Acer Aspire One Cloudbook 11 Netbook Review

Compared with the Aspire ES1-131, the Cloudbook has slimmed down by a few millimeters. The slim looks suit the laptop well. The Cloudbook's casing is entirely made of plastic. Apart from the display bezel (black), all casing components feature a gray color. In addition, the base unit's upper side is roughened. The lid's back and base trays are structured. The stability is not very satisfactory. The casing can be dented easily on both sides of the keyboard. Furthermore, the base unit can be warped without much effort. This is even more so for the lid.

The types and number of interfaces are the same as in the Aspire ES1-131. However, their position has changed. While the Aspire's ports are on the device's rear, in the Cloudbook they are on the  sides, making them easier to access.

Windows 10 Home (64 64-bit) serves as the operating system. A recovery DVD is not included. In addition, buyers get a one-year license for Office 365 Personal, which has to be activated within 6 months.

With the Cloudbook 11 Acer has an 11.6-inch laptop in its lineup made for basic office and Internet applications. Our review sample carries a price tag of approximately 260 Euro (~$283). We did not discover other configurations.

The Cloudbook cannot boast of tremendous computing power. The installed Celeron N3050 (Braswell) dual-core processor is sufficient for office and simple Internet applications. The CPU is a frugal one (TDP: 6 watts) of its kind, and can be cooled passively. This is also utilized in the Cloudbook. The Celeron clocks at speeds ranging up to 2.16 GHz. It achieves full speed in both AC and battery mode.

The system runs smoothly; we did not encounter any problems. The PCMark benchmark scores correspond to the installed SoC's performance. The advantage over comparable Bay Trail devices is bigger than expected. This is due to the Braswell GPU. It is at least twice as strong as its Bay Trail predecessor. It is not possible to increase the Cloudbook's system performance.

An eMMC memory module with a capacity of 32 GB serves as the system storage. The transfer rates are within a normal range for this type of storage. The laptop's owner has approximately 14 GB available for free use in the state of delivery. The pre-loaded applications have to be uninstalled for additional storage capacity. The laptop has not been named "Cloudbook" without a reason. The buyer receives 1 TB of storage capacity (for one year) in Microsoft's cloud service OneDrive with the device. Expanding the storage via an SD card is not very practical. The card cannot be completely inserted in the device and juts out by a good one centimeter (~0.4 inch).

The memory card reader is not the fastest of its kind. It achieves a maximum transfer rate of 34 MB/s when copying large data blocks. Transferring 250 JPG image files (approx. 5 MB each) is only performed at a speed of 13 MB/s. We always test the memory card reader with our Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II reference card.

Intel's HD Graphics (Braswell) GPU supports DirectX 12 and clocks at speeds of up to 600 MHz. Compared with the Bay Trail predecessor, Intel has almost doubled the computing performance. Thus, for the first time, Intel has graphics cores in its lineup that can compete with the weakest AMD models, such as Radeon R2 (Mullins/Beema) or Radeon R3 (Mullins/Beema) graphics cores.

The Braswell graphics cores are not only much stronger than their predecessors - they also have a new feature. An integrated H.265 decoder can unload the processor when rendering this video format. H.265 is about to replace the H.264 format often used today. It enables smaller files in the same image quality. The media player has to support the hardware-accelerated playback of H.265 materials. The installed Movie and TV app in Windows 10 is capable of that. The CPU load remains below 20%, while rendering our test video (4K, H.264, 60 FPS).

The casual games available in Windows' store are recommended if the Cloudbook is to be used for gaming. The hardware cannot cope with up-to-date games like "FIFA 16". Moreover, there is not enough storage capacity for most games.

The stereo speakers are situated on the device's underside. They produce a very thin, bass-free sound that tends to be tinny. Speech is quite understandable. The speakers are at mostly suitable for video telephony. Headphones or external speakers would be recommended for everything else.

The Chromebook does not require much energy. We measured an idle consumption of 5.8 watts. The load power consumption is not much higher. A power consumption of 11 watts is measured in the stress test. The CPU and GPU throttling is noticed here. Thus, it is not surprising that the medium load consumption is on the same level. The power supply has a nominal output of 45 watts.

We simulate the load needed for opening websites with our practical Wi-Fi test. The "Balanced" profile is enabled, and the screen's brightness is set to approximately 150 cd/m². The Aspire achieves a runtime of 7:25 hours - a good rate. However, it lags a good two hours behind the former Acer Aspire ES1-131. The reasons: The latter needs slightly more energy and has a higher battery capacity (37.7 vs. 32 Wh).