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The 6-cell battery puts the 531 into a slanted position.Our test sample had to unfortunately give up a large part of its elegance due to the large, protruding 6-cell battery. This also puts the laptop into a slanted position and raises the rear area up from its respective surface. Unfortunately the battery wobbles a bit, which reduces the overall good impression of quality. Toshiba PA3733U-1BRS
In particular the base unit is particularly dimensionally stable and shows no unusual deformations against large amounts of physical pressure. Unfortunately this is not true for the display overall, which gives a little but still performs well on the whole.Toshiba PA3733U-1BAS
Both hinges give a good impression, which keep the panel in position with regulated force. Making adjustments to the opening angle of the display as well as closing the lid is still possible with one hand only.
You should watch out when stowing the netbook away in a bag, as the display has no kind of locking mechanism, which means that objects could slide in between the keyboard and display.Toshiba PA3732U-1BAS
Reducing the height of the base unit towards the front edge of the device requires a precise positioning of individual ports. The ports are, so to speak, placed on the device in positions depending on their height requirements. This is why the front and the front half of the left and right edges remain free of connections. Toshiba PABAS218
In the middle area on the side there are the audio ports as well as a cardreader and USB connections. Both of the "biggest" connections, the VGA port and LAN connection are skilfully put by Acer in the back corner, where both connections are shapely integrated into the overall design. Toshiba PABAS209
The Aspire One doesn't just attract attention with its looks, but also in terms of practical use we were pleased with the scope, quality and position of the ports. The Aspire One 531 offers three USB 2.0 ports overall which is the same as some 17-inch laptops. Also the consistent positioning of possibly permanently occupied ports like the VGA output, the LAN port or the mains adapter is convincing.Toshiba PA3672U-1BARS
Finally the practical test of the VGA port went without criticism. On our test monitor, a Dell 2408wfp the small laptop conjured up a first class and sharp image with a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. We're talking about a proud 61 centimetres diagonally compared to the puny 25.5 centimetres on the internal screen.Toshiba PA3732U-1BAS
Acer has meant well with the addition of an SD expansion port to the cardreader. Here SD-cards can be inserted that can be used as additional memory. With the inbuilt 160GB hard drive the need for such a solution is limited.Toshiba PABAS078
Right: audio, 2x USB, mains adapter, LANAcer offers the full range when it comes to communications modules. Whilst LAN 10/100 Mbps and Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g still belong to the mandatory equipment of the laptop, specific models are also equipped with Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. In additional there is optional integrated UMTS/HSPA mobile broadband internet, at least according to Acer. Toshiba PA3615U-1BRS
Until now, however, there are no models equipped as such to be found in German-speaking countries of Europe. Experience shows, however, that an integrated broadband modem is likely, adding what we expect to be 100.- Euro to the cost, which would make the price of the Aspire One 531 nearly 500.- Euro. Toshiba PA3615U-1BRM
When it comes to operating system, Windows XP Home is used, which is experiencing a rebirth, so to speak, what with the emergence of the netbook, whilst Vista is dealt a further blow in its not-so-glorious history by being dropped for Windows XP. Due to the low performance requirements Windows XP is still the preferred OS for mini-laptops.Like many other netbooks, the Acer Aspire One 531 only comes with a 12 month guarantee.Toshiba PABAS115
Quite clearly the same keyboard is taken from the Aspire D150 and put into use in Aspire One 531 at hand. Therefore this netbook also gets a keyboard with the full range of inputs, which, when it comes to key size, ranks among the smallest comparable competitor (Asus Eee 1002HA, Samsung NC10).Toshiba PA3591U-1BAS
Certainly after a certain acclimatisation period on the Aspire One 531 extremely fast and error-free text input can be attained. The typing feel is characterised by a particularly small stroke. The quiet background noise even when typing quickly is positively viewed as well as the fact that the keyboard is hardly prone to being bent under pressure.Toshiba PA3591U-1BRS
The multi-touch function of the integrated touchpad is seen as a rather useful feature. This is especially useful for frequently used multimedia functions such as "next, zoom and scroll", which are easy to configure.Toshiba PA3589U-1BRS
The response time of the touchpad is consistently good, however the size of the pad at just 6.5 x 3.5 cm makes extended use unpleasant. Provided you want a central input function with intelligent multi-touch features on your touchpad, you simply don't come around to suitable dimensions for this purpose - compare to the current Apple MacBooks.Toshiba PA3522U-1BRS
The Acer Aspire One 531 uses the typical netboToshiba PA3522U-1BASok display format of 1024x600 pixels (WSVGA). Furthermore LED technology is put into use, which offers comparably better brightness and also low energy consumption compared to CCFL displays.
