Product reviews: Acer Aspire One 756 netbook

Acer is a Taiwanese company known to manufacture quality notebooks and netbooks at a reasonable price. With the Aspire one 7xx lineup (722, 725, 756) Acer is creating a new benchmark in netbooks.

Acer aspire one 756 is an 11.6 inch netbook with Intel Celeron 877orB987 processor. It costs around 329$ - 399$ with Windows 7/8 operating system. This review is based on Intel Celeron 877 netbook with 4GB RAM.

Case is made with plastics and weight is around 1.3kgs. It is extremely thin. It is 24mm in its thickest point. Display is attached to the base unit with two tight hinges. Back of the screen is glossy and it is a finger print magnet. Opening angle of this subnotebook is 1700 and it is very wide compared to other netbooks in this category.

Another nice feature is single screw maintenance cover beneath the base unit. This can be easily opened to upgrade memory or storage devices.

Acer aspire one 756 comes with three USB 2.0 ports and one HDMI port. In addition, it is having combo port for audio (in and out) and a standard VGA port. It would be nicer if Acer incorporated at least one USB 3.0 port.

In addition, there is built in WiFi and the Ethernet port (LAN) is on the right side. However, there is no built in Bluetooth connectivity.

This is the area acer 756 excels.It has Intel Celeron 877/Pentium B987 processor depending on the configuration. These processors are based on Intel’s revolutionary Sandy Bridge architecture.

It is same as second generation Core i3 processor except some functions are turned off (Turbo boost®, Hyper threading®). In addition, it has Intel HD 2000 graphics core (with 6 execution units). It has 2GB – 4GB DDR3 RAM depending on the model and can be upgraded to 8GB.

Acer 756 is about 2.5 times faster than the fastest Atom® Netbook according to the PC Mark score. It is two times faster than Acer 722 (its smaller sibling with AMD C-60 Processor).

Unlike other netbooks, this machine can play high end 3D games developed 2 years back when details are set to low. These games include Crysis, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 and 2, Fallout 3, and Elder Scrolls – Oblivion. In addition, this machine can play current 3D games that do not require high specs such as Shogun 2 – Total War, and Diablo 3. That is pretty impressive for an ultra-lightweight cheap netbook.

Acer 756 can play Full HD 1080p movies but occasional dropped frames are evident. It can play HD 720p movies without a hunch.

This is one of the weak points of this netbook. It has 4 cell Li Ion Battery and the battery life is 3hrs maximum. It is not acceptable for a netbook computer.

It is one of the fastest Netbooks you can have. In addition, it is quite cheap. Therefore, performance to price ratio is pretty high. Acer 756 can play games like an old low end gaming notebook. Its low battery life, glossy finish and lack of a USB 3.0 port are negative points.