Acer V7-482PG-9884 Review: Everything You Need
by Jarred Walton on August 24, 2013 12:00 AM ESTConclusion: A Fine Balancing Act
As I mentioned in the introduction, every computer and laptop ends up being a balance between various goals. If you want a faster CPU and GPU, price will inevitably go up but so will the cooling requirements, which in turn means a heavier laptop. Touchscreens also add weight relative to regular displays, and the choice of materials for the chassis affects the weight as well as the durability and cost. It’s basically impossible to create a laptop that will be ideal for every single user out there – if you make a lightweight laptop, power users might want more performance; a fast and lightweight laptop might be possible, but then budget minded users will think it’s too expensive; etc. Acer goes for a middle-of-the-road approach, providing a decent level of performance with good build quality and an attractive aesthetic, with what I consider to be a reasonable price. There are certainly laptops that cost less, but in this case you get what you pay for.
The Acer Aspire V7 is quite possibly my favorite Acer laptop of the past five or more years. We’ve joked before that every PC laptop tends to come with (at least) one critical flaw; in the case of the Aspire V7, I can’t think of any clear failures. Some areas could be better, but there’s not a single element where I want to pull my hair out and groan, “What were they thinking?” The display is good, the speakers are good, the keyboard layout is good (even if I would prefer a gap between the backslash and enter keys), the laptop is built well, and the performance is certainly sufficient for most users. In short, I really like the Aspire V7.
So what areas could still use improvement? Probably my biggest complaint is with the lack of key travel on the keyboard. It’s not so bad that you can’t type on it, but it’s far from the most comfortable laptop keyboard I’ve typed on. I also wish that Acer had used at least a 128GB SSD in place of the 24GB SSD cache, as that provides a better overall experience in my opinion. Acer should have included 802.11ac WiFi, and that’s something I’ll say of any laptop costing over $800 going forward. Oh, and whose idea was it to move the power button to the side of the laptop? It might look nice to not have it on the keyboard area, but I managed to accidentally power off the V7 (and R7 and S7) at least a few times during testing in just a few weeks. The edge of a laptop is not a good place for such a button.
The final concern is the pricing; Acer is asking more than you’ll pay for a base MacBook Air 13, and even though performance is quite a bit better than the Air in some areas, the only company that can get away with charging Apple prices is Apple. So then we look at the $1300 MSRP and that’s the same price as the upgraded MBA13; however, Acer is tossing in a Core i7 processor, three times as much RAM, a GT 750M graphics chip, and a good quality 1080p touchscreen; Apple counters with arguably better build quality and a 256GB SSD. It may not have the same cachet as an Apple laptop, but it’s hardly a poor bargain. Hopefully we’ll see retail prices drop a bit further, down to $1200 or less, but $1300 seems like a reasonable price.
When we look at all of the things that the Acer V7 gets right, I end up doing something I rarely do. The Acer Aspire V7 warrants an Editor’s Choice Award, not because it’s perfect but because it’s about as close as I’ve seen in recent years. It’s really heartening to see Acer eschew their usual budget-minded compromises in order to provide a better overall experience, and I can only hope that the market will let them know that they’ve made the right decision in not cutting too many corners. We’re giving it our Silver Editors’ Choice Award, leaving room for improvement and potentially better products down the line (giving the GPU GDDR5 and having better keyboard travel would have likely pushed it up to Gold), but as far as mainstream laptops go I can’t immediately come up with a more compelling alternative that doesn’t have its own share of flaws.
Acer also has other V-series laptops available, and while I wish that they had the same sensibilities as the V7-482PG reviewed here, just looking at the spec sheets I can see that’s not the case. The V7-582PG-6421 has a 15.6” 1080p IPS display, but the CPU is a Core i5-4200U and the GPU is a rather questionable GT 720M (that's 96 Fermi cores with a 64-bit bus, if you're wondering); at least the price is $250 lower than the 482PG. Meanwhile the V7-582PG-9478 upgrades the CPU to an i7-4500U but drops to a TN 1366x768 display and a price of $1000. In short, while the core chassis may be similar, many of the extras that make the V7-482PG-9884 stand out seem to be lacking. So shop carefully, because there’s a fine line between greatness and mediocrity, and a few too many “minor” changes will often find you on the wrong side of that line.
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tackle70 - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
I guess I'm just a computing dinosaur... I do almost all my work on desktops, and while I love a laptop as a backup portable work/netflix/whatever box, I just can't stomach the thought of spending $1k+ on one.My 2.5 year old $450 HP Probook 4430s may have a fugly screen and not be the thinnest or fastest thing out there, but I can't see replacing it anytime soon for how I need to use a laptop.
