Acer Aspire V5-171 Notebook Review: The Death and Rebirth of the Netbook

Conclusion: A Killer Bargain

While I try to approach my reviews without much bias, or at the very least leave that bias checked at the door, I'll admit I haven't had the best impressions of Acer's products when I've reviewed them, and I certainly never imagined I'd ever buy one for myself. When I read about the Acer Aspire V5-171, I approached it with a heady mix of skepticism and optimism: I was pretty sure there would be some dealbreaking problem with it (I'm incredibly picky when it comes to the computers I personally use), but I was hoping that it would be a diamond in the rough.

The V5-171 is not without its faults, many of which undoubtedly stem from Acer's push to get it to market at the remarkably low price tag it's currently at. The chassis is plastic, and at the outermost corners it's not the firmest build in the world. While the chiclet keyboard is a huge improvement over the old floating island keyboards Acer used to employ, it's still a bit on the mushy side. Relative battery life is at least competitive, but absolute battery life is pretty poor. In an era where we can get five to six hours of running time out of most notebooks, just barely scraping four useful hours surfing the internet is brutal. Finally, I still remain absolutely perplexed by manufacturers who smartly eschew glossy plastic for the majority of the build...and then put it on the screen bezel, the number one place where fingerprints are going to be picked up.

With all that said, there's a hell of a lot you can forgive if the price is right. Just like I'd happily take home an AMD E2-1800-based netbook if they were priced appropriate to their performance (read $300-$350), I'm willing to put up with some of the V5's problems simply because of the stellar price-performance ratio. If you take the questionable battery life out of the equation and uninstall most of Acer's bloatware from the hard drive, you're left with a bargain notebook that really doesn't have any major usability issues. The keyboard, clickpad, and display aren't great, but they aren't awful either. The distance between the user and the metal isn't painful to cover.

The V5 hits almost the exact notes for my usage patterns. I do videography semi-professionally on the side, and the ability to take a three pound notebook with me to a show, shoot a performance, then convert the footage to a YouTube-ready format with QuickSync in under two minutes and copy it to the performer's flash drive that night makes me tremendously more efficient. Being able to comfortably indulge in my casual game of choice, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, while off the mains is wonderful, too. And finally, it's thin without being so thin that you start to make compromises when it comes to key depth, system noise, heat, and serviceability the way you do when you get to true ultrabooks.

I think either the i3-based version (currently only $399 on Amazon) or this i5-based model are potentially excellent companions for end users who need something portable and don't mind the truncated battery life. The savvy user will probably be able to eke out five hours of useful life just by knocking the brightness down a bit more, which makes it a little more palatable. The V5-171 isn't flawless, but it's a pretty powerful little system and a surprisingly worthy replacement for my venerable ThinkPad X100e.