Acer Aspire V3-571G-9435: The Value Proposition

Conclusion: Compromises, Yes, but It’s Fast and Cheap

If you’re looking for something that will wow like the MacBook Pro Retina, and a sexy Ultrabook, obviously Acer’s C3-571G isn’t for you. Many elements of the industrial design (like the black glossy black plastic finish) feel like a throwback to several years ago. Acer has also definitely cut some corners in order to hit the price target. It’s too bad we have to accept compromises, but unfortunately that’s how companies make money. If you’re more interested in getting a decent budget laptop that can do everything you might want, however, the sub-$800 price makes up for a lot of the omissions.

Back when AMD launched their Trinity laptops, they commented that Trinity was designed to hit price points that we just wouldn’t see from Ivy Bridge any time soon. I expressed concern at the time that $700 was too much for what was otherwise a fairly budget oriented design, and Acer has now brought my concerns front and center. Given that Trinity is designed to hit lower price points, I don’t expect build quality or features to be any better than what Acer has put together with the V3-751G, but performance in most areas is going to be substantially better than AMD’s A10 APU with the quad-core Ivy Bridge CPU and Kepler GPU. The question is, how much more are you willing to spend to make such an upgrade, and what compromises will you make in the process?

The Acer V3-751G-6435 certainly has its fair share of compromises. A 5400RPM hard drive in today’s SSD-equipped Ultrabook world feels painfully slow at best, and untenable at worst. The USB ports on the Acer are a bit of a joke as well—how is it that we have a chipset that supports up to four USB 3.0 ports natively, and yet the V3 only includes one USB 3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports? The battery capacity is also mediocre, and the plastic chassis isn’t going to win any design awards. As for the display, low contrast low resolution LCDs are everywhere, sadly, so at least that doesn’t stand out as a major flaw compared to competing offerings. There are other compromises as well: the use of DDR3-1333 memory instead of DDR3-1600 for the system may not matter much, but going with DDR3-1800 RAM on the GPU instead of GDDR5-4000 certainly cuts into the performance potential. On the bright side, Acer has a great keyboard layout and has ditched their old flat floating island keys, and the performance is best in class for the price.

From the competition, looking at Ivy Bridge i7-3610QM laptops you can get an ASUS R500VM for $800 (8GB RAM, 750GB HDD, and 15.6” LCD but with a GT 630M GPU). Toshiba has their Satellite S855-S5266 for the same $780 price as the V3-571G, but they use an AMD HD 7670M GPU (with 6GB RAM, 640GB HDD, and the same 1366x768 15.6” LCD spec). Acer also has a larger version of the V3-571G, the V3-771G-9875 for $830 (6GB, 750GB HDD, GT 650M, 1600x900 17.3” LCD). Beyond those laptops, prices on quad-core Ivy Bridge go up from there, often giving you integrated-only HD 4000 graphics until you get into the $1000+ range.

If you prefer the AMD Trinity route, sticking with the top A10-4600M, you can get the Toshiba S855D-S5253 for $660 that we mentioned earlier (6GB, 750GB HDD, 1366x768 15.6” LCD, and HD 7660G—Amazon lists incorrect GPU information, incidentally), or there’s a similar Toshiba S855D-S5256 that adds Blu-Ray support for $700—or there’s the S875D-S7239, a 17.3” notebook with a 1600x900 display for $750. Lenovo has a notebook with virtually identical specs (but obviously a different chassis) with the IdeaPad Z585 starting at $722. And last but not least (expensive) is the HP Pavilion dv7-7010us, a 17.3” 1600x900 notebook again with the same 6GB RAM + 750GB HDD starting at $750 online. Unless the aesthetics or design of one of the other models really suits your fancy, I’d recommend either sticking with the least expensive Toshiba S855D models, or go for the Acer V3-571G.

What about those who are looking for something higher quality than this Acer? You need to determine your priorities first, naturally, as well as how much you're willing to spend. Just as a high water mark, if you want the same performance but with great build quality and a "real" LCD, Lenovo's T530 will set you back $1700 or more (with i7-3720QM, NVIDIA NVS 5400M, 4GB RAM, and 500GB HDD it's around $1700; upgrade to 8GB RAM and a 32GB SSD cache and you're looking at $2000+). Dell's Latitude E5530 is more reasonably priced but drops support for quad-core CPU and only has integrated graphics: $1250 will get you i5-3320M, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD (no SSD caching option for now), and a 1080p display. There's also Dell's new XPS 15, with a 1080p display, SSD caching, i7-3612QM (35W quad-core), and GT 640 GDDR5, all in an attractive aluminum finish; it will set you back $1700 for such a configuration. More affordable options (e.g. Dell's Inspiron 15R Special Edition) drop the price back down into $1000 range, but build quality tends to drop along with the pricing.

Acer doesn’t hit a homerun with their V3 line, but they do hit a very enticing price point. I’d still prefer spending more money to get a laptop with a better display and a chassis that isn’t so glossy, but I can certainly understand how back-to-school shoppers will be swayed by the low price tag and the performance. Can you find higher quality laptops? Certainly. You can also find faster laptops, or laptops with better displays, improved battery life, or even lower prices. What you won’t find are laptops that deliver quad-core Ivy Bridge with an Optimus-enabled Kepler GPU for less money (at least not right now). It may not be the sexiest notebook on the block, but the Acer V3-571G will certainly crunch numbers, encode videos, and even play games as well as laptops that cost hundreds of dollars more.