Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch – Keyboard and Touchpad

As a 15.6” laptop,
the V5 Touch allows plenty of room for a full sized keyboard, and
actually offers a very comfortable typing experience. The keys are
backlit if required via an easy F-Key toggle, and I found typing this
review on it a pretty happy experience.

The touchpad takes a bit
more getting used to. It’s both smooth and a decent size that means
that covering the whole screen with the pointer doesn’t require multiple
drags, and also that the gesture inputs come naturally, with the
computer rarely misinterpreting multi finger strokes. I found that right
clicking, by pushing the pad in was a little hard to do consistently,
and this will be more of a problem to those used to a trackpad being
centred below the keyboard: here, the number pad to the right has meant
that Acer have chosen to offset it to the left so it’s just below the
keys section of the keyboard.

Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch – Internal Speakers and Cameras

The
V5 has “Dolby Advanced Audio” with “Virtual SurroundSound”. While this
does offer distinctive channels for the audio, we still ran into the
same problem that most laptops have: the audio quality is tinny, with
very little bass and with some distortion evident at higher volumes.
Suffice it to say, inserting a decent pair of headphones solves this
problem, and this will be most travellers’ solution anyway.

The
V5 Touch comes with an integrated front facing 1.3 megapixel webcam for
Skype video chat. Pictures are, as you would expect with such a low
resolution camera, a bit on the grainy side but it’s perfectly adequate
for video calling.

Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch – Specs and Performance

This
particular flavour of the V5 Touch (V5-571P-53316G50Mass to its
friends) comes with an Intel Core i5 dual-core processor running at
1.7ghz and a generous 6GB of RAM, and as such most of the day to day
tasks are smooth as you’d hope. Despite this, it’s not always quite as
zippy as you’d imagine with everything: loading applications sometimes
delayed longer than we’d hoped for. We’ve probably been spoiled by solid
state drives: this model packs a 5400RPM 500gb hard disk: plenty of
space for filling up with MP3s, videos, pictures and anything else you
fancy, but it will always seem sluggish compared to its SSD rivals.

This
isn’t a gaming laptop, and appropriately it packs an Intel HD4000
onboard videocard. Fine for the casual games Acer package with it (hello
‘Cut the Rope’ – lovely with the touch screen), but as you would
expect, it will struggle with more resource intensive 3D games. That
said, benchmark tests in S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat averaged a quick
playable 25FPS in 720p on medium detail, while we got 55.5 FPS in
Trackmania Forever, so don’t rule out 3D gaming entirely.

PCMark 07

General Score: 2504

Entertainment Score: 2507

Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch – Battery Life

Acer
reckons you’ll get around 4-5 hours of battery life from the V5, and
our battery test at 40% screen brightness only gave us an outcome of 3
hours 44 minutes. Pretty disappointing, then, but its 2.4kg weight means
you probably won’t want to be away from a plug socket for too long a
period in any case. That said: with that kind of bulk, we were hoping
more of the strain on airport luggage allowances would be taken up with
battery, rather than other innards.

Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch – Value

Retailing
at £600, this flavour of the V5 straddles the ground between Ultrabook
and ‘cheap and cheerful’ laptop quite awkwardly. Much of the question of
value comes down to what you’re looking for, as clearly much of the
cost goes towards the impressive performance of the touch screen, which
unquestionably makes Windows 8 a more friendly experience. However, if
that’s a feature you’d barely use, then there are alternatives within a
similar price bracket that would probably suit you better which offer a
zippier everyday performance thanks to a hybrid SSD/HDD approach, such
as the Sony VAIO T13, or the Toshiba Satellite U840W, if you can stretch
that bit further.

Verdict

The Acer Aspire V5-571 Touch doesn’t know
quite where it fits, it’s not a performance powerhouse but neither is it
a budget laptop. The touchscreen functionality, keyboard and trackpad
make for a great user experience, but it does feel like corners have
been cut to accommodate the premium aspects of the laptop. For £600,
we’re not sure all the sacrifices – particularly the mediocre battery
and average screen – were always worth it. For basic tasks such as
writing and browsing, you’ll be happy enough, but if you’re hoping to
navigate Windows 8 using touch you may find some of its rivals offer a
smoother experience.

Trusted Score