Acer Ferrari One

Acer Ferrari One

Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Acer Laptop Battery

The Ferrari name is associated with fast cars, speedy performance, and good looks. Apply that to the laptop world and you’d naturally expect a notebook bearing the Ferrari name to share these characteristics. Acer certainly turns heads with its Ferrari One notebook ($599 as tested), a sleek system that is to traditional ultraportables what the Ferrari F430 with battery like Acer BTP-43D1 Battery, Acer TravelMate 220 Battery, Acer BTP-58A1 Battery, acer BTP-60A1 Battery, Acer TravelMate 240 Battery, Acer BTP-52EW Battery, Acer BTP-63D1 Battery, Acer BTP-42C1 Battery, acer BTP-44A3 Battery, Acer BTP-550P Battery, Acer AS07A31 Battery, Acer AS07A51 Battery is to the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Packed with an AMD Athlon CPU (instead of an Intel ULV processor) and ATI Radeon graphics, Acer’s Ferrari One obviously wants to set itself apart from the crowd. But will it speed past the competition to the checkered flag or end up in a twisted wreck on the side of the track?

Though the Ferrari One is listed as a netbook on Amazon.com, the 1.2-GHz AMD Athlon X2 L310 processor qualifies it to race with ultraportable systems. But to see how much of a nitro boost AMD’s CPU provides, we’ll also compare it to netbook averages.

The AMD processor and generous 4GB of RAM earned the Ferrari One a score of 2,110 on PCMark Vantage, which measures overall system performance. Compared to a single core ULV system like the $479 Toshiba Satellite T115, the Ferrari One comes out 657 points ahead of that notebook’s score of 1,453. The system also easily trounces the netbook average of 1,131 and the HP Mini 311 from Verizon Wireless (1,227). However, the Ferrari One’s score is more than 600 points behind the ultraportable category average (2,766), and is bested by the $399 Acer Aspire 1410 (2,475), $683 Dell Inspiron 11z (2,442), and the $549 Gateway EC1430u (2,700), all of which are equipped with dual core Intel ULV processors.

The 5,400-rpm, 250GB hard drive booted Windows 7 Home Premium in a swift 59 seconds, two seconds under the average. The Aspire 1410 and Gateway EC1430u were both slightly faster at 55 and 50 seconds, respectively. The Ferrari One proved faster than the average ultraportable running the LAPTOP Transfer Test, completing the time trials in 3 minutes and 29 seconds for a speedy transfer rate of 24.4 MBps. Not only did it zoom past both the average netbook (15.3 MBps) and the average ultraportable score (20.9 MBps), but it trumped every other ULV notebook in the race, including the Aspire 1410 (19.6 MBps), Inspiron 11z (21.9 MBps), and the Gateway EC1430u (22.2 MBps).

Transcoding slowed the Ferrari One down a bit, with a final time of 16 minutes and 33 seconds. That’s about 3 minutes behind the average ultraportable (13:39) and behind the Aspire 1410 (12:47), Inspiron 11z (13:11), and Gateway EC1430u (11:33). It still bested the average netbook’s time of 29:42.

Wireless throughput at 15 feet from the router was a decent 19.7 Mbps for the Ferrari One, though this is a bit below the average of 20.4 Mbps. The 50 foot score of 16.4 Mbps is also slightly behind the ultraportable average (17.1 Mbps). You’ll still be able to stream video from Hulu at this range, but may have to let the buffer fill a little before you can enjoy smooth playback.

Though the Ferrari One is a fast machine, it doesn’t offer the best endurance in its class. The battery life of 4 hours and 41 minutes is decent considering the discrete graphics card. However, the HP Mini 311 from Verizon Wireless offered 4:52, eleven minutes longer than the Ferrari One. Still, at more than 30 minutes below the ultraportable average (5:24) and well behind the Acer 1410 and Gateway EC1430u (6:33 and 8:11, respectively), consumers will have to decide which is more important: graphics power or long battery life.

Just as with many sports cars, owners of the Acer Ferrari One will pay more than they would for a comparable, but less sexy system, and trade in better mileage for a sleek design. Most will choose this ultraportable because of the Ferrari brand and because it offers souped-up graphics, and the $599 price tag—$200 above the Aspire 1410—gives owners the aura of luxury. Consumers who are more interested in overall performance and longer battery life should opt for the 1410, but if aesthetics are a priority, then this is the right ultraportable for you.