Taiwan?s Acer, the world?s No. 2 PC vendor, is constantly innovating and coming up with one after another, feature-rich laptops. Adding to the portfolio, here is the all new, Aspire One 522, that comes with a lot of positive features in the netbook category. It is designed to deliver a fresh and exciting user experience, by providing smoother high definition (HD) multimedia enjoyment, creation and sharing, and greater multitasking performance.

First, Aspire One 522 comes powered with an AMD dual core C-50 processor clocking at 1 GHz. The processor used in here is a recently launched low voltage processor from AMD with TDP of 9W which is almost comparable to the dual core Intel Atom Pineview N5xx series (TDP: 8.5W). Users are increasingly focused on enjoying multimedia?movies, games, photos, videos?wherever they go. This is why Acer has equipped the Aspire One 522 with the new AMD C-50 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), engineered to deliver rich, sharp and lifelike high definition internet entertainment and take advantage of today?s visual digital universe anytime, anywhere.

Second, the netbook comes with a multi-card reader which is still not a common feature in netbooks. Third, you can take advantage of the 28 cm (10.1-inch) Acer CrystalBrite LED backlit high brightness display, flaunting 1280 x 720 (WXGA) resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio, to make the most of Web chatting, browsing and video streaming. This is again the highest in the category.

If we talk about the exclusive features, the netbook has a 320 GB HDD, 2 GB DDR3 RAM and chiclet-island style keypad with soft and well-sized keys. Typing was a well-felt experience and was not at all cranky in terms of pressing the keys or sound produced. Not only this, multi-gesture touchpad also showed great response. Moreover, the HDMI and VGA out, Bluetooth 3.0 and 3 USB 2.0 ports are some of the aspects that successfully keeps the light weighing (1.4 kg) Aspire One 522 ahead in the league of netbooks.

What?s more, the Aspire One 522 makes accomplishing any task, from HD movie playback to internet HD video streaming to simply chilling out a delightful experience. You can go beyond simple internet browsing to experience full high-definition video over the Web. But that?s not all. The new Aspire One 522 integrates AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics to provide sharp HD video with support for the latest graphics standards including Microsoft DirectX 11, 1080p video output via HDMI, real time image processing with auto colour and contrast adjustment, and edge sharpening.

Everyday tasks, such as internet browsing, streaming online HD video, emailing, chatting, photo viewing, document editing are efficiently performed by the Aspire One 522 that delivers multitasking capabilities, even with visually intense, high-definition applications. Support for fast DDR3 memory further helps tackling even more demanding tasks.

On performance front, the netbook scored competitive to the Atom powered netbooks, with PC Mark Vantage score of 1388 and battery backup was decent at close to 4 hours in our Battery Mark 4.0 test. Well! every electronic wonder has its own dark patches as well. On the not-so brighter side, the rear of the netbook does get heated up and that too just in minutes of its usage. The ?half rear-half side? profiled heat vent just could not manage it well enough to cool of the machine. Besides, the mono-loudspeaker in the rear of the netbook produced low sound levels making the audio experience a bit unpleasing.

Multiple connection options, including Wi-Fi, LAN and optional 3G or Bluetooth, maximise your mobile experience and keep you in touch with all you care about. And, to chat live, capture photos or video-conference there are the built-in Acer Crystal Eye webcam and digital microphone.

At a price tag of approximately 20k, the product is well packaged on features and performance desired of a netbook, and thus, an option worth considering. It is a decent netbook that offers good looks and a great display.

? CyberMedia www.LD2.in