Impulses - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Guess that makes me a bit of a dinosaur too... Or just a geek and a gamer, I've been thinking of getting a laptop for a while to replace an aging netbook but between my desktop and my tablet I tend to use the netbook a whole lot less than I used to...And I wouldn't be happy with a budget laptop (let alone another netbook) if it weighed half a dozen pounds or had a crap screen (not after getting 3x24" IPS displays for the desktop and looking at the new Nexus 7 display...). Work needs might eventually force my hand tho, and while I'd like a system like this Acer I'd probably opt for something slightly cheaper/lighter without a dGPU.
et20 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Good review. Thank you.Please stop saying "the only company that can get away with charging Apple prices is Apple".
It's stupid and insulting.
It's insulting to Acer and the other manufacturers to imply that they don't deserve proper margins for developing good products.
It's insulting to consumers to imply that most of them are not discerning enough to pay what a good product is worth.
It's insulting to Apple to imply that they somehow "get away" with making more than subsistence profits for building good products.
It's insulting to Apple product users to imply that they're been fooled into paying more than rock bottom prices for good products.
So just stop with this BS and admit that Mac and PC hardware offer largely the same value for money.
JarredWalton - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
You can say "it's insulting" all you want, but that doesn't make it true. The reasons for why Apple can charge more are numerous, but just to cover a few:1) Brand recognition
2) Good products
3) Unique OS
4) An ecosystem that many users like
I don't personally like Apple products enough to own them, other than an iPod Touch I got from work, but they do get plenty of things right. There is however no question that Apple charges a significant premium on their products; the old joke is "everyone buys two, so if you have a problem the first replacement is free, no questions asked." To suggest that they're "largely the same value for money" is stupid and insulting to anyone that can do math. Let me go over it again:
MacBook Air 13: $1300, Acer V7-482PG-9884: $1300
On the Apple side:
Build quality: minor win for Apple; let's be generous and call it $100
256GB SSD: $100 more than 24GB + 1TB HDD
Thunderbolt: $50 (again, being more than generous)
+$250 relative value
On the Acer side:
Better 1080p AHVA LCD: $75 more than 1400x900 TN
Touchscreen: $100 extra
Faster i7 CPU: $150 more than i5-4250U
GT 750M: $100 add on
+$425 in relative value (BoM costs)
So right there, with some math that's very kind to Apple, we have at least a $175 additional profit margin for the MacBook Air 13 (upgraded model). If we were to go through all of the components for both laptops and figure out a realistic BoM, I figure Apple's total profit margin on the upgraded MBA13 is roughly twice what Acer makes off the V7-482PG. And yet, Apple will sell 10X or maybe even 100X MBA13 as Acer will of the V7-482PG.
Oh, but to suggest that Apple can charge more because they're Apple is stupid and insulting. I forgot.
teiglin - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
It's a bit silly to add after Jarred's clear (and snarky) response, but any discussion of "value" has to bear in mind that many factors that influence value are subjective. On the Apple front in particular, I was in the market for a 13" laptop recently and strongly considered the MBA, thanks largely to touchpad quality, plus the unique availability of HD5000 vs. HD4400 in all the available ultrabooks. However, for me, shipping OSX is mostly a downside--it adds the cost of a Windows license to my purchase, not to mention a nonstandard keyboard layout under Windows.So value is in the eye of the beholder. The fact that Macs have higher profit margins than most Windows boxes is not an insult to Mac users; it just means that Mac users are willing to pay more money for less hardware, in order to get the other benefits of owning a Mac. Life would be simpler if Apple fanboys (really, fanboys of all stripes) would be a little less touchy about perceived attacks on themselves or their company.
Impulses - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
To me, the only strong value proposition involved with a Macbook is the fact that after 2-3 years of use someone's likely to pay me 2-3x for it what an equivalent Windows laptop PC would be worth at that point... Resale value's not enough of a reason for me to deal with bootcamp etc tho. They're nice systems and all, just not for me.I'm not sure when companies started deserving higher margins or not or howthis somehow became a moral issue... Brand recognition and PR (backed up by solid build quality) sells and can easily inflate a product's worth, don't be naive and try to pretend otherwise.
ananduser - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
There is no shame in charging extra for the brand. If you truly believe that your company makes premium products, then you must price accordingly. You may buy macs for their technical nuances and exclusivities, but I'm afraid you're in the minority. So, unless you need OSX, you're relatively paying more for less; Jarred above me is right.joe_dude - Monday, August 26, 2013 - link
The Canadian model of the V7 is far better in terms of price point. As for Apple, they will always be "pay more for less". Also, battery life would last longer if the extra diagnostics were turned off, since Windows continually writes that info to disk. It's for enterprise/network use (which is something Apple doesn't have to worry about).dareo - Monday, August 26, 2013 - link
Is it possible to easily swap out the 24GB SSD Cache on this model with a Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SSD, using it as the primary drive for the OS and apps, and reserving the HDD for documents?JarredWalton - Monday, August 26, 2013 - link
From the hardware side, it's easy. On the software side, you'll basically want to do a clean install of the OS and you wouldn't want ExpressCache running as you would have no need for it. For most of our readers, I'd guess doing a clean Win8 install is simple enough, particularly if they're willing to open up the laptop and replace the mSATA drive in the first place. :-)