The Taiwanese manufacturer Acer is notorious for its virtually uncountable laptop models.
The laptops from the E1-line are gathered in the affordable consumer range, and face countless competitors, for example from Toshiba and Lenovo.
The two comparison devices also come from these manufacturers. Toshiba’s Satellite C55-A-1D5 still relies on the Ivy Bridge Intel Core i5-3230M CPU(2x 2.6 - 3.2 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP: 35 W), which has a higher clock than the i5-4200U(2x 1.6 - 2.6 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP: 15 W, Haswell) in the review sample. In return, it consumes more power and produces more waste heat.
That also applies to the Core i5-4200M(2x 2.5 - 3.1 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP: 37 W, Haswell) that powers our second contender, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z510. The new - at least according to the name - AMD Radeon R7 M265 challenges the widely used Nvidia GeForce GT 740M in both the Toshiba and Lenovo laptop.
The budget was not enough for an IPS screen in any of the three contenders. The review sample and Lenovo’s Z510 at least stand out from most contenders with a matte Full HD screen, while owners of Toshiba’s laptop have to live with a reflective surface and a low resolution of 1366x768 pixels.
All three laptops have roughly the same size, but the height of Toshiba’s laptop of 33.4 mm(~1.3 inches) is thicker than the approximately 26 mm(~1.0 inches) of the E1-572G and Z510. In return, its depth is lower by about 2 cm(~0.8 inches). The weight ranges from 2.35 kg(~5.2 pounds; Acer) to 2.2 kg(~4.9 pounds; Lenovo). Several configurations of the review sample can be found here. Listing them all would go beyond the scope of this report.
The user is faced with minimalism in terms of interfaces; only the essential ports plus a VGA out are installed. The drawback of the standard casing is seen here: A second USB 3.0 port is perhaps not expected in a 400 Euro(~$553) laptop, but that is not true for a 600 Euro(~$829) device. At least no adapters are needed. In return, we have to criticize the interface distribution, which is concentrated in the front area. Particularly the cord of an external mouse annoyed us during practical use since it had to be plugged in on the right because an external hard drive was connected to the USB 3.0 port on the left. That the SD card slot on the front left edge is not closed with a dummy is unusual.
Acer includes its standard 24-month carry-in warranty. It can be upgraded to three years with international validity for approximately 70 Euros(~$97). I am using this laptop for more than a year no any single probelem faced and it runs like butter believe! According to Acer, the "E" in the Aspire E range stands for either "everyday" or "essentials". It’s a budget laptop with an Intel Ivy Bridge processor at a very low price.
The E1-571 has an Intel Core i3-3110M processor running at 2.4GHz. Paired with 4GB of RAM, this processor completed our multimedia benchmarks with a respectable score of 41. This is almost double the score we’ve seen from some similarly-priced laptops such as the Acer Aspire V5-571, with its previous-generation Sandy Bridge chip. It’s also just a few points behind your average Ultrabook, making the E1-571 plenty fast enough to handle several applications at once, and its battery life of 6 hours and 42 minutes should keep you going for most of the day.As we expected from such a cheap laptop, it’s no good for games. The E1-571’s Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset managed just 15.5fps in our Dirt Showdown test at 1, 280x720 and the High quality preset, so graphically-intensive games are out of the question. However, you’ll be fine with the casual games in the Windows 8 store.
While the E1-571 certainly performs well for a low-end laptop, we were disappointed by its connectivity options. The laptop has the standard VGA, HDMI and Ethernet ports, but all three of its USB ports are the old USB2 type as opposed to the newer and faster USB3, so you won’t be able to take advantage of super-fast external storage. Still, the E1-571 does come with a 500GB hard drive, a multi-format card reader and a DVD writer, so you’re well set for on-board storage.
This is a budget laptop, and unfortunately it looks it. The whole laptop is made of cheap-feeling plastic, and its glossy black bezel and silver wrist rest pick up plenty of fingerprints, as does the laptop’s lid. The keyboard is surrounded by hard matt black plastic, and the entire effect is about as far from a svelte Ultrabook as it’s possible to be. It would be churlish to expect more for £350, though.