We can confirm Acer's quote for brightness at 200 nit with the measurements we obtained in the tests. We could observe a maximum brightness in the centre left display quadrants with brightness even reaching 226 cd/m². At 83.8% the panel achieves an acceptable illumination. Toshiba PABAS092
Subjectively the panel offers acceptable colour reproduction with an average brightness of 209 cd/m². In terms of contrast the display admittedly falls behind our expectations with a maximum contrast ratio of 121:1, whilst the reflective display does nothing to help this.Toshiba PA3382U-1BRS
Strong reflections in unfavourable lighting conditionsDue to its good brightness the Acer Aspire One 531 has good conditions for outdoor use. Indeed the reflective display surfaces throw a spanner in the works. As standard for this kind of display, strong reflections often appear, Toshiba PA3382U-1BAS especially in unfavourable and bright lighting conditions, which are mostly to be encountered outdoors, so that you can only see your own reflection in the display. Certainly, these glossy displays also lead to a rapid tiring of the eyes with disturbing reflections indoors, and eyes must constantly "fade out" these overlaying reflections.
Also the display deserves no prizes when it comes to viewing angle stability. In the vertical field of vision at low viewing angles distortions to the image appear rapidly, whilst in the horizontal field you have to primarily fight with reinforced reflections.Toshiba PA3384U-1BAS
There's nothing new to report about the Acer Netbook at hand when it comes to performance. Here, the latest version of the Intel Atom CPU comes into play (N280), which with a clock speed of 1.66 GHz provides solid office performance on Windows XP. Toshiba PA3384U-1BRS
The Intel GMA 950 onboard chip provides the graphical solution, which is likewise consistently sufficient for basic applications. In the 3D Mark 2001 Benchmark test the Acer Aspire One N280 achieves 3215 points, which is actually a best compared to other, similarly equipped netbooks. When it comes to its capacity to play games, it is admittedly no bed of roses.Toshiba PABAS052
3D Mark 2001In principle the power of the Atom N280 CPU 1.66 Ghz and the GMA 950 should be enough to render HD videos. In a practical test with the "Coral-Reef-Adventure" trailer (1080p) we noticed at first extremely strong jittering. A refreshed attempt went clearly more fluidly as the first test, yet it at the while resulted in short judders. A peek at the CPU utilisation, however, showed a constant 57%, which means that other components should be responsible for this drop in performance.Toshiba PA3399U-1BRS
Further tests of practical applications were carried out, for example of music and video playback, surfing the internet, simple word processing and spreadsheet processing, which all ran problem free. It's only the somewhat longer waiting times that you have to deal with when it comes to this device,Toshiba PA3399U-1BAS in comparison with the performance oriented dual-core CPUs that we have all gotten used to.
The hard drive carries authority, in the case of the Acer Aspire One 531 a disk from Toshiba (MK1652GSX) with a capacity of 160GB and a rotational speed of 5400rpm. In the HDTune benchmark test the mass storage device indeed showed good transfer rates of up to 61.8 MB/sec, but admittedly a somewhat longer access time of 18.7 milliseconds.Toshiba PA3399U-2BAS
Acer configures the Aspire One 531 ex factory with 1024MB DDR2 of RAM. There is only one slot for memory modules, meaning that in the case of a future upgrade, the installed 1GB module must be removed. A maximum of 2GB RAM is supported. For basic office applications you should get on with 1GB of RAM on Windows XP. Only by more advanced picture editing and complex applications would a RAM upgrade make sense.Toshiba PABAS174
In modest Office use you can notice that the fans are constantly running. Although this is only noticeable as long as you concentrate on the noise but at just 31.4 dB(A) on our scale the Acer Aspire One 531 remains in an uncritical and unobtrusive range of noise. However, Toshiba PA3782U-1BRSthe hard drive stood out as somewhat unpleasant, which stands out time and time again from the otherwise subtle background sounds with a clearly audible rumble. When idle with maximum power saving settings we could also notice that the fan noises were silent. The fan noises only come about suddenly as soon as minimal load is applied, meaning that as the fan is only quiet for a short time, this aspect is actually not worth mentioning.Toshiba PA3783U-1BRS
Under load the system's fans get faster and with that so too does the noise from the netbook increase. Running demanding programs, the device achieved a noise level of 35.3 dB(A) and the system reached its peak of 41.1 dB(A) using the entire extent of the CPU's and GPU's resources for an extended period of time. In practise this scenario would, however, rarely be seen.Toshiba PA3784U-1BRS
As usual we tested the maximum surface temperatures of the case after several hours of constant load of the hardware. The Acer Aspire One 531 reached somewhat higher temperatures than expected, despite the inclusion of energy efficient components. On the upper side of the base unit a maximum temperature of 38.3 °C can be observed on the left rear area of the keyboard. The maximum temperatures were indeed somewhat higher on the underside of the case. Here the measured peak of a proud 46.8 °C was observed in the area of the fans. Toshiba PA3785U-1BRS | 
