Performance Review on Acer Aspire V5-123 by Tiyasha

In the era of micro technology and smart gadgets we are living in, it has become easy to own them at a very pocket-friendly price.

So, the early concept of buying a desktop PC or even laptops at a fat price is not a cool idea anymore and so the electronic market has seen a decline of sale in the recent time.

Although, in the past 5 years smartphones and tablets had an exponential growth in sale according to the report of many Indian e-commerce portals like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal to name few of them.

But, along with these commonly talked about devices, I have also found mini-laptops or in other word, palm-tops has been a recent alternative to the traditional laptops.

So, when I got number of questions on social networks and emails from my readers and community I look no further and research into the matter whether it will be a wise decision to buy a mini device like palm-top bypassing laptops for work and if yes what is the pros and cons we need to know before opting to buy.

So, from here on my friend Tiyasha Kanjilal, Reviewer... will review a year old palm-top(which she personally used & tested) to give you an idea how it performed in actual practice (no ad gimmick and no first-day assumptions) - a real one-year user experience review.

• Suggested Reading: Performance Review on Sony Xperia M2 Dual

A Performance Review on Acer Aspire V5-123 by Tiyasha :

I bought my Acer Aspire V5-123, 11.5’ notebook dated back in 2014 September, with a warranty of 6 months.

Well, my machine puts inspiring performance in a thin and light form. A silver grey colour elegant one, significantly light at only 1.2 kg; pretty slim and trim just about 2.4cm when closed, easily slip into a small spongy bag that comes with it.  You can hardly feel the weight when carrying it around, the first good point on my daily ‘travel to work’ requirement.

Nevertheless, it comes with an attractive deal, real value for money but getting the good balance of components makes it hard.

Open it up and it’s like a chassis holding an 11.6-inch screen.

The keyboard is island styled with black plastic plain keys, feels a bit cramped when typing. I find it tiring on typing any articles or journal papers for long periods because the keys have little travel to them. Though the keyboard is not the worst one around but the keys bottoms out very quickly, ease of typing is quite denied.

With the touchpad, I must say, it could have been much better. Such small area, though swiping and tapping is feasible but the little buttons present in a bar at the bottom are hard to use and often unresponsive. I find the touchpad bit frustrating in my long segment write ups for research articles, so had to use USB mouse.

There are 3 USB ports and one is USB3, also HDMI and VGA ports are available, so connecting to any projector comes easily. There’s a Gigabit Ethernet port as well as 802.11n Wi-Fi present for network connectivity.

Audio is given by a 3.5mm headset jack.

My machine previously ran in Windows 8.0 operating system, but I got it formatted to Windows 7.0 last summer due to its so-called ‘universal-friendliness’ and its working okay, though, I feel it would have been much better to load this machine with a lightweight operating system such as Chrome OS or even Ubuntu Linux. It has 2 GB RAM, 500GB hard disc and 64 bit OS.

Speaking about the processor, an AMD E1-2100 is actually what little performance the V5-123 has in it. It’s basically a 1GHz dual-core chip and it’s damn cheap.

Battery life is as usual as expected, with the small, 4-cell battery lasting max to max 2h 15mins at a stretch now after almost 2 years of frequent use. It's a shame it doesn't have a little more longevity because light laptops are even better when you don't have to worry about plugging them in on a regular basis.

The battery becomes hot after a short stretch of use, which is irritating at times because it slows the system much too much.

Moreover, the processor is temperature sensitive since AMD is processed based on sensitivities of European temperature and heat. So in Indian conditions, Intel works wonders, withstand high heat and climatic variations. Therefore, usually in summer months of April, May, often I find my machine getting hot, hanging up irrationally.  

To Conclude:

Overall, the Acer V5-123 just isn't powerful enough but sleek smart portable. The laptop's hardware just isn't powerful enough to handle the challenges even the lightest of users will throw at it. 

• Suggested Reading: REVIEW On Denzong Kitchen

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