Acer Aspire One D250 Review

by Jerry Jackson

Acer managed to strike gold in the middle of a global economic crisis thanks to their affordable Acer Aspire One netbooks. These low-cost, ultraportable laptops have quickly become popular travel companions for people who don't want to haul a heavy notebook to Starbucks. The latest 10-inch Acer Aspire One, the D250 series, offers a great balance of features at a starting price of less than $300. Read on to find out more about the Acer Aspire One D250-1165.

Our Acer Aspire One D250-1165 features the following specifications:

• Operating System: Genuine Windows XP
• Processor: Intel Atom N270 Processor 1.60GHz
• Memory: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (533MHz)
• Internal Storage: 160GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD
• Display: 10.1-inch diagonal WSVGA+ (1024x600) 
• Graphics: Intel GMA 950
• Wireless: 54g Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
• Expansion: 5-in-1 media card slot
• Ports and connectors: (3) USB 2.0 ports, VGA OUT, power connector, RJ-45/Ethernet (10/100), stereo headphone/line out, stereo microphone in, 0.3 megapixel (VGA) webcam
• Dimensions (H x W x D): 1 x 10.2 x 7.2 inches (including feet)
• Weight: 2.4 lbs (not including weight of AC adapter).
• Power: 3-cell Lithium-Ion battery (2200mAh, 25Wh)
• Warranty: One-year standard warranty
• MSRP: $329.99 ($299.95 Retail Price)
  

Build and Design
The Acer Aspire One D250-1165 is a low-cost version of the new D250 series netbooks and features a smaller battery and no Bluetooth in order to drop the retail price below $300. One very interesting item of note is that the D250 is actually slightly thinner than the original Acer Aspire One 150 series which used a smaller 8.9-inch screen. Like the original Aspire One, the D250 uses glossy plastics on the top of the screen cover as well as around the entire LCD. At times the reflective boarder does get on your nerves if you are in a brightly lit room with many sources of glare.

Build quality looks quite good and the construction feels strong enough to handle being tossed around inside a book bag without much concern for its safety (well apart from possible scratches to the glossy surfaces). We detected some flexing in the LCD lid plastics and bottom of the chassis when we squeezed the D250 while holding it folded in half, but overall this is a solid little netbook.

One nice design feature in the D250 is easy access for upgrades. Compared to the original Acer Aspire One, the D250 is extremely easy to upgrade. Flip the netbook over and you'll find three access panels for the hard drive, RAM, and the mini-PCIe card slot. The mini-PCIe card slot is obviously open for built-in broadband wireless access, so you should be able to buy this netbook directly from wireless carriers depending on the carriers and data plans in your area.

Screen and Speakers
The new Aspire One uses a fairly standard LED-backlit display panel with a 1024x600 native resolution. The glossy screen looks identical to what we're seeing in most netbooks: the glossy screen offers good color and contrast, but glare and reflections indoors under strong lights or outdoors under direct sunlight can be a problem. Again, although the 1024x600 resolution is pretty standard for a netbook these days, I'd much rather see a 1366x768 screen in the next Aspire One. Vertical viewing angles are average, with some strong color inversion when viewing from below and some over-exposed colors when viewed from above. Horizontal viewing angles are better with colors staying accurate at extremely wide viewing angles.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The Aspire One D250 uses a surprisingly cramped keyboard that is virtually identical to the keyboard used on the original Aspire One 150 series. Considering that the original Aspire One was a smaller netbook with a 8.9-inch screen it's rather disappointing that Acer didn't use a larger keyboard. Despite the small key size, the typing surface feels strong with no keyboard flex and individual keys feel strong with no wobble. One aspect that I really enjoy about the keyboard layout is the dedicated page up and page down buttons.

Still, the cramped keyboard will cause problems for more than a few owners. Since the keys are small and unusually close together you have to look at the keys when typing rather than using touch typing methods. Here's a quick example of what I can type when looking at the keys:

"This is what it's like to type a document on the Acer Aspire One keyboard if you are looking at the keys."

Here's a quick example of what I can type using the traditional touch typing method:

"This is ehat it's like to type a document on the Acer Aspore One keyboard ig you are looking st the screen."

The Synaptics touchpad used on the D250 is a little small considering that most 10-inch netbooks are getting larger touchpads these days. The touchpad is gesture-enabled and this allows you to use multi-finger gestures such as "pinching" your fingers together or "pulling" your fingers apart to zoom in or out. You can also use a spiral motion to activate the "chiral scroll" feature. The Synaptics control panel in Windows also allows you to customize these gestures as well. The touchpad surface provides smooth, fluid movement but the small size takes some getting used to. The left and right touchpad buttons are located beneath a single rocker-style button, but with no separation between the left and right side it's easy to accidentally press the middle of the touchpad button when you're trying to press the left or right side. The touchpad buttons have extremely shallow feedback, so it isn't always easy to feel when you have or have not pressed a button.

The D250 also includes a dedicated wireless on/off switch on the front of the notebook--something that's nice to have when traveling and isn't available on many netbooks from other manufacturers.

Input and Output Ports
The Aspire One D250 provides a good selection of ports despite the thin profile of the chassis. You get three USB 2.0 ports, a 5-in-1 media card reader, headphone and microphone jacks, Ethernet port, and a standard VGA out port. It's nice to see a standard set of ports considering that several other netbooks sacrifice ports in order to achieve a thin profile.

Here is a quick tour around the Acer Aspire One D250-1165:

Front view: Wi-Fi on/off switch.

Rear view: No ports here, just the hinges and battery.

Left side view: Ethernet, heat vent, VGA out, USB 2.0 port, microphone and headphone jacks.

Right side view: 5-in-1 card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, power jack and security lock slot.