How's this for something new? With its Aspire M, Acer has released a Windows 8 laptop that doesn't slide, spin, swivel or otherwise transform into a slate. It's a straight-up laptop – albeit one with a touchscreen.
Tragically, that fact, plus the relatively low $800 price tag, are the most noteworthy features of this notebook, a largely lackluster affair that cuts a lot of corners to keep costs as low as it can.
In a world of Windows 8 laptops costing between $1,000 and $1,200, here's what you're sacrificing by moving to the lower price bracket. Aside from the lack of slateability, the most noteworthy tradeoff is the screen. It's a spacious 14 inches diagonally, but the resolution, at 1366 x 768 pixels, fails to take advantage of that. The resolution limit is compounded by a distinct lack of brightness as well. It's actually the dimmest laptop I've reviewed in more than a year, and it shows, with "whites" that appear as a dull gray on screen.
While the Aspire M sticks with the now-standard 1.7GHz Core i5 CPU, it subs in a 500GB traditional hard drive (backed up with a 20GB SSD) in lieu of the typical 128GB SSD commonly found in other Windows 8 laptops on the market. While this bumps up the capacity nicely, the Aspire M pays substantial costs in performance. The machine feels very sluggish, and the benchmarks back this up. On general apps, the Aspire M is 30 to 40 percent slower than the SSD-equipped hybrid machines I've reviewed in the last couple of months.
Ports are about average: two USB 3.0 (one chargeable), HDMI, Ethernet and an SD card reader. Styling is uninspired. Corporate-friendly is the best way to describe it.
That aside, the Aspire M does offer some upgrades over the competition. 6GB of RAM instead of the usual 4GB is a nice addition, though it doesn't seem to make much of a difference here. More notably, the Aspire M includes a double-layer DVD writer, though Acer still manages to keep the laptop at a slim 24 millimeters (including the feet), the same thickness as Dell's DVD-free XPS 12. The biggest surprise? Battery life that tops 5 hours of non-stop optical disc playback. In a world where 3.5 to 4 hours of battery life is common – for machines that are playing video from an SSD instead of a power-hungry, spinning DVD – that's impressive.
If only I could use that word to describe, well, anything else on the Aspire M.
WIRED Decent weight for a 14-inch laptop at 4.4 pounds. Exemplary battery life for its class. Quite slim for an optical drive-equipped laptop.
TIRED Touchy touchpad. Front-mounted power button is prone to accidental presses. All ports are rear-mounted. Extremely weak LCD. Some general bugginess during daily use.