Acer Aspire 1 A114-32-C1YA, 14" Full HD, Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC, Office 365 Personal, Windows 10 Home in S mode

This laptop is a great buy that fits nicely between "cheap" and "too cheap". Youre obviously not going to be playing graphics intensive games on this. Thats not what its for. If youre looking for a solid internet/email/office apps laptop that is light weight, has decent battery life, is surprisingly speedy, and is cheap, this is it. I personally use mine for programming classes and meetups. It runs Visual Studio Code with a dozen Chrome pages and LibreOffice open no problem. If you want to watch some YouTube or Netflix, it does that nicely too. Ive never noticed any video lags or stuttering. Most apps open up in about 5 to 7 seconds. Chrome opens in less than 5 usually. I also have Linux (Ubuntu 18) running in dual boot. The only problem I have faced with running Linux is that you have to put the touch pad into Basic mode in the BIOS before using Linux as it doesnt support the touch pad in Advanced mode. Advanced mode allows the touch pad to use advanced gestures like pinching and three finger swipes. I dont really miss it in Linux honestly as I dont usually use those gestures much in Windows. As many have mentioned, the biggest draw back to this laptop is the screen quality and the storage space. If you find that 64GBs isnt enough for you, this problem can easily be solved by an external SD card, USB drive, or cloud storage. One issue with the SD card reader is that the SD card sticks out about 5/8 of an inch. This would mean youd probably want to remove it before storing the laptop in a bag. Another option is to buy a Micro SD card and a Shortening Micro SD Card Adapter. These are used in some models of MacBooks and in Raspberry PIs. This would make it so the card sticks out only about 1/4 of an inch, which would make a better permanent space solution. I have not personally done this yet, but I have read that it works. As for the screen, theres not much you can do there. It is obvious this is the area that Acer decided to make the most cuts, and I cant say that was a bad decision. Since graphics is not going to be an important task on this machine, the screen is going to be adequate for most tasks. Really the only time that I notice it is when Im trying to share the screen with someone next to me. There simply isnt enough of a viewing angle for a second person to get the best view. But when Im engrossed in coding, or browsing the internet, I dont notice the screen that much. This laptop comes loaded with Windows 10 Home S. The "S" means that it comes in what Microsoft calls "S Mode." S Mode simply means that you can only use Microsoft approved apps from the Microsoft store. In order to run third party apps like Chrome, or LibreOffice, you have to switch out of S Mode. This is a permanent change. Once out of S Mode, you cant go back, although I dont suspect most people will care. You will then have a regular version of Windows 10 Home for free. This is a quick and easy switch, and Im guessing most people would be better off doing this right when you get your laptop. If you need Windows 10 Pro, you will need to purchase the upgrade from the Microsoft Store, which is $99 at the time of this review (11/9/18). The bottom line is, you have to make sacrifices somewhere when you are this far down on the price spectrum. Its really about what is going to fit your needs the most.

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If you are in the market for a laptop for basic surfing and email needs (which most phones can do), or for mostly word processing, then this device may be a good option for you. Anything beyond that may end with you quickly running into issues with storage space and speed. The laptop does not use a standard HDD or SSD - instead it uses an eMMC chip. These tend to run faster than standard Hard Disc Drives but are nowhere near the speed and performance of an SSD. There are some questions about how many rewrites they can take before failing but, with the rate at which most people replace laptops, this is probably not a huge issue. The biggest thing that surprised me is that you get basically 40 GB of storage (64 GB before windows 10 eats up 24 GB). 40 GB is really small for a new laptop. You can, of course, use external drives, etc but adding new programs will eat into the storage space on your basic drive. Windows 10 S means that you can only install windows software from the app store. This will likely be very frustrating for your average teen but if you need a laptop for a child who wont break down in tears at the thought of being limited from the latest popular app or game, then this may not be a problem. This also means that games like Minecraft will need to be the windows 10 version to work on this laptop. The limitations of windows 10 S also mean you cannot run chrome which will be hugely frustrating if that is what you are used to. I like Acer and have a chromebook and a laptop from this manufacturer that work very well. Like them, the keyboard layout works very well for me. I have included a picture of the keyboard so that you can see the layout. There are some keyboard layouts that I simply cannot get used to and not having an intuitive layout can be a deal breaker. This laptop, though, is a very basic entry level student laptop which seems to be trying to compete with chromebooks. At the current price point, even if you are sold on windows, I think one can easily find a more powerful device with more storage for a comparable price. You get a years subscription to Office 365 - which I personally dont like because you need to keep paying for a yearly subscription once you get used to it. If you want to install free LibreOffice or OpenOffice you will need to get rid of Windows 10 S and switch up to plain windows 10. Bottom line, this may work for you if you have very specific needs that will not be changing. Personally, I would pay a little bit extra to get a stronger laptop with more storage space.

