launch V3-571G. If you're feeling really adventurous, you could always try to roll your own.
If you can find an appropriate data/power cable, you should be able to get the 1080p display to work properly, but I have to send this laptop back to Acer so I’m not going to spend any more effort on the attempt. In general, you should be able to replace an LCD in a laptop with any LCD that runs at the same or lower resolution (and has the same form factor—note that there are at least four different form factors/mounting mechanisms just for 15.6” screens), but for higher resolution displays you will need a laptop that is designed to support such displays. If you buy a laptop where the manufacturer supports multiple resolutions (e.g. Dell’s XPS 15z can be configured with either a 1366x768 or a 1920x1080 display), you should be able to make the upgrade as well, but ideally you’d just buy a laptop with a quality display in the first place.
When I see 1920x1200 tablets from ASUS and Acer hitting the market, or ASUS’ 1080p Ultrabooks—not to mention Apple pushing their Retina displays on all of their product lines—I keep thinking, “Maybe we’re finally going to see the end of low resolution displays.” After all, go shopping for a new HDTV and you’ll see that no one even bothers with 720p these days and the only HDTVs that aren’t 1080p (or higher) are on clearance. So why is it that our laptops are still stuck with such a low resolution? If you care about displays, my recommendation is to make sure to let your wallet do the talking, and encourage friends and relatives to do the same. (/rant)
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
88 Comments
View All Comments
StormyParis - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
It's an article of faith among tech reviewers that SSDs are where it's at nowadays. I have doubts:1- Size: especially on a laptop, I'd rather have a large HD on which I can stick a few games, 10+ hours of films for me and the kids. AN SSDs pretty much means you *have* to carry an external HD. Or read getting bored.
2- Reliability: the only reliability survey I ever saw says SSDs fail on average almost twice as much as HDDs.
3- limited use case: very few apps do a lot of disk I/O once launched, and 4GB systems mostly don't swap, so SSDs are mostly useful during boot and app launch. Also, many users now do sleep/hibernation with apps open, instead of a full reboot + apps relaunch. That makes for a scarce few seconds when the SSD will be felt.
I'm fairly sure reviewers aren't needing hours of videos during their reviews (they're at work, not snowed in with the kids ^^), do full startups (and few of those), and are given somewhat pre-tested units. Isn't there a big disconnected between reviews and users ?
Omoronovo - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
1. For a laptop, you're unlikely to have many games installed that are dedicated, hardcore games that take up 25GB of space each. Diablo 3 et al are all relatively large games, certainly, but you will know which ones will be playable on a machine like this and you will be clever enough to plan accordingly. As for movies, having anything higher than 720p on a machine with this resolution is pointless; and even at maximum quality (again, ruined on a panel of this quality, but for arguments sake), you're talking about 40GB of movies for 10 hours of potential playback. A 128GB ssd would be enough to cater to both of these with space to spare.2. Unless you can cite your source for this survey, we can't really comment on its validity. Solid state drives have come a long way; I have no doubt that drives like my first generation Indilinx-based SSD have higher failure rates, but that's the price for early adoption. They are far, far more reliable now, with Sandforce being able to de-dupe and compress data so that only a fraction of nand is physically written to (whereas early Indilinx based drives had insane write amplification, wearing nand far faster than necessary for the sake of performance).
3. SSD's make a tangible "snappiness" improvement to your machine. This is especially noticeable with Windows due to the way it prioritizes data in ram. Take a theoretical example: Opening control panel. On a standard disk based system, each and every file called needs to be accessed from disk; excluding those files already loaded (like the ui elements as those are shared with all standard explorer windows). If there are 30 files to access, with a standard disk you will have as much as 450ms latency to get all of those files loaded into ram and the panel opened, not to mention any processing time (ordering of icons and such). This is only half a second, that is true. Scale this up with all file and folder access on the machine (from all programs, devices, and services, bearing in mind that when multiple programs try to access the disk (HDD) at once, the latency is exacerbated), and you quickly realize why using an SSD makes such a huge improvement to the day to day usability of a machine.
In my case, personally, I noticed far more of an upgrade in my day to day use of my machine when I upgraded to a SSD, than I did upgrading to a core i7-920 from a Core 2 duo E7200.
One final point I'd like to make: Although this laptop doesn't, there is nothing preventing a manufacturer dropping optical storage and using the space for a hybrid disk drive and SSD setup. When Windows 8 ships and OEM's start tearing into the Storage Spaces feature, "normal" people won't even have to go out of their way to move bulk data onto the disk drive, as windows will do it automatically and merge the SSD and HDD space into one contiguous area. Just something to think about.
Rollo_Thomasi - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Even if the OEM:s usualy favors an ODD over a SSD HDD combo you can simply replace the ODD yourself.Here is an article on that:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/131697-ivy-br...
Christopher29 - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
1. Agreed, size still is not enough ...2. Completely untrue - see forum xtremesystems thread: SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm/page195 - where users intentionally try to wear out SSDs, most of them hold from 600TB - 800TB, and 256GB Samsung 830 holds 2,500TB Host writes. Everyone died after stating correct S.M.A.R.T warnings.
For your perspective, I have written 3,8TB of data on my SSD since 2009 and this is 1/200 (0,5%) of possible writes that this SSD will handle - in other words - this SSD will outlive two to three laptops in which it will be used.
3. You tottaly don't know (and probably used) anything what You've just written in this point.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
What are you even talking about? You can get 256GB SSDs for a very reasonable price these days, job done.Less power use, less likely to die in the manner that is MOST caused by use in laptops - knocking the heads around...
I would say maybe you can't afford an SSD, but really, very recently the prices have come right down to the point where there's no reason not to have one..
jabber - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
Yes I picked up a SATA2 120GB SSD for $100 a few weeks ago.Why SATA2 well as my laptop only runs SATA2 I felt it pointless to get a 500MBps capable SSD when it will only run at half that speed.
Oh and its cheaper. Anyway instead of the WD Black 320GB drive giving me 85MBps I now have an SSD giving me around 275MBps. Big improvement especially in access times.
zorxd - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
$780 is a high end laptop. Most people by laptops cheaper than that. This review sounds like the review of a BMW by a Ferrari owner, saying that the BMW is OK if don't care about cheap build quality and bad performance.zorxd - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
The average selling price of a windows laptop was $513 in the US in February 2012.JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
Where exactly does that stat come from, and what happens if you remove netbook class hardware from the list? Netbooks (and ultraportables like the 11.6" stuff with Brazos) are very inexpensive, but if people want to complain about this Acer's quality they should be even more harsh on such laptops. Regardless, $780 is hardly high-end for a laptop; it's at most lower-midrange pricing.zorxd - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
http://blog.laptopmag.com/the-average-pc-laptop-co...netbooks or not, $780 is still much more than the average price for a laptop.
And this is only in the US, a rich country. The average of the world is probably much lower.