Finding ways to differentiate your product in the notebook market can be difficult. Most companies are currently going with the Intel Atom N270/N280 CPU combined with the 945GSE chipset. The result is that performance is nearly identical between similarly equipped netbooks, although as we saw with the ASUS 1005HA and the GIGABYTE M1022, there are still differences when it comes to battery life and features. Acer looks to separate their latest Aspire One 751h from the crowd by bumping the screen size up to 11.6", which also has the very noticeable benefit of providing you with a 1366x768 native resolution. Here's a rundown of the features and specifications.

The upgrade in LCD and chassis size would normally result in lower battery life, but Acer counteracts that by switching to a lower power Atom Z520 CPU and the US15W (Poulsbo) chipset (with SCH LPC Southbridge). The Atom Z520 processor isn't actually that much slower than the N280, as it runs at 1333 MHz in comparison to 1667 MHz; it's a difference of 25%, but netbooks aren't designed to be fast systems in the first place. Giving up a bit of CPU power in order to get a larger LCD is a compromise many people would be happy to make, provided there aren't other drawbacks. The change in chipset is more of a mixed bag, offering clearly inferior 3D performance as well as noticeably slower 2D performance. Video playback without proper hardware acceleration (i.e. YouTube) suffers a lot on the US15W/GMA 500, with significant stuttering any time you try to interact with the system -- i.e. opening a menu. However, with proper hardware support you can get very good x264 playback, including up to 1080p support. Try that on a GMA 950 with an Atom CPU and it will fail miserably.

It's worth noting that we received the Aspire One 751h-1192 with a 6-cell battery, and as you might expect that means roughly twice the battery life of models that use a 3-cell battery. There are numerous other 751h models available, including options that ship with 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive (i.e. the AO751h-1196). Given the much higher starting price of around $470, you'd be better off buying the base model and upgrading the components on your own, but other SKUs have better pricing.

Acer Aspire One 751h Overview

As usual, we'll start with a pictorial overview of the system.

The short summary is that the Aspire One 751h includes everything you'd expect in a modern netbook. You get WiFi (only 802.11g), Fast Ethernet, three USB ports, a VGA port, and a flash memory reader. There's nothing particularly unique about the package, with the exception of the larger than average 11.6" LCD panel. However, that's a pretty major difference, especially when we take into account the native 1366x768 resolution. We have had numerous complaints about the 1024x600 resolution used on many smaller netbooks, and overall we definitely preferred the slightly larger LCD on the 751h. Other manufacturers are also coming out with 11.6" netbooks, but this is the first one we've received and there's a noticeable difference.

Like many other manufacturers, Acer uses a glossy plastic finish on the 751h. We received a sapphire blue model, and fingerprints are easily visible. If that's a concern, we would recommend looking for one of the models that comes in white. The Acer Aspire One AO751h-1273 is a great choice and it includes the 250GB hard drive and 2GB RAM upgrades, but it also ships with a Vista Home Basic "downgrade" which is unfortunate in our opinion. Vista just doesn't perform that well on netbooks, though it looks like Windows 7 will do a lot better. Of course, you can save a bit of money and get the same specifications as the 1192 we're reviewing with the white AO751h-1885.

That's the one rather confusing aspect of Acer's model numbering scheme: tons of similar but not quite identical products that all have the same family name. Our advice would be to look for a model that comes with Windows XP and make sure you get a 6-cell battery. If you can find such a system in a color you like with 2GB RAM, so much the better. We like the overall design and our only real complaint is that the Poulsbo chipset used in the 751h isn't as fast as the 945GSE used in many other netbooks. We'll have to wait for Pine Trail/Pineview to get the package we really want, complete with an integrated memory controller and IGP. The Pine Trail platform netbooks should ship in early 2010 (if not sooner).

Netbook Performance Comparison

You can read about our testing setup and the other laptops used in our previous GIGABYTE M1022 review. None of the results changed for this article, so we'll dispense with most of the commentary to keep things short.

The performance picture shows that the Atom Z520/Poulsbo combination is clearly slower than the Atom N280/945GSE platform. How much of the slowdown comes from the 25% lower CPU clock varies by application, and you can see by the 3DMark results that the GMA 500 is anything but a high-performance 3D solution. In fact, in 3D applications the GMA 950 is anywhere from 45% to 75% faster than the GMA 500. Overall performance ends up somewhere between the old ASUS Eee PC 4G and the more recent Eee PC 901, which is still typically "fast enough" for office and Internet use.

