Acer Aspire One 751h: NetbookSize++
by Jarred Walton on September 3, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Netbook Battery Life Comparison
We run many scenarios for our battery life tests. Since most netbooks don't include optical drives, we ripped our standard test DVD to a hard drive and copied those files over. Obviously there's a benefit to not powering a spinning DVD, but even without that advantage the netbooks provide much better battery life than higher performance laptops. We also have DivX HD, and Xvid tests to show if there's a difference in codec performance -- as noted, smooth/acceptable x264 playback was not (currently) possible on the 751h.
Here's where the compromise in choice of processor/chipset pays off. Acer is able to include a larger LCD panel but still provide very good battery life, nearly equaling the ASUS 1005HA in several tests. It's particularly interesting to note that DivX and Xvid battery life is much closer than DVD battery life -- odd considering the GMA 500 is supposed to have better MPEG-2 support than the GMA 950. Whatever the cause, the ASUS 1005HA offers 12 to 14% more battery life in most instances, but only 5% more battery life in Xvid playback and virtually identical playback during DivX decoding (a difference of less than 2%, which is about the margin of error for our battery life tests). The battery life relative to battery capacity puts things in perspective, and the 751h ends up trailing the ASUS 1005HA by just 2.5%.
Where things get really interesting is in the x264 playback test. Note how the Acer 751h suddenly vaults into first place, and not by a small margin. Thanks to the H.264 acceleration in the GMA 500 (using the PowerDVD 8 H.264/AVC Decoder), the 751h is able to offer 15% more battery life than the ASUS 1005HA. It can even handle 1080p x264 should you have appropriate videos, which is not something you can do on the N280+GMA 950 combination. CPU usage is quite a bit lower on the 751h than the 1005HA/M1022 during x264 playback, typically hovering around 30-40% (compared to 70-80%). With the higher resolution display, the benefits of a higher quality codec like x264 are clearly present, and you don't even need to sacrifice a lot of battery life. It's a shame performance in other areas (i.e. general 2D/3D performance) isn't nearly this impressive.
Netbook Power Requirements
As a corollary to the battery life tests, we also performed measurements of power requirements using the AC adapters and a Kill-A-Watt device. These numbers are only accurate to the nearest Watt, so a difference of 1W (i.e. from rounding) could obscure up to a 12% actual difference in power requirements. Also note that power requirements change when you switch to DC power, so the battery life tests are a better indication of a true power requirements. Still, it's interesting to see just how little power these netbooks consume relative to entry-level laptops -- let alone your typical gaming desktop.
As you would expect, power requirements more or less mirror what we see in the battery life results. Without using EeeCTL to increase the brightness level on the 1005HA, it typically has the lowest power draw of the tested netbooks. Running a 3D application changes the situation slightly, but that's mostly because the GMA 500 doesn't perform nearly as fast as the (already slow) GMA 950.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
30 Comments
View All Comments
kopilka - Saturday, January 16, 2010 - link
Which model has a version of XP Professional Edition?Where can I find information on the XP Professional Edition [url=http://www.legalrxuk.com">http://www.legalrxuk.com]online[/url]?
gipper - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
I could care less about screen SIZE, but having an x600 screen, I would kill for x768. I'll probably buy another at the first of the year when these 10 and 11" x768 screens are offered with the new chipsets.The 10" keyboards work fine, and if they wanted, they could fit these 11" displays in the same chasis. The bezels on the 10" books are ridiculously oversized.
cremefilled - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
I've had my Acer 751h for two weeks. As suggested, look for the Bing combo specials. My 6-cell red 751h with XP Home netted $295 at Tigerdirect after Bing rebate and an additional $20 Paypal rebate.If you get the right codecs, these play high-def videos *wonderfully*. I've played all sorts of mkv and avi files, including very high bitrate mkv's (16GB 1080p file, averaging something like 12Mbps video bitrate). This is in Windows XP Home; make sure the files are local, not over wireless. You can find several tutorials on the Internet for setting up 264 hardware decoding-- and yes, it does currently involve using PowerDVD h/x264 codecs. So far, after having tried 12 to 15 Usenet/torrent mkv files, I have 100% compatibility. It's really remarkable to play a 1080p video on this tiny, lightweight device. It's like the world's greatest portable DVD.
