Acer Aspire V5-122P laptop

Cons

• Slow processor
• Display not very bright

With the V5-122P series, Acer has made a smaller version of the V5 series laptops with an AMD processor on board. The touchscreen has a diagonal of 11.6″, which makes the laptops very compact. We tested the model that has an AMD A6-1450, together with 6GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. That quad-core model costs Unknown, while also a dual-core version for Unknown is available.

Appearance, keyboard, touchpad

Acer has designed the small laptop in two colors of plastic. The touchscreen lid is grey, with a brushed aluminum look, while the bottom half is matte black. The notebook is slightly smaller than an A4 sheet and weighs only 1.2 kilograms.

The laptop is made of plastic, but thanks to its small size it has little chance of feeling really weak. The hinges do give a little when you open them, and the screen moves a lot when you tap on the touchscreen. The screen has a glossy finish, but otherwise the laptop is quite matte.

The inside of the V5-122P is gray plastic with the same brushed aluminum finish as the top. The backlit keyboard is black and taps nicely, but the keys are very flat, which feels less pleasant than ‘hollow’ keys. The touchpad is quite small, but works fine and the screen is also touch sensitive. The mouse buttons of the touchpad are at the bottom and are pressed very deeply. Alternatively, the entire touchpad functions as a left mouse button, providing a more subtle movement.

Battery tests and speed

The Acer V5-122P laptops are not real workhorses and you can tell by the connections, among other things. You have to make do with just one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 connection, and a card reader. A port that looks like a standard mini displayport is actually a multifunction connector. With the supplied adapter you can connect a d-sub, USB 2.0 and a network port to it. Furthermore, wireless network (b/g/n) and bluetooth are of course present, and you can connect a headset to the audio port. The power button is, slightly different from the norm, on the side of the laptop.

The touchscreen of the V5 works fine and is combined with an ips panel, which gives better viewing angles than cheaper tn panels. The resolution of the glossy screen is limited, but still in proportion to the dimensions. The maximum brightness is quite low, which makes outdoor use a bit difficult. The color reproduction is not great, but does not deviate disturbingly. The contrast, on the other hand, is good again, but with a limited maximum brightness you have little benefit from it in brightly lit environments.

Acer has opted for AMD processors for its V5-122P series. These are APUs from the energy-efficient series, with two or four cores and a built-in graphics processor. The calculation cores are, judging by the benchmarks, not very fast and that also applies to the graphics performance. That’s why it’s a bit strange that Acer has built in no less than 6GB of memory in the more expensive model; that money could have been spent elsewhere. The battery lasts more than three hours with browsing and the four hours are just tapped during video playback. Charging is done in about three hours using a compact charger.

Conclusion

For those who see portability as a primary need, Acer has a great compact laptop in its hands with the V5-122P series. Especially the screen, including touch support, is perfectly fine. On the other hand, the performance of the AMD quadcore is very mediocre; with the dual-core variant, the laptop will be even slower. The Acer does have a standard 2.5″ hard drive on board that can be replaced by an SSD. This way the performance can be increased. For a price of Unknown, the V5-P122 is a nice internet laptop or a nice tablet alternative.