One element of performance that's not immediately visible from the above graphs is the video playback capabilities. All of the other systems are able to handle 720p x264 decoding -- albeit barely in the case of the 1005HA and M1022. Those two netbooks require the use of the CoreAVC codec in order to avoid dropping frames. Unfortunately, the Atom Z520 isn't able to decode HD x264 videos without severe stuttering. The good news is that the US15W/GMA 500 chipset includes support for HD video, provided you have the right software. PowerDVD 8 -- included on the system -- has an H.264/AVC codec that works with the chipset and easily handles x264 decoding. The Z520 CPU can also handle less strenuous codecs on its own (HD DivX and Xvid for example), but we do have to warn that any multitasking -- even opening menus -- while watching videos causes severe stuttering.

Final Update: After further testing, I have revised the above text to summarize the video codec situation better. Initially, I was not able to view x264 videos, but with some searching and suggestions from readers I finally got it sorted out. Worth noting is that testing under Windows 7 did not go so well, but Intel doesn't yet offer official Windows 7 drivers for the GMA 500 -- you have to use the Vista drivers, and I experienced numerous crashes after going that route. I did not test Vista, but others report no serious issues, and under XP things worked fine for the most part. I still get the occasional crash when launching some applications (particularly video players with HD content), and it appears to be a driver issue. The latest GMA 500 XP drivers are "for developers", so they're essentially beta still. For x264 playback acceleration, I used Media Player Classic - Home Cinema and the PowerDVD 8 H.264/AVC Decoder (set it as the preferred codec in the External Filters section).

General Windows Performance

Quite a few people also asked for some general performance numbers in terms of Windows boot/shutdown, hibernate/resume, and sleep/wake times. These obviously vary quite a bit between runs, depending on what you've been doing on the computer. If you have a bunch of open applications, it will take longer for the system to enter sleep mode for example. We performed these tests on all of the netbooks and laptops from an empty Windows desktop, and we used the best-case result for each system. As a side note, all of these tests benefit greatly from a fast SSD, though again we have to question whether spending a $200+ on an SSD for a $350 netbook makes sense. Regardless, SSDs will help application load times as well as Windows boot/hibernate/sleep times. We also need to note that the NV52 and NV58 run Windows Vista 64-bit, which took noticeably longer in the hibernate/resume tests. That's expected since both Gateway systems have 4GB of RAM, but we also included results with Windows XP 32-bit as a point of reference.

Outside of the Windows Vista notebooks, the Acer 751h tends to place at the back of the pack in these tests. However, boot and resume times are better than the GIGABYTE M1022 by virtue of the fact that Acer has a much faster POST time. Booting, shutting down, hibernating, and resuming are all far more painful to endure than a simple sleep/wake, and it's there that the netbooks do very well. When you combine the great battery life with fast sleep/wake times, you can easily get a full day of work/school done without the need to connect to an AC outlet. Speaking of which, let's look at the battery life comparison.

Netbook Battery Life Comparison

We run many scenarios for our battery life tests. Since most netbooks don't include optical drives, we ripped our standard test DVD to a hard drive and copied those files over. Obviously there's a benefit to not powering a spinning DVD, but even without that advantage the netbooks provide much better battery life than higher performance laptops. We also have DivX HD, and Xvid tests to show if there's a difference in codec performance -- as noted, smooth/acceptable x264 playback was not (currently) possible on the 751h.

Here's where the compromise in choice of processor/chipset pays off. Acer is able to include a larger LCD panel but still provide very good battery life, nearly equaling the ASUS 1005HA in several tests. It's particularly interesting to note that DivX and Xvid battery life is much closer than DVD battery life -- odd considering the GMA 500 is supposed to have better MPEG-2 support than the GMA 950. Whatever the cause, the ASUS 1005HA offers 12 to 14% more battery life in most instances, but only 5% more battery life in Xvid playback and virtually identical playback during DivX decoding (a difference of less than 2%, which is about the margin of error for our battery life tests). The battery life relative to battery capacity puts things in perspective, and the 751h ends up trailing the ASUS 1005HA by just 2.5%.

Where things get really interesting is in the x264 playback test. Note how the Acer 751h suddenly vaults into first place, and not by a small margin. Thanks to the H.264 acceleration in the GMA 500 (using the PowerDVD 8 H.264/AVC Decoder), the 751h is able to offer 15% more battery life than the ASUS 1005HA. It can even handle 1080p x264 should you have appropriate videos, which is not something you can do on the N280+GMA 950 combination. CPU usage is quite a bit lower on the 751h than the 1005HA/M1022 during x264 playback, typically hovering around 30-40% (compared to 70-80%). With the higher resolution display, the benefits of a higher quality codec like x264 are clearly present, and you don't even need to sacrifice a lot of battery life. It's a shame performance in other areas (i.e. general 2D/3D performance) isn't nearly this impressive.

Netbook Power Requirements

As a corollary to the battery life tests, we also performed measurements of power requirements using the AC adapters and a Kill-A-Watt device. These numbers are only accurate to the nearest Watt, so a difference of 1W (i.e. from rounding) could obscure up to a 12% actual difference in power requirements. Also note that power requirements change when you switch to DC power