I've owned several netbooks, including top-rated Asus and Samsung 10" iterations. This Acer DESTROYS them for high-def video, provided that you take the time to track down the right drivers. Also, the battery life for DVD playback improves if you use the PowerDVD general video codec -- like the PowerDVD 264 codec, this uses the GMA500 for hardware MPEG2 decoding. DVD playback when using GMA500 hardware decoding is less pixellated than the Asus and Samsung netbooks -- not sure why...
For everyday web browsing, MS Office, music playback, etc., this 1.33 MHz Atom is "just as good as" the higher speed Atoms. They're all fine. (The only caveats would be Youtube fullscreen, and some jerkiness when quickly scrolling through a webpage. By the way, you can overclock the Acer from Windows... just look around the Net.) The 11.6" screen and the fullsized keyboard are HUGE improvements over the 9" and 10" form factors. (The Acer's keyboard is better than the keyboard on my 15.6" Toshiba notebook.) The only thing I need more processing power for in a portable is high-def video, and the Acer 751h -- if you will tinker a bit -- absolutely rules in that category.
I'll add that the 751h is exactly the same weight as my 9" Asus netbook -- the latter still looks "cool" and svelte (the 900HA, I think). Hold them side by side, and you realize how much thinner and more elegant the Acer is. It is also very cool in your lap -- much better than other netbooks I have tried.
I think there's an Acer coming out with the same 11.6" screen size, a single-core Core2 CPU, and a battery that doesn't jut out -- for $500 retail. That would be a heck of a bargain, but it couldn't decode mkv's any better than the 751h does.
lr300a - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Those benchmarks are totally irrelevant. How can anyone use a netbook to do encoding of x264 video? I think that different benchmarks must be posted on applications which are important in a netbook (like java youtube player performance, divx decoding, 720p decoding cpu occupancy).JarredWalton - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
DivX 720p decoding works and provides the listed battery life. Are you going to try to watch a movie while doing something else on one of these netbooks? If so, you're not going to enjoy the experience much... every time I start interacting with other apps while a movie is playing, the system stutters. As it stands, YouTube works, but YouTube HD doesn't -- as I mentioned in the last two netbook articles, which had faster CPUs/GPUs.The tests I ran are supposed to give you an idea of relative performance, which in this case means that you see how slow these Atom CPUs are in CPU intensive tasks. PCMark05 gives you an idea of general application performance. I'm not sure what good it is to try and capture %CPU use for video playback, when it either works or fails. I can see about adding such a test, but adding more tests just means fewer articles written. My goal right now is to review MORE laptops, even if it means we don't get as much detail on each one.
Jjoshua2 - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Could we always have a test on these netbooks to see if they can run youtube HD fullscreen? I think most everyone wants to do this, and it is the most intensive thing that most people will do. I don't see why someone would watch 1080p on such a small screen, and its not for home theaters.It would also be nice to have a flash game test to see if it stutters on that. I know one flash game that seems slow on my netbook sometimes is farmville a facebook flash game.
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
My C2D@3GHz/GT260/WinXP has visible stuttering with youtube HD. I don't think it's optimized to run well in general.JarredWalton - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
I mentioned it in the ASUS 1005HA and Gigabyte M1022 reviews, but those two netbooks couldn't handle YouTube HD - regular YouTube was fine. Needless to say, with a slower CPU/chipset, the Acer 751h definitely can't play YouTube/Hulu HD. :(Griswold - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Once again its not just the display that is glossy, the display frame comes with a piano finish. Bloody murder! I guess its a plus that the keyboard area doesnt come with the same finish as well...It seems that the upcoming nokia booklet 3G is one of the few (if not the only) netbook that doesnt look like a bling-bling toy from a junk goods store.
Seriously, cheap doesnt mean it has to look cheap.
FATCamaro - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
God this looks like a cheap ass piece of shit even in photos. I can't imagine how shitty it is IRL.