Acer Aspire R11

A CHEAP AND CHEERFUL CONVERTIBLE.

IT’S AMAZING THE di erence an SSD can make. Nearly every device in our roundup came equipped with one, but Acer instead chose to use a much larger, yet slower, 500GB mechanical hard drive in the Aspire R11. e di erence was obvious as soon as we started using the machine, with a slight pause between when we asked the machine to do something, and when it actually responded. is delay was usually just a split-second, but enough to notice, and loading our benchmarks took substantially longer than on an SSD.

ankfully the rest of the system is well specced for this price point. e 11.6 inch screen mightn’t have the widest viewing angles, but the clever hinges allow it to be used in tent or presentation mode. It’s also touch enabled, a nice inclusion at this price point, which is o set by the lower resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels.

Tucked away under the hood is Intel’s Pentium N3700 Processor, a quad-cored critter with a top speed of 2.4GHz. Paired with 4GB of DDR3 memory, this hardware combo should be enough to deliver respectable performance, yet the R11 occupied the bottom rungs of our performance ladders. e blame lays squarely at the feet of the mechanical hard drive, which simply can’t keep up with ash-based drives. On the plus side, battery life was simply incredible, hitting almost four hours of heavy use, the second best in our roundup.

e lack of an SSD doesn’t help this affordable laptop win any favours, but thankfully there’s the option to buy the R11 with an SSD installed. It’s only 32GB in size, but it’ll make a world of difference.