Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480

Netbooks may have lost a lot of their momentum to tablets like the Apple iPad 2 and HP TouchPad, but by and large they still have superior hardware. So if you need an easily portable system, the Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480 may be a good way to go. It comes equipped with an AMD dual-core C-50 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) that gives it a fair (if not remarkable) dose of processing power for the price, and improved graphics for playing most games not of the intense 3D variety. This Aspire One has little else to offer in the way of features, but given its $329.99 (list at Costco) price tag that's not too bad a trade-off.

Design
The Aspire One 722-BZ480 has a plastic Espresso Black chassis, with a glossy lid that also sports a dynamic ripple design. The system measures one inch thick and weighs 2.95 pounds. This puts it on the lighter side for 11-inch netbooks: The HP Pavilion dm1z ($449 direct, 4.5 stars) weighs 3.4 pounds and the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e ($580 direct, 4 stars) weighs 3.3 pounds.

With an 11.6-inch screen displaying in 1,366-by-768 resolution, the 722-BZ480 is capable of playing 720p HD video. You can utilize the HDMI port to connect your computer to your HDTV, but your content will be limited to streaming and digital downloads as there's no optical drive. At least the 5,400rpm 320GB hard drive should be able to contain a fair amount of media. If you want more capacity, a few netbooks have 500GB; but, as theSony VAIO VPC-YB15KX/S ($599.99 list, 4 stars) demonstrates, they also have higher prices.

The keyboard is a full-size one in the chiclet style; I noticed some flexing on it while I was typing. If you're looking for a better typing experience, the ThinkPad X120e's keys have a comfort curve. The touchpad provided smooth navigation, but I found the single mouse button to be quite stiff.

Features
The Aspire One 722-BZ480's features can be summed up in a list of its connectivity options: It has a multiformat card reader, headphone and microphone jacks, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and three USB 2.0 ports. Unfortunately, the Aspire One 722-BZ480 comes with a fair amount of bloatware preinstalled, like the NY Times Reader, Nook for PC, Skype, and links to Netflix and eBay?and that's just on the desktop. Because all of these are easy to acquire yourself, they clutter up a new PC when you probably want a fresh start.

Performance
Because of its modest components?the 1GHz dual-core APU and 2GB of DDR3 RAM?the 722-BZ480 was only a fair performer in productivity tasks. On our PCMark 7 overall-system test the Aspire One 722 scored 775, 162 points less than we saw on the Lenovo IdeaPad S205 ($579.99 direct, 3.5 stars), which has a more powerful AMD APU and more memory. We saw similar results on our CineBench R11.5 test, with the Acer scoring 0.36 and the IdeaPad S205 managing a significantly higher 0.63.

The 722-BZ480's APU uses Radeon HD 6250M better suited for displaying Flash videos than playing 3D games. The system delivered unplayable frame rates in both Crysis (11 frames per second, or fps) and Lost Planet 2 (8.5fps) at medium quality settings. You will, however, be able to play lower-end games like Torchlight at higher settings than you normally could with an Intel Atom?based netbook. But there are still better choices: The HP Pavilion dm1z, which uses an APU with stronger Radeon HD 6310M graphics and still costs less than $450, turned out a 3DMark 06 score of 2,403?656 points higher than the 722-BZ480's 1,747.

The Aspire One 722-BZ480's six-cell 40Wh battery lasted 7 hours 17 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 battery-rundown test. That's a better showing than the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e's 6:30 time, but not quite as long as the 8:40 we saw with the HP Mini 5103 ($650 street, 4 stars) or the 7:53 of the Sony VAIO VPC-YB15KX/S.

The Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480 is a solid netbook for the traveling PC user on a tight budget. Its $329 price point is alluring, and its AMD APU will help it make easy work of online media. If you have another $250 to spend and want more processing and graphics power, you may want to consider the IdeaPad S205 instead; its higher-level APU delivers more punch in both areas. For a more digestible $120 difference, the dm1z gives you even faster parts for the price, 1GB more RAM, a better typing experience, and a faster 7,200rpm hard drive.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480 with several other laptops side by side.

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