10.1″ Acer Aspire One – Preview/First Impressions

Acer Aspire One 10-inch We have received our 10.1″ Acer Aspire One (aka the AOD150) this afternoon.

The one I have is the Sapphire Blue model shipping from Amazon.com, the Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165.

It did in fact come with the higher-capacity 6-cell battery, the 5800mAH battery (this is the higher-capacity battery that was accidentally shipped by Acer). I’ve also had three other people email me and confirm that they received the higher capacity battery as well. Note, chances are the models with this higher capacity battery have already all been allocated to pre-orders and are sold out.

Looking at the battery, it’s clearly a production battery, so hopefully it’ll be included in future models. I do like that the battery gives it a slight angle (the keyboard that is).

I’ll be posting a lot of photos and some benchmarks this weekend, but here are my first impressions:
– The 10.1″ Aspire One is slightly deeper and wider than the 8.9″ version.
– The batteries between the 8.9″ Acer Aspire One and the 10.1″ version are compatible. I successfully used a 6600mAh 9-cell battery from Amazon.com. I’m not necessarily recommending you do this – it may void some kind of warranty, but the batteries can be swapped between the models.
– The A/C adapters have a slightly different voltage.
– If you get lucky enough to get one of the ones with a 5800mAh, the battery life is definitely over 7 hours, without adding much weight/bulk.
– The touchpad is very responsive. Getting used to the button placement wasn’t hard (versus the 8.9″ version)
– The Sapphire Blue version is definitely a fingerprint magnet. It doesn’t bother me, but I could see some people being bothered by it.

As far as weight, the 10.1″ version is 2.25 pounds (1.02kg) without the battery. The 8.9″ version is slightly under 2 pounds (0.91 kg) without its battery.

Even though the 10.1″ AAO is slightly larger, it doesn’t feel like it. I do agree with some of the reviews that mentioned the keyboard should have went to the edges, but chances are that might have driven up the price. This is one of the best values around right now. If you are comfortable with the 8.9″ version, you would be comfortable with the 10.1″ version.