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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JarredWalton - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
The "silliness" was more in reference to the hidden torx screws under the pads. Let me clarify that in the text.evilspoons - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
Yes! Torx screws are better given the same physical size, and the screwdrivers aren't exactly expensive or anything. I'd much rather have to spend an extra five minutes finding a Torx driver than strip out a friggin' Philips.KaarlisK - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
In 2011, I bought a laptop that weights 1.7kg and has a 35W TDP CPU, and as a result, the CPU and the integrated graphics could actually both boost at the same time.Now we're being offered 1.9-2.5 kilo laptops with 17W CPUs and rather inconsistent performance, especially in games.
It seems silly, especially since the idle power consumption is the mostly same and the prices, at least for Ivy Bridge, were mostly similar.
mtoma - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
I think Jarred (and many other ethusiasts) have huge expectations from the displays. Sure, everybody wants 1080p (or higher) IPS displays, but at what cost? Let's not forget that many people don't have many thousands of dollars per month in order to afford such beautiful displays/products. For example, why should'nt be enough an 720p or IPS panel on a 14 or 15 inch laptop? I remember back in 2007 I had an 15,6 inch Fujitsu laptop with a 1280x800 pixels. It wasn't great at all, but it was getting the work done. Remember, a greater display resolution demands much more from the graphichs, and that leads to bigger power consumption. More doesn't always mean better.Regards,
KaarlisK - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
A better display is simply _the_ worthwhile upgrade in the era of "good enough" computing.I have a Sandy i3 laptop and a Core 2 Duo desktop, and since I do not much game (or convert videos/run scientific simulations), I still do not feel a need to upgrade my CPU (I do have fast storage and lots of RAM).
More and more I've been catching myself on the thought that my next upgrade might be a ~24'' monitor with high DPI, if one arrives for a reasonable price. With the laptop it is similar – it does everything it is asked to, so the only incentive to upgrade is either a way better screen (better colors and high DPI), or the same performance and OS support in a tablet/phone sized package.
sheh - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
Nevermind the resolution, a poor TN is a horrible thing. I'd want laptop makers to use *decent* TNs as minimum, though really I'd prefer something better than TN (with decent response pixel times).I recently got an Asus 15.6" laptop (500-600$ in the US). The TN screen is horrendous. The specs say it's something like 15+30 degrees vertically, but that's a lie. It's more like 0 degrees. There's no single angle where you can see the whole screen undistorted. Maybe if you watch it from 2-3 meter away. Horizontal angles aren't good either, but are less of a problem. I wonder why they don't rotate the panel 90 degrees, as vertical is more important in laptops. The 6-bit dithering is not difficult to notice. The pixel response time isn't too good. And looking at technical specs, it seems there are even worse TN screens being made!
Now, you can get such panels on eBay for about $50. That's for a very poor 6-bit 1366x768 TN. For $150 you can get a 15.6" 1920x1080 S-IPS 10-bit. $100 difference in end user price going from super poor to very good:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-15-6-Laptop-LCD-Screen...
You can probably find decent 6-bit 1366x768 IPSes for less than $100.
sheh - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
BTW, I didn't say anything about contrast because I don't know what it is. The contrast is variable across the screen (mostly vertically), as are the colors (is this pink or orange? is it dark purple or light? is there a vertical gradient here or is it a solid color?).Pfffman - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
I don't think Jarred expects people to buy laptops monthly let alone every year so investing in a nicer screen is still reasonable.When the asking price for the laptop is $1300, 1080 would seem to be expected. Touch is a nice extra. Generally Anandtech will scale their screen expectations according to price. They do have a high emphasis on screen though. They generally only okay TN panels if they are the really good ones or the laptop is clearly budget targeted.
In this time, it might be hard to get a 1280x720 or 1280x800 IPS screen at 14 inch. The panel manufacturers might not bother with it any more.
piroroadkill - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
While your old laptop may have had a crap display - many others had old laptops which did not. I have a laptop from 2004~ that has a 15" 1920x1200 screen, a Dell Precision which also has a 15" 1920x1200 screen, an old Dell with a 1400x1050 14".. etc.My favourite laptop and the one I'm on right now is a Sony Vaio Z12, 13.3" 1600x900, and so light. But I added the previous examples to show that some people have ALREADY had higher res screens, and are bewildered that options lack today.
I think the screen on this particular Acer is probably just fine - once calibrated, so they probably should do that from the factory - but I honestly would love to drop the touchscreen entirely, and have a matte finish. But that's me. It would even save some money.
dareo - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
"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"I've been considering this model mainly because of the larger display, which only adds 0.5 lbs to the weight, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be so the extra screen real estate is needed. It would be great if it were as light as some previous generations of the Samsung Series 9, but you can’t have everything.
Taking into account the following use cases, will the lower CPU & GPU specs on the 6421 really make a difference to me?:
At home office (connected to an external 24” monitor):
- Word, Excel, Powerpoint
- email
- web browsing
- occasional hobbyist use of 3D Home Architect
On the road:
- Word, Excel, Powerpoint
- email
- web browsing
- watching videos on flights
While display size at home is irrelevant since I have the external monitor, I find that my current laptop with a 13.3” display doesn’t cut it (for me) on the road when working with the MS-Office suite. Since the laptop is nearly 4 years old and starting to give me some problems, the timing of the new Haswell-based laptops is spot on and I’m looking to get one by the end of the year. Right now there just doesn’t seem to be too many options for a new generation (processor & touchscreen) 15” minimal-compromise ultrabook at a decent price. Calling the V7-582PG-6421 an ultrabook might be a stretch, but it weights the same as my current smaller-screen laptop so it’s acceptable.
Should I be waiting for something else that’s just on the horizon? Are there other alternatives to the V7-582PG-6421 that I should be considering?