// Home / Reviews / Laptops

Acer Ferrari One-200 review

in Laptops

1 of 2

Gallery

Verdict

A well-built and speedy netbook but battery life is below average

Review Date: 2 Oct 2009

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £347 (£399 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
3 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

The rest of the Ferrari's specification is good, with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard disk outstripping the 1GB of memory and 160GB disk offered by the recently reviewed Samsung N510. It's disappointing there's no 802.11n, though, which is included in the Samsung.

We like the screen though. Its 11.6in diagonal and 1,366 x 768 resolution are identical to the Samsung N510, and just like its rival this helps the Acer Ferrari's screen pack a far greater punch than most netbooks. It's bright, it's sharp, and the higher resolution is much more readable on an 11.6in screen than when manufacturers try and squeeze all those pixels into a 10.1in display. Our single complaint is that the screen's glossy finish proved distracting under bright office lights.

The keyboard, meanwhile, takes inspiration from Acer's super-light Timeline laptops with tightly tesselated, broad, flat keys. The results are good and, while traditionalists may prefer the weightier action of the Samsung's keyboard, there's little to complain about.

The layout is sensible too, with a single-height Return key the only weak point. And, while the trackpad is an odd tapered shape, with plenty of space and a light responsive rocker button beneath, it's still easy to use.

Unfortunately, the solid ergonomics are marred by mediocre battery life. While its six-cell power pack lasted 4hrs 46mins in our light-use benchmark, the Samsung N510 lasted considerably longer at over six hours in the same test.

It's a powerful and well-built netbook, then, but we're not convinced that it's better than Samsung's finest: with the N110 offering class-leading battery life, the NC20 with a larger 12in screen and the new Nvidia ION-based N510 able to deliver decent performance for less cash.

This leaves one main reason to buy the Ferrari, and that's its styling. While its brash looks won't appeal to everyone, you can't argue that it makes an impact.

Author: Mike Jennings

1 2

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

Comments

User comments

Still its a nice AMD moment that we should all enjoy and hope it will last long and improve over time.

By nicomo on 2 Oct 2009

I was hoping for a better review than this... I got all excited over this netbook but now feel a bit flat.
Are there any other netbooks coming out before the end of the year that you think might make the A-list?

By Mattallyc on 7 Oct 2009

It has a much better spec & software than the Samsung N510 and yet has a poorer rating. Have I missed something?

By Pebus on 31 Oct 2009

Battery life is 1hr 44mins worse than N510 this takes a massive chunk off the overall rating. It's nice to see AMD making such a great debut in to luxury/lifestlye end of the netbook market.

By CyberpowersystemUK on 11 Nov 2009

"This leaves one main reason to buy the Ferrari, and that's its styling" NO! what are you talking about? It has a dual core faster processor and a ATI Radeon HD 3200, 56% more HDD capacity, double the RAM at 2GB and Windows 7 not the ancient XP. I smell the stench of impartiality!!!

By peterbradley4 on 29 Nov 2009

Argh, no HDMI out? Why pack it with HD punch then fail to include an HDMI port? If this netbook had an HDMI output, I would buy it without hesitation.

By tHe_jAcKaL on 9 Dec 2009

crissgoodlookingguy

The battery life is not as poor as you make out..

I've had it running on just the battery for 6 hours runing multiple apps with no problems.

There is a Balanced (more draining)

and

Power Saver battery mode on Windows 7.

The latter can give you upto 6 hours of use on a single charge.

A brilliant brilliant machine no problems running CS4, Office 2007, IE8, iTunes (w/HD movies) in the background with Splinter Cell Double Agent foreground all at the same time with zero performance issues...

Chris

By crissgoodlookingguy on 13 Jan 2010

crissgoodlookingguy

RE: No HDMI

I was thinking the same thing before purchasing, but working in IT myself I did some investigation and Acer have gone one better!

The Ferrari One-200 comes with a built-in ATi XGP port

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/ati-xg
p/Pages/ati-xgp.aspx

Which will allow you to drive upto 4 HDMI 1080p TVs as monitors with the help of the Acer DynaVivid Graphics box (£150)

which is not such a big price tag for being able to output HD 3D to multiple HD displays...

http://experts.thelink.co.uk/2009/09/30/acer-ferra
ri-one-dynavivid-graphics-dock-detailed/

The built-in Radeon HD3200 (of the AMD Spider family) is more than powerful enough for many current DirectX11 games.

By crissgoodlookingguy on 13 Jan 2010