Acer Aspire One Cloudbook review

We love Chromebooks. They’re fast, lightweight, provide a great web experience, and they’re so cheap you could leave them at the beach or drop them in the toilet and not worry. With everything saved online, the only thing you’d lose is whatever text you typed in the browser. And with some extensions these days, maybe not even that.

Acer’s been at the front of the Chromebook phenomenon, and we even called their Chromebook C720 i3 one of the top 12 in tech last year. But what if you made a Windows laptop that inexpensive? We already saw a good example in HP’s Stream 11 earlier this year running Windows 8.1, but how about Windows 10?

That’s what the Acer Aspire One Cloudbook promises to be, the first low-priced Windows 10 laptop on the market that’s worth the price. Starting at $170, with a free year of Office 365 (a $70 value), is the Cloudbook the fruitcake of laptops or can it make a home in your messenger bag?

The answer in three words: Is that performance?

Yes, it’s technically a laptop

After hearing that the iPad Pro is as powerful as a desktop computer, talking about a lightweight, low-priced laptop is weird. It’s $630 cheaper than Apple’s upcoming tablet, and that’s complete with a full-size keyboard, trackpad, and expandable memory. With prices like this, who needs a tablet?

$170 is a tough price to believe. The Cloudbook comes complete with a 1.6GHz dual-core Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM, running the latest-generation of Intel chips that’s faster what most Chromebooks have. The paltry 16GB of flash storage is mostly spent by the operating system, though even our 32GB test model only had 18GB available. Thankfully Windows 10 supports effectively unlimited expandable storage, so tack on those USB flash drives and an SD card slot.

For the more storage-hungry, there is a larger 14-inch model that comes with up to 64GB of storage. The 11-inch 32GB model sells for $190, and the 14-inch models will run for $200 and $250 later this year.

But for this price, something has to give. And it does: Performance is next to awful, restricted almost entirely to running one application at a time. Which is kind of nice, actually, if focus is one of those things that you need to start doing. Before your head explodes.

Windows 10 doesn't pair well with budget devices

What sets the Cloudbook above the lower-end competition is the quality of the hardware. So let’s be clear: This computer is painfully slow. If you want to run a handful of tabs, keep that free year of Word and Excel open while typing away with a few web apps, or run some anti-virus software and anything else...you’re going to have a bad time. Windows 10 is a resource hog. The Cloudbook chugs along like a train that’s trying to speed up, but never does.

Image: James Pikover/Mashable

The current version of Windows 10 just isn’t as efficient or fast as Windows 8.1. We love Windows 10; it’s a great operating system with a ton of new features. And lord knows I love talking to Cortana. But it’s slower, and for a computer with low-performance components like the lower-speed RAM and flash storage, the Cloudbook just can’t keep up.

After a day of heartbreak getting over my spoiled sense of entitlement that a computer should do everything all at once, I switched tactics and only did one thing at a time. Basically, I used the Cloudbook like I would an older iPad. And that made a world of difference. Which is kind of nice when you’re used to doing 50 things at once and need a better way. And for that, the Cloudbook turns out to be pretty darn good.

Great keyboard, average screen

First, the Cloudbook is tiny and light, just 2.54 pounds and 0.7-inches tall. It’s so light it's not even noticeable in a bag. The Cloudbook is barely thicker and heavier than an 11-inch MacBook Air.

Image: James Pikover/Mashable

Then there’s the near-perfect keyboard, a full-size number pad with smaller keys that are taller and bouncier. It’s one of the best laptop keyboards I’ve ever typed on thanks to the very tactile and responsive keys. This entire review was written on its keyboard; it’s better than the overwhelming majority of laptop keyboards, though it’s not great for fat fingers. Having handed off the laptop to some colleagues, let’s just say if you’re a butcher, stick with typing through Cortana.

The trackpad is also surprisingly good. It’s large for the laptop’s size and comfortable to use for extended periods.

Everything else about the Cloudbook matches the price. The case is solid, with a plastic frame, that at the top feels like faux leather, but it attracts fingerprints that are almost impossible to clean off. The connector ports look like they are straight up missing corners.

The low-resolution 1,366 x 768 display isn’t bright and isn’t usable in bright conditions outdoors, though if you’re just crunching numbers, answering emails, or writing an essay, this panel is more than enough.

Full Windows for the low-budgeted, but why?

Great computers push the limits of technology in some way, either packing more into a smaller space, providing more power than you could ever need, or have a brand new function that didn’t exist.

The Acer Cloudbook is the cheapest Windows 10 computer you can buy. Check out our review on @mashabletech A photo posted by @jamezrp on Sep 13, 2015 at 10:40am PDT

Budget laptops aren’t thrilling, but quality should never come at the price of budget. That’s why we love Chromebooks: great performance with lower-priced components thanks to excellent software.

Windows 10 isn’t there yet. A $170 laptop with a full version of Windows 10 and a free year of Office 365 is ambitious, but it’s slow. The Aspire One Cloudbook would make for an amazing Chromebook, but with Windows at the helm, this poor laptop just doesn’t stand a chance when multitasking. Run one thing at a time, and sure, it speeds along...but who does that?

Which is where the kerfuffle steps in. People looking for a simple computer for answering emails and writing up really basic documents will like the Cloudbook because it’s thin, light, and cheap. As nice as it is to have a full version of Windows 10 so you can run specific Windows applications, there’s a web version of just about everything.