Acer V7-482PG-9884 Review: Everything You Need
by Jarred Walton on August 24, 2013 12:00 AM ESTAcer V7 LCD Analysis
A big part of what made both the Razer Blade 14 and the MSI GE40 so frustrating was that with all the good elements, both laptos botched the LCD. Thankfully, the V7 doesn’t have to come with that caveat. The LCD is a good quality AHVA panel from AU Optronics, and while colors aren’t perfect, they’re better than many alternatives. I wish that PC manufactures would start factory calibrating their displays, though, as out of the box the color accuracy is substantially lower than what our charts below show – I tested uncalibrated color accuracy and measured average Delta E of >10 out of the box. The color shift that happens when you load the calibrated profile is pretty drastic. Anyway, here’s how the LCD stacks up, post-calibration:
The contrast is excellent, which is one of the most noticeable things for most users, so that’s always good to see. Maximum brightness unfortunately is again lower than I’d like – I feel like we need at least 400 nits for laptops, particularly if they have glossy panels. You can use the V7 outdoors or in brightly lit environments, sure, but it’s less than ideal. As for color accuracy, my results are merely okay, and while gamut appears quite good, like the R7 I want to note that the greens are undersaturated while blues and reds are oversaturated.
The important thing is that the LCD at least delivers a good overall experience and won’t garner too many complaints. Compared to the many low quality, low resolution TN panels we’ve seen over the years, this is a great display. And if you use the touchscreen, I hope you remember to bring along a microfiber cloth for cleaning it….
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Seriously, as much as people may laud touchscreens, until we get displays that don’t show every little fingerprint, I’m more than happy to stick with a mouse/touchpad and keyboard. You don’t even want to see what a touchscreen looks like after a three year old is finished playing with it!
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damianrobertjones - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
"I’m frequently amazed at how much better battery life is with Apple hardware under OS X" - I didn't see this in the last gen of macbooksI hope that this machine, as well as the Sony, is mentioned in future battery sections as the Mac DOES NOT PROVIDE the best battery life.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/383785/dell...
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
Their "Light" battery test is not the same test that we use, nor is it at the same brightness setting. The MacBook Air 13 Haswell model gets 11.03 hours while loading four web pages every 60 seconds with the LCD at ~200 nits. They measured 12.68 hours of battery life doing what? "The light-use test is the absolute longest you can expect the battery to last with careful power management." That sounds like they're doing nothing, equivalent to our old "Idle" battery life testing from last year, and possibly at minimum brightness.We haven't been doing Idle testing for 2013, but on laptops tested previously idle battery life was typically 20% to as much as 40% more than what we got on our Internet testing. Our new Light test is our old Internet test with the LCD at 200 nits, so basically take the MBA13 result and multiply by at least 1.2 to be fair, and possibly as much as 1.4. That means the MBA13 under OS X while idle could easily hit 15+ hours, which would be more than any Windows laptop manages with a similar size battery.
Basically, you have to make sure you're comparing apples to apples when it comes to battery life testing. If a site doesn't completely document how they're testing, you can't do that.
willstay - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
"Anand didn’t test Windows battery life with the new MBA13" - I wish he did. No one has done it with MBA13 yet.ihleonard - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
Since these don't seem to be available/on display in store anywhere, I want to get some idea of what they feel like before I take the plunge and get one. Are there any Acers (or other laptops) with a similar keyboard feel that are widely available in store; I just want to make sure that the low travel is ok.Thanks
Otunia - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
This PC shows why 16:9 screens are bad. I'm writing this comment on an old 16:10 laptop which is as wide as this new Acer and guess? My screen is 15" thanks to all those extra vertical pixels.There are two extra downsides of this PC: the memory limit at 12 GB (why not two 8+8 GB unsoldered slots? For the extra thinness? Who cares!) and the glossy screen. So even if the keyboard and the touchpad turn to be super we are left with a subpar screen and constrained memory. The rotational disk would be OK if it can be upgraded later on.
A good attempt but please try again. Hint: just clone the 16:10 matte MBP 15" and perfect it by letting people upgrade its parts.
Hrel - Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - link
While I'm sure Microsoft is pushing for manufacturers to include touchscreens; it adds NO value right now. So the problem then becomes, if you include a touchscreen you can't charge for it. Which means reduced margins. I'm certainly not going to pay for it. This thing is at least $100 too expensive.Looks like a good machine though, if I could find it on sale for 1K I'd probably buy it.
ziotoo - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
Hey jared (or any v7 owner)My laptop died and thought of upgrading to the acer v7
The question is: i do design on my laptop, both 2d (photoshop, vectorial, animation, video editing) as well as 3d (from cad to maya/max). This is the first mainstream laptop i see with a decent dedicated graphic solution, and since i also do photo retouching you pretty much sold me on the screen. I travel a lot and the v7 is light and has the perfect screen format for me. It's also 1000eur in europe, wich is a really good price for this kind of product.
The problem is the i5 cpu. I've had a first gen i7 (i think 720 qm) quad core cpu for the past years and it was enough for me. But i'm scared that the acer v7 will actually offer worse performance with its 4th gen dual core i5 than my old laptop. Am i right to be worried? And would an i7 4500u actually be much better, even though that's also a dual core? It's gettong very hard to find quad core cpus in the 2kg weight range.
Thanks a lot.
ziotoo - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
Forgot to add: the 14 inch configuration in europe only sports an i5. The rest is unchangedhellermercer - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I need powerfull speakers!!!!hellermercer - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I need powerfull speakers!!!!