Acer Aspire One

As for the build, the all-plastic chassis doesn't feel any cheaper than those rivals, though it can't hold a candle to the sturdiness of the all-metal and subsequently more expensive Nokia Booklet 3G or the HP Mini 5101. The 532h has the usual netbook port selection with three USB ports, VGA for watching Video like KEONG RACUN, Ethernet, an SD slot and headphone and microphone jack surrounding the chassis.

Along with almost every other laptop manufacturer under the sun, the 532h's gone the chiclet keyboard route, but just doesn't implement the style quite as well. Though it's spacious, and has two full-sized Shift keys, there isn't enough space between the keys and they feel too flat. Touch typing was a struggle, and even when we got the hang of it we were still mistyping words. Overall we much prefer the keyboards on the Toshiba Mini NB205 and Eee PC 1005PE. Our feelings are also mixed on the flush-with-the-palmrest touchpad which is only differentiated by a grid of rubbery dots. It does feel nice on an index finger, but it's almost too grippy and it's harder than we would have liked to move the cursor. Though the multitouch pad is capable of two finger scrolling, we preferred using the dedicated scroll bar.


The Aspire One 532h's 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600-resolution screen is typical for its class; it's bright, but surrounded by a thick bezel and the horizontal viewing angles are poor. With that said, we were able to manage watching a few video clips with a friend while laying on a couch.