A bigger little laptop for less
It may sound like a South American football result, but ‘Acer Aspire One Cloudbook 14’ is actually the name of a nippy little laptop. It’s got a good brain on paper, even if it’s a bit off the pace for the big leagues. So should you snap it up while the transfer window is open, or would buying it be an own goal?
Football clichés aside, this is a modern wedge-shaped Windows 10 laptop at a strikingly reasonable price. Some budget laptops come kitted out in bright colours, but we were quite happy to see Acer had gone for a more sensible dark grey. It’s plastic, of course, but the stippled lid and plain interior look professional, especially after you peel off the marketing stickers. At 18mm thick and weighing 1.6kg, it’s not the slenderest laptop, but it doesn’t feel chunky or cheap.
Thanks to the medium-sized screen, there’s room for a proper keyboard. Its tile-style keys respond more by clacking than moving, which is not conducive to accurate typing, but since they’re all basically where they ought to be, we got used to it. Below is a touchpad that’s bigger than average and responds effortlessly to movements. The left and right buttons are invisible – you just press harder – but give a nice distinct click.
The screen is also a game of two halves. Its 1366x768-pixel resolution is adequate, but with only 62 per cent of the sRGB colour range, and not much contrast, it looks quite dull, especially from anything but a straight angle. You wouldn’t choose it for photo editing, or to work outdoors a lot. For general tasks, though, it’s by no means the worst in this price bracket.
Needless to say, this is not a high-performance PC. With only 2GB of memory, the Celeron processor struggled in our tests. Handling 4K video was beyond it, but Full HD was fine, and you’ll have no great difficulty editing text documents and browsing the web as long as you don’t open dozens of windows at once. On the plus side, it doesn’t use much power: the battery lasted us 11 hours and 20 minutes of video playback, and for many purposes you’d get longer, especially if you’re not constantly online.
However, as the Cloudbook name implies, this machine might suit you best if you are constantly online. Only 32GB of flash storage is built in – one-thirtieth of the terabyte (1TB) capacity of most PCs – and only about 10GB of that is available on top of Windows 10 and some other preinstalled apps. You do get 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive internet storage free for a year, though, as well as a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal, which means you can install any or all of Microsoft’s Office apps. It’s a shame the Wi-Fi is 802.11n, not the faster 802.11ac, and there’s no Ethernet port for wired networks.
If you need more space for files, there’s an SD card slot, but a standard card sticks out of this far enough to be accidentally knocked. A ‘short’ SD card – often sold for use with Apple MacBooks – would help, or you could use an extra-small USB stick in the fast port on the left side instead, leaving the USB 2.0 port on the right for a mouse or other accessories.
We’ve seen the Cloudbook 14 on sale for as little as £150, but £170 was the lowest we could find as we went to press. That’s still very good value. If you want, or could put up with, a smaller screen and keyboard, you might find something like HP’s Stream 11 a bit cheaper.
VERDICT
As long as your needs are modest, this smart-looking laptop covers the Windows 10 basics without too many compromises.
SPECIFICATIONS
1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3050 processor • 2GB memory • 32GB SSD • Intel HD Graphics • 14.1in 1366x768-pixel screen • Webcam • SD card slot • 1x USB 2.0 port • 1x USB 3.0 port • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.0 • Windows 10 Home • 27.9x339x235mm (HxWxD) • 1.6kg • One-year warranty