Acer Aspire V3-571G-9435: The Value Proposition
by Jarred Walton on July 4, 2012 4:25 AM ESTConclusion: 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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
88 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
It's not an "assumption" that chiclet is better, but I can't think of one thing about the old style "floating island" keyboard that is better to this new "floating chiclet". That's not to say that this keyboard is perfect, but as I note in the review, I did a fair amount of typing on the V3 and the keyboard is certainly usable without severe complaints by me -- someone that writes 5000 word articles for a living. Is it equal to some of the older ThinkPad keyboards? Not really, but I'm not sure ThinkPad has ever done a perfect keyboard layout with a 10-key either, outside of the W700 line. For a 15.6" keyboard with a 10-key, the layout is just about perfect, even if the key action could be improved.pullmyfoot - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
You guys should do a review of the Samsung Chronos 7 700Z5C. I just got one and its the perfect laptop IMO without breaking the bank.70% aluminum construction
A above average screen at 1600x900
1TB 7200RPM with 8GB SSD express cache
Rest of the specs are the same if not slightly better than this Acer.
apmon2 - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
Given that so many Laptops still seem to be sold with crappy screens and that good replacement screens can be got for less than $100, it would be great if AnandTech could write more about this.If you could write a separate article on how to switch laptop screens and what you need to consider, as well as review the different available after market LCD screens, perhaps more people would choose to switch their screens and not suffer from their crappy display.
This could even benefit those buying high-end laptops, if it becomes common to order the laptop with the cheapest display and then replace it with a high quality on later on, just as it is common to order the cheapest HDD and then replace it with an SSD.
E.g. Lenovo charge $250 for the full HD screen upgrade on the Thinkpad T530, whereas the screen costs less than $100 if bought separably. One also then has a better choice, be it matt vs glossy, IPS vs TN, high colour gamut or not, rather than the one choice offered by the manufacturer.
jabber - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
I'd like to see an article on what the costs are to the manufacturer for screens.Basically what does a standard 15" TN glossy 1366x768 screen cost compared to -
15" TN 1600x900 (glossy/non glossy)
15" TN 1920x1080 (glossy/non glossy)
15" IPS 1600x900
15" IPS 1920x1080
I havent included 16:10 as I don't wish to hope for too much.
JarredWalton - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
The manufacturers don't disclose their costs for individual components, so it's impossible to say what they pay. I've had one manufacturer insist that what we pay for an LCD on, e.g. LaptopScreens.com, is less than they would pay. That seems unlikely to me (if you're ordering 10,000 LCDs, you're not going to pay more than if you're ordering 1 screen, are you?) but they do note that there's also difficulty at times in procuring the required number of displays. My hunch is that LaptopScreens probably marks up the LCDs they sell by 10% over what they pay, and large manufacturers pay a bit less than them. But I could be wrong.chromatix - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
I have a 14" display from *1994* that can manage 115 dpi without much trouble. Bear in mind that 14" is the tube diagonal, not the display area, and that this is a fairly bog-standard "fishbowl" monitor. Driving it at 1152x870 results in the aforementioned 115dpi.Coincidentally, this is also approximately the density of both of my much newer flatscreen monitors, which are of course meant for viewing at a greater distance than a laptop. It is also the density of the roughly 2000-vintage ThinkPad that I rescued from the office scrap pile recently - with 1400x1050, the screen is excellently configured for coding, even if the viewing angles and colour reproduction are awful by modern standards. (It's very useful to have lots of *lines* of code on screen at once.)
My 2006 17" MBP pushes the density up to 130 dpi with 1920x1200. I have to go back to my 2000-vintage PowerBook G3 to get down to 100 dpi.
Meanwhile, a 15.6" laptop display with less than 1400 pixels across is going to be 100 dpi maximum. At laptop viewing distances, that's like putting standard definition up on a 50" TV - you can see the pixels without even trying. Antialiasing is a wonderful thing, but it has limits to what it can hide. On an old PowerBook it was forgivable because it was the best thing available (and the panel was decent) - but today, and with contrast numbers that make flip-up sunglasses look good...
Surely someone out there knows how to make a laptop with good build quality, good ergonomics, a big battery and a good screen, and doesn't mind reducing the performance a bit to suit the price? I don't even care if it's two inches thick, as long as the screen and the body aren't shiny - I would prefer to see my code and my game rather than my own ugly mug.
That's another point - thinness is vastly overrated. Comparing my PowerBook G3 to my MBP, they are the same depth, the MBP is 21% wider (15.4" vs 12.7") and the G3 is 70% thicker (0.98" vs. 1.7"). They're not much different in weight - the G3 is 2.8kg, the MBP is 3.1kg. But it's the MBP that feels "bigger". It also feels considerably more fragile to pick up - I feel the need to grab it by both sides, rather than levering it up by one side, even though intellectually I realise it's probably strong enough to withstand such treatment, and my other hand might be otherwise occupied.
Meanwhile, I still have a lot more difficulty putting both the MBP and my 15" AlBook - a total of 2.1" thickness - in the same bag, than I do just putting the G3 in. Part of that is, I think, because the G3 is more rounded at the edges, so it doesn't catch on things so easily. Little details like that - and thermal performance - matter a lot more than being thin. It's even worse when important functionality (such as recording dual-layer DVDs, or being able to replace the battery, RAM and hard disk without risking ruining the whole machine) are sacrificed in the name of the holy measurement.
Iketh - Sunday, July 8, 2012 - link
YEA SILVA!!!!!QuantumPion - Monday, July 9, 2012 - link
I got an Acer laptop last year with sandy bridge core i5 and nvidia GT 540M for $450 after instant rebate. The display sucks but $450 for a laptop fully capable of playing Skyrim and Battlefield 3 is hard to beat.DotNetGuru - Monday, July 9, 2012 - link
Just wanted to drop a comment to show my appreciation for this great review.Very well done. Thanks!!
rudolphna - Monday, July 9, 2012 - link
I actually just picked up the Trinity A8-4500M version of this laptop for $529 on newegg, and I have to say, though the screen isn't that great, overall it's a great deal for the price. I'm certainly not going to complain about the amount of horsepower I managed to get for $530. I also did order a Momentus XT 500GB, and 8GB of Corsair DDR3-1600 that should arrive tomorrow to hep up the performance a bit more. Once that's done, I doubt there are any other laptops on the market with this kind of value.