Acer Ferrari One
07:26
AMD
Athlon NEO CPU notebooks fill the void between netbooks and full sized
notebooks. Think of them as the tweeners with higher resolution displays
and more powerful CPUs than netbooks, but with greater portability and a
lower price than mainstream notebook computers. If you remember the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e
we reviewed earlier this year, you will know that the 11.6” ThinkPad
ran on the AMD NEO MV-40 with integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics.
But there were some limitations: it was a single core CPU and many base
models shipped with Windows 7 32-bit though the Neo CPU is a 64-bit CPU
with virtualization support. To get a jump on single core Intel Atom
netbooks, AMD released the Athlon 62 X2 L310 and L335 dual core
processors that typically ship with 64-bit Windows 7. There aren’t a
huge number of notebooks on the market with these CPUs, but the Acer
Ferrari One is among them.
The Acer Ferrari One runs on the AMD
Athlon X2 dual-core L310 CPU at 1.2GHz with support for AMD Hyper
Transport 3.0 technology and AMD M780G chipset. Like with the Neo CPU,
the Acer also has integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics with up to 2GB
HyperMemory which translates to 256+128 MB of dedicated system memory
and up to 1.66GB shared system memory. The Acer Ferrari One 200 comes
with 4GB of DDR2 memory that beats out most netbooks’ 1GB or 2GB memory
configurations, and a 250GB hard drive vs. the usual netbook 160 gig
drive. The 11.6” widescreen display also has a native 1366 x 768
resolution for 720p content and an excellent audio package. And many
CineBench numbers show that the AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs can run circles
around the Intel Atom Z530 CPU and the Neo MV-40. The Ferrari One
typically sells for $599.
 Design and Ergonomics
The design of the Acer Ferrari One is
eye-catching and masculine. The consumer-oriented design screams “look
at me”, and won’t fit in well in corporate meeting rooms. It features a
bright Ferrari red cover and a patterned wrist rest that matches some of
Ferrari’s interior surfaces. The sharply cut corners amplify the style.
The machine plays a racecar startup sound when entering Windows and it
stands on 4 tiny rubber tires.
The Acer Ferrari One weighs 3.3 pounds
with the 250GB HDD, and it feels sturdy and well built. The full size
84-key keyboard feels large for a small notebook, but the keys lack
travel and feel very flat. It will take you a bit of time to get used to
typing on this keyboard. The full size keyboard leaves a decent but not
large space for the small trapezoidal touch pad, and the mouse button
rocker sits on the edge of the notebook. The 11.6” display is
interesting: it’s super bright yet looks a bit grainy and washed out.
Viewing angles aren’t wide, but then they generally aren’t wide for
machines in this price range. The screen is so bright that when the
brightness slider is set in the middle, the screen is more than bright
enough for movie watching. The Acer Ferrari One has a built-in webcam
and mic above the display.
The Acer has a great set up for movie
watching thanks to that bright screen and an excellent audio package.
Unlike many netbooks, the Acer Ferrari One has two speaker grilles just
under the front edge of the notebook with nothing blocking the sound.
The front firing stereo speakers sound loud and reasonably full for a
small notebook thanks to third-gen Dolby Home Theater audio enhancement
that includes bass and high frequency enhancer technologies. The RAM
slots are easy to access under the notebook, though you’ll probably
never need to access them since the machine typically ships with 4 gigs
of RAM.
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Horsepower and Performance
The Acer Ferrari One 200 runs on the AMD
Athlon 62 X2 duo-core L310 CPU at 1.20GHz with 1 MB L2 cache. It comes
with 4GB DDR2 667MHz RAM in two slots and a 250GB hard drive. Since AMD
owns ATI, the Acer Ferrari One 200 has integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200
graphics and the AMD M780G chipset. Though the ATI Radeon sounds
impressive, the benchmark results (see below) show it didn’t add much to
gaming power though movie streaming is quite smooth. For an 11.6”
notebook, the Acer Ferrari One has a healthy collection of ports
including 3 USB 2.0, VGA, Ethernet, mic in, headphones/speaker line out
with SPDIF support and a media reader that works with most memory cards.
The netbook has an ATI XGP port for external graphics though we haven’t
seen anything available to make use of this feature. The Acer Ferrari
One 200 doesn’t have a built-in optical drive, but it worked with all
external DVD drives we tested it with. Software installation and file
transfers feel fast via USB 2.0 from external optical drives.
As with many AMD powered notebooks, the
Acer Ferrari One 200 runs at higher temperatures compared to Intel
notebooks, but not by much. The notebook runs at about 38 degrees
Celsius when running productivity applications including MS Office,
Internet Explorer, Outlook and more. Streaming movies via Wi-Fi raises
CPU core temperatures by 10-20 degrees. When playing a 1 hour Hulu
movie, the Acer’s temperature rose to 43-53 degrees Celsius; playing
movies via Netflix the Core temps went up to 40-50 degrees Celsius.
Playing games raised the temps to 60 degrees Celsius. The Acer Ferrari
One 200 also takes a bit longer to cool down compared to Intel based
notebooks. The fan blows out on the left side of the notebook, and the
air exiting the fan is hot when it’s running full blast.
Since the Acer Ferrari One has built-in
ATI graphics, we tested gaming. Bundled Casual games by Wildtangent
worked smoothly, but FPS games with demanding graphics were unplayable.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 played at 10 fps with all effects turned
off, and at that frame rate, the game was unplayable. Consider the
heavier and more expensive Alienware M11x if you’re looking for serious
gaming power in an 11” design. We also tested movie streaming on the
Acer Ferrari One, and it handled it admirably. Netflix movies streamed
over WiFi at solid 30 fps and looked smooth with audio in sync with
video. If you install the latest Flash 10.1 with GPU acceleration, Hulu
movies streaming over WiFi will play at 25 fps, which is very watchable.
YouTube streaming over WiFi played at 25 fps at 480p resolution and
looked smooth; but at 720p resolution YouTube videos played at about 18
fps and audio went out sync with video. All streaming movies we tested
were playing in full screen mode, which reduces fps.
Battery
The Acer Ferrari One has a 6-cell
Lithium Ion battery that’s 5600mAh in capacity. That’s a high capacity
battery for a netbook size computer, and the dual core AMD CPU needs it.
With the power setting at Balanced and screen brightness at 50%, the
notebook made it just past the 4 hour mark performing productivity tasks
such as editing MS Office docs and surfing the Web via WiFi. The screen
is bright enough at 50%; you don’t need to crank up the brightness.
Streaming movies from Hulu or Netflix via Wi-Fi lasted 2:15 hours on a
charge. The laptop doesn’t charge very fast with the included AC charger
(100-240V), taking 2 hours to fully charge from 40% full. So users who
are on the go will likely to need to charge the notebook overnight.
Standby time is about 2-3 days.
Software
The Acer Ferrari One comes with Windows 7
Home Premium 64-bit and essential software for media playback and
system recovery. Acer bundles its own webcam tool called Acer Crystal
Eye and their own Acer eRecovery Management tool. For DVD playback, the
Ferrari One 200 has InterVideo WinDVD. MS Silverlight and SQL Server
2005 are preinstalled. Like many notebooks, the Acer comes with the
60-day trial version of MS Office Home & Student 2007 as well as a
McAfee Internet Security Suite trial. There’s some bloatware including
toolbars, shortcut icons for Google, eBay, Norton Online Backup, Oberon
Game Zone, eSobi and more. But fans of Ferrari will enjoy the included
wallpaper, screensaver and the Windows startup sound bite of a Ferrari
race car passing by.
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