Today we have an eco-friendly novelty from Acer in our review – the Aspire Vero laptop with integrated graphics and an Intel i7 processor, which emphasizes, incredibly, but on environmental friendliness of materials and energy efficiency. Let’s take a closer look at the device and figure out what this representative of office machines can do for its price.
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Packaging and equipment
The laptop is packaged in a simple unpainted cardboard box. All the usual packaging details are made from biodegradable materials such as paper and cardboard.
The kit only comes with a 65W charger with a miniature angled connector reminiscent of old mobile phone chargers.
Design and ergonomics
The appearance of the laptop is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent. Personally, the author liked the unusual case design, but most people have mixed reactions to the design.
The material feels and looks like a very dense pressed cardboard, but, of course, this is not it. The body is made of plastic and 30% recycled materials. The elements of the laptop case are unpainted, again for the sake of environmental friendliness, which explains its unusual appearance.
The legs are made of dense acid green rubber, and there are also several embossings on the body of the device, reminiscent of recycling, certification, the brand name and its line, which in my opinion is a little redundant. But the bright legs are a good solution, diluting the boring gray color of the case.
Tactile surfaces of the Acer Aspire Vero are very pleasant due to the unusual structure, it is even more pleasant to work with it than for devices with metal cases. It feels lighter, but this is more of a self-belief, since the laptop weighs 1.8 kg according to the passport.
When you open the lid, the laptop gets an additional support and space for air circulation. You can judge the thickness of the device yourself from the photo, but it is visually a little thicker than the usual office machines, although not significantly.
The dimensions are as follows: 363.4 × 238.5 × 17.9 mm.
Ports
In terms of inputs and outputs, everything is at the proper level and the laptop is equipped with the necessary minimum. On the left side is:
- Charging port
- Ethernet RJ-45
- HDMI 2.0
- 2xUSB 3.2
- USB 3.2 Type-C (up to 5 Gbps)
On the right side:
- Kensington lock
- USB 2.0
- 3.5mm combo audio output
- LED indicators
Display
The screen is 15.6 inches with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and a classic 16:9 aspect ratio. The display is slightly recessed into the lid and surrounded by plastic frames, the maximum refresh rate is 60 Hz.
The IPS-matrix with a matte finish does not allow stray glare to affect the work, but the image is noticeably darkened even with a slight deviation. Brightness suffers with minimally bright lighting (in the apartment on a sunny day, but not under direct rays). You can use it indoors with comfort, but you can forget about working outside the home.
The picture is quite clear and saturated, but for photo processing it is still better to prefer something else, which is especially true if you pay attention to the results of colorimetric tests:
Keyboard and touchpad
The black keyboard with a rather long and stiff stroke is comfortable for typing, especially if you are a fan of mechanical keyboards, since here it is not as “laptop-like” as on the same MacBooks. By the way, the keys are also 50% recycled plastic.
A keyboard with a NumPad block, high-quality uniform backlighting and mirrored green letters on the E and R keys, which once again hints at the eco-bias of the device.
The touchpad is surprisingly pleasant to use, not only tactilely, but also during pressing – it springs softly and is pressed effortlessly. It is convenient to use it as the main manipulator, although I would like it to be larger in area. The fingerprint scanner is located in the upper left corner.
Sound and camera
The sound is at a very mediocre level – watching a series or a video on YouTube is enough, but it is better to listen to music from a smartphone. The almost complete absence of bass and intelligibility at the top and middle.
The 720p camera with a resolution of 1280 x 720 is at a good level for laptops, without too much blurring – it will do just fine for video calls.
Specifications
The review laptop has an Intel Core i7 inside with Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of internal storage.
Detailed specifications:
- Processor: Intel® CoreTM i7-1195G7 processor (12 MB Smart Cache, 2.9 GHz with Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 up to 5.0 GHz, DDR4 or LPDDR4x, Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics)
- RAM: 16 GB DDR4 SDRAM
- Graphics: Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics, supporting OpenGL® 4.5, OpenCLTM 2.2, Microsoft® DirectX® 12
- Storage: 512 GB, PCIe Gen3, 8 Gb/s, NVMe
- Display: 15.6″ display with IPS (In-Plane Switching) technology, Full HD 1920 x 1080, Acer ComfyViewTM LED-backlit TFT LCD 16:9 aspect ratio
- Wireless: 802.11a/b/g/n/acR2+ax wireless LAN (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz); Bluetooth® 5.2
- Wired: Gigabit Ethernet, Wake-on-LAN ready
- Dimensions: 363.4 x 238.5 x 17.9 mm
- Weight: 1.8 kg
- Charger: 3-pin 65 W AC adapter, 107x47x30 mm, 243 grams
- Battery: 48 Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery
Performance and software
The performance of Acer Aspire Vero in the overview configuration is more than enough for comfortable work with documents and files, as well as basic photo editing in non-resource-intensive editors (for example, it is quite enough for photo processing in the built-in ACDSee 2019 editor). Windows 11 works smartly and without lags, and 100 tabs in Google Chrome, although they added some brakes to the speed of the browser, did not affect the overall performance of the system in any way.
The device is not gaming at all, but for the sake of interest, I tried to run The Witcher 3 and WarCraft III: Reforged. Attempts were unsuccessful and the laptop did not even want to run games, so I had to be content with Gwent.
Synthetic test results:
- Geekbench 5 – 4519 multi-threaded and 1494 single-threaded
- Cinebench R23 – 5733 in multi-thread and 1518 in single-thread
autonomy
With a moderate load, which included working with documents, processing photos, working in a browser and watching videos, the laptop worked on a single charge for 6 hours and 22 minutes. During operation, the keyboard backlight was turned off, the screen brightness was set to 80%, and the laptop was in maximum power saving mode from Windows. So the result is not impressive, and with constant work in the energy saving mode, the laptop may not last the whole working day on a single charge.
From the native 65W charger, the laptop was charged in 1 hour 52 minutes.
Cost and competitors
At the moment, the retail price of the tested Acer Aspire Vero configuration from official representatives is UAH 35,699 .
For about the same money, you can buy Apple MacBook Air M1 , which is also made of eco-friendly recycled aluminum. It’s MacOS and a smaller display, but it’s still a Mac on the M1.
If you pay attention to other configurations of Acer Aspire Vero at a price of UAH 24,999 , then the choice of competitors will be much wider.