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Only two complaints about this notebook, battery can run down fairly quickly and my main gripe touch pad is a little wonky. I ended up going with a wireless mouse. Keep it plugged in when not on the go and use a mouse and its a great budget notebook at the price. Good screen display pretty light weight and keyboard is fine.

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The Acer Aspire 1 is the Microsoft answer to the continuing onslaught of affordable Google Chromebooks, featuring decent specs, at a downright affordable price. While I would not want to use it as my only machine, as a secondary device, it has much to offer. An immediate downside is that it ships with Windows 10S, which is a limited version of Windows, that can only install apps from the Windows Store. However, this is easily remedied, and it is a free upgrade to Windows 10 Home, which then allows any Windows program to be used, and is recommended to intermediate and advanced users. At this price, we can’t expect amazing, but the Acer Aspire 1 is a decent laptop. While the exterior is a lightly textured plastic, it is quite thin with a fanless design, and the keyboard is good although the keys have shallow travel. The touchscreen is also serviceable. The display is also ok, and with a 1080p resolution, although it could be brighter, and have richer colors. Still, it does not look bargain to my eye. The 3 USB ports, and HDMI port along with an Ethernet port match up well against many mainstream laptops these days. The CPU is the Celeron N4000, and while it is a dual core part, is the newer Gemini Lake architecture, and has enough horsepower for routine tasks, such as email, word processing and basic web surfing. The Acer Aspire 1 is gimped in a few departments. The first is the “hard drive” which is 64 GB of eMMC memory, which is a cousin to that flash card in your old digital camera, with speeds more akin to a mechanical hard drive than an SSD. The space is limited, but it should have enough for a Windows upgrade, unlike the 32 GB machines. There is also only 4 GB of RAM, which you can feel when you open up more than a few tabs on your browser. Finally, while there are two speakers, they are fairly small, and the audio lacks punch and bass, which is typical for this type of machine. Overall, the Acer Aspire 1 is a more than decent bargain machine. While not suited to advanced tasks such as video editing or gaming, for the basics such as email or web browsing it gets the job done. When I pushed it, it was even able to stream a 4K video quite smoothly. This makes it an ideal device for a student to take to class, a senior citizen, or to take on vacation.

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I have a middle-school aged child and as he gets older, more of his school assignments are done online. He needs the computer more and more to write papers or hand in assignments in his school portal. After reading reviews for SEVERAL laptops, I decided to take a chance on this one as the reviews were good and the product description was exactly what I needed. This was a great purchase and I would definitely recommend. This came with a 1 year Microsoft Office subscription which is perfect as my son uses Word to type up a lot of his school papers. All software was easily downloaded at start up and the computer was ready to use within 30 minutes of taking it out of the box. The set up was easy and contrary to some reviews, the set up DID NOT use up all of the available memory on this PC. Pros: This is not a Chromebook product, most inexpensive options were Chromebook and this is a standard PC that uses Windows. Screen size and clarity are good, the picture is clear on photos and videos - my son watches A LOT of YouTube videos so I can personally attest to the screen clarity. Lightweight, this PC is not heavy, only weighs a few pounds. Slim build of the product is nice, it allows for easy storage in a sleeve or laptop bag - this PC is not bulky at all. After set up, you can easily link this PC to your other Microsoft/Windows products (like Xbox, or other PCs) with your Microsoft Log-in information. Cons: You get what you paid for price wise - if you need this for anything more than basic browsing, games, Microsoft Office (basic documents) then you may want to consider either something with more memory or buying external storage - that isnt so much a con as it is something to make note of. The Microsoft Office will need to be renewed which will be an additional cost after the 1 year subscription. Was this review helpful helpful? Let me know!

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Solid laptop. Users...first thing you need to google and do is to take this product out of Windows S mode

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