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May 04, 2017

Acer GARDA31 Battery

Overall, you'll end up waiting too long for these tablet-style programs to launch or respond, and likely won't use them too often, which is a shame, as the design and layout are very nice.The 10.1-inch display has a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, which is what we'd expect to see on a more upscale 10-inch Netbook. Video and images looked decent, but off-axis viewing was an issue. Passable from the sides, it wasn't much worse than many other low-cost laptops, but the image faded quickly when viewed from even slightly above or below (which could be an issue with a screen that swivels up and down).The built-in speakers were surprisingly loud--good enough, at least, for movie playback to a small audience. But even better-sounding was the optional JBL speaker dock accessory. It adds $100 to the cost of the system, but it also holds the Duo at a good angle for video viewing, or use as a digital photo frame or for touch-screen music playback. Plug the Inspiron Duo into the dock and it asks you if you want to display a digital photo frame mode or switch to a desk clock view, with an animated aquarium background.The Duo is surprisingly thin on ports and connections, choosing to offload many of the standard features one would expect to the optional $100 docking station (which makes it much less optional). This includes an SD card slot and Ethernet jack, which are both found on the dock but not on the system itself, and any kind of video output, which is missing from both the Duo and the dock.

There's one other odd accessory note. The built-in Webcam is part of the screen bezel, so when the display is flipped into tablet mode, the camera disappears and is unusable.With a 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 processor, we'd expect performance about on par with other 10-inch Netbooks. The dual-core version of Intel's Atom, though long-awaited, hasn't completely lived up to our expectations, and in the systems we've reviewed that feature it, performance isn't noticeably better in many circumstances than the single-core Atoms, which have been seeming a bit long in the tooth lately.We could normally get away with it for basic computing tasks, but when you consider that the Duo has to power a higher-resolution touch screen with only the Atom N550 and basic Intel integrated graphics (although there's a Broadcom video chip to help with video playback), the sluggish performance makes sense. That said, when set up as a traditional laptop, the Inspiron Duo performs about as well as other Netbooks. It's only the touch-interface tools that seem especially slow.

With its trim dimensions, colorful lid, rounded display hinges, and isolated keyboard, the $799 Sony Vaio VPC-Y218FX certainly looks the part of a stylish laptop for home or campus use. It also features oodles of wireless connectivity, with 802.11n Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, and Bluetooth onboard. It's not particularly well built, however, and it's woefully underpowered. The culprit is an ultralow-voltage (ULV) CPU, the 1.2GHz Intel Pentium U5400, which can't keep pace with similarly priced Core i3-based models. Even worse, it doesn't offer much of an advantage in battery life. There are better thin-and-light options, such as the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG-7805, the Asus U35Jc-A1, and the Toshiba Portege R705-P25.The Vaio VPC-Y218FX follows Sony's basic laptop recipe: a colorful lid (in this case, a vivid purple), rounded display hinges (the power button resides on the left end, and the connection for the power cord sits on the right), and a Chiclet-style keyboard. Those ingredients result in a snazzy look, but unfortunately the Vaio VPC-Y218FX doesn't offer the same solid build quality that we've found on other Vaio models, such as the 15.5-inch Vaio VPC-EA24FM/W or the 16.4-inch Vaio VPCF12AFM/H. For one, the battery in our review model ended up sitting loosely in its housing. Similarly, two narrow hinges holding the display in place didn't prevent a bit of screen wobble when the laptop was gently nudged.

The roomy keyboard, with widely spaced isolated keys, didn't feel as solid as other Vaio keyboards and sounded clacky. Above the keyboard, two small buttons handled additional quick-launch functions. One, labeled Vaio, opens up Sony's Media Gallery app, through which you can control your music, photos, and videos. The other, labeled Assist, calls up Vaio Care, where you'll find troubleshooting, diagnostic, and recovery tools.A responsive touch pad doesn't support multitouch gestures, which are becoming increasingly common on today's laptops. Instead of two-finger scrolling, you'll need to use the vertical scroll region along the touch pad's right edge. A horizontal scroll region runs along the bottom edge. The mouse buttons are narrow, positioned along the curved bottom edge of the laptop. They're comfortably angled, and quiet when pressed.The display measures 13.3 inches on the diagonal and features a 1,366x768-pixel resolution. It's not the brightest display, but colors look vivid and videos played smoothly. The audio from the speaker bar that runs along the top of the keyboard is predictably tinny; it's difficult for small laptops to produce big sound.

For a compact laptop, the Vaio VPC-Y218FX features a decent amount of connectivity, particularly of the wireless variety. You'll find only three USB 2.0 ports and no eSATA, but there is an HDMI port along with the standard VGA video port. There's also a 34mm ExpressCard slot and two media card slots (SD and MemoryStick). In addition to 802.11n Wi-Fi, the laptop offers mobile broadband (subscription to Verizon or Sprint is needed). Continuing the march of wireless connectivity is a Bluetooth antenna. A small Wi-Fi on/off switch resides on the front edge of the laptop.In addition to the flimsy build quality, the other chief drawback of the Sony Vaio VPC-Y218FX is its slow performance. It features the Intel Pentium U5400, a dual-core ULV CPU with a clock speed of only 1.2GHz. Many advanced features of Intel's Core i3/i5 chips, such as Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading, aren't available here. For all of these reasons, not surprisingly, the Vaio VPC-Y218FX trailed similarly priced Core i3-based laptops in labs testing. The $849 Asus U35Jc-A1, for example, uses a Core i3 processor and completed all three of CNET Labs' application benchmarks in less than half the time it took the Vaio VPC-Y218FX. In anecdotal testing, we encountered frequent lags, particularly when multitasking. There are Vaio Y-series models with faster ultralow-voltage CPUs: an upgrade to a 1.2GHz Core i3-330UM CPU only costs $20, whereas a 1.73GHz Intel Core i5-430UM CPU costs an extra $100.

The biggest benefit of an energy-efficient ULV chip is extended battery life, but the Vaio VPC-Y218FX failed to put any distance between it and more-powerful Core i3-based laptops, lasting 4 hours 9 minutes on our demanding video playback battery drain test. That's not bad for battery life, but it's underwhelming with a processor this low-impact.Sony offers a standard one-year parts and labor warranty with the system. Help options include a 24-7 toll-free phone line, live Web chat, driver downloads, and FAQ pages.As a result, our recommendations vary based on what cost and specs you'd select from the configuration options available on Dell's Web site. Certain aspects of the V130 are consistent across the board: the rock-solid aluminum-and-magnesium frame, the 13-inch matte screen, and the system's lack of an optical drive. Also, the V130 only has integrated Intel graphics.The configuration we reviewed, a top-of-the-line $918 model, had an Intel Core i5 U470 CULV processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. In this configuration, it underperformed compared to the slightly larger but more affordable Toshiba Portege R705, especially in terms of battery life.

That's the pickle with the Vostro V130: especially when factoring in its poor battery life, there's really nothing that distinguishes it when compared with superior small laptops such as the Portege R705 and the new Apple MacBook Airs. In the middle configurations, especially around $600, the V130 could have been a sweeter choice, especially if its battery performed better.Much like the Dell Vostro 3300 we reviewed earlier this year, the Vostro V130 is a sleek, angular laptop that feels almost ThinkPad-like in its interior, but also has some exterior style that casts it as the offspring of a MacBook Air and an Adamo. An anodized aluminum frame comes in both attractive steel and metallic red shades (Lucerne red costs an extra $40). An integrated battery underneath keeps the thickness on the V130 universally slim. The slight hinge-forward design of the top lid leaves a little back lip jutting out behind the opened-up lid, which is where all the ports and the V130's heat vents are found. The rear ports are great for desk use but can get confusing on one's lap, while the rear heat vents do a nice job shunting excess warmth away from legs and other delicate parts.

A wide magnesium-alloy palm rest frames a square multitouch touch pad with discrete buttons beneath. The pad's smaller than what you'd find on Apple's MacBook Air, but it's responsive and has all the requisite multitouch gestures enabled.The keyboard is well-built and feels great, too--it's a semiraised keyboard that's similar to those on other Dell Inspirons. There are a few annoyances: volume and brightness aren't function-reversed and have no dedicated buttons, and a column of page up/page down keys on the right side cramp easy access to the Enter/Shift keys, a trend we've seen growing on many laptops. If you're looking for any dedicated keys other than what the standard keyboard provides, you're out of luck. A tiny power button on the top left is all there is. The 13.3-inch screen has a native pixel resolution of 1,366x768 and has a matte coating, which helps protect against glare. Text and videos both looked very crisp, and though the screen's maximum brightness still wasn't all that bright, the lack of environmental glare helped make the most of it. A mono speaker situated below the keyboard did a better than expected job with video playback, and it reached an acceptable volume. Sound quality wasn't overly tinny, despite its lack of depth.

An included 2.0 megapixel Webcam can record video or snap pictures at resolutions up to 1,600x1,200, but video recorded in AVI format at that size was extremely choppy. We achieved the smoothest results at 640x480.Due perhaps to its size, the Vostro V130 doesn't have a great selection of ports. Most of them are tucked along the back end of the V130, except for an SD card on the right side of the laptop and headphone/mic jacks and a SIM card slot on the front end. In addition to mobile broadband readiness, the V130 also has Bluetooth standard.Dell offers a huge selection of configurations of the V130 on its small business Web site, starting at the seemingly bargain-basement price of $429 and climbing well above $1,000. That's a vast range for a 13-inch laptop, but a peek under the hood of various configurations reveals that the low-end $429 V130 has a paltry 1GHz Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. A more reasonable configuration--and one we'd recommend--would be a $628 model with a Core i3 ULV CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. Our version has a high price largely because of its CPU, its doubled RAM, and the upgraded Windows 7 Professional OS. One nice plus: the 500GB hard drive is a fast 7,200rpm. A 128GB SSD drive is also available for an extra $228, but if you're really hungry for SSD in a thin laptop, you might as well go with a 13-inch MacBook Air instead.

The Core i5 ULV processor in our configuration of the Vostro V130 is an ultralow-voltage processor, operating at only 1.3 GHz. It's a less powerful processor than a standard-voltage Core i5 found in most mainstream laptops, and it also underperforms compared to any standard voltage Core i3. It's better, though, than the Core 2 ULV CPUs found in many last-generation thin-and-lights. Apple's MacBook Airs still feature Core 2 Duo ULV processors, but in our benchmarking tests the 11.6-inch MacBook Air came out ahead in a few categories. Functionally, you can expect a nearly mainstream experience from a Core i5 ULV, plenty to do most tasks, although when it came to multitasking the V130 engaged its fans and got quite warm.Video streaming looked great on the Core i5 ULV Vostro V130; both full-screen Hulu and Netflix were smooth and very watchable. The V130 only has Intel integrated graphics, but that's more than adequate for any video playback needs. The V130 won't handle games well, but that's not something a V130 customer would really be looking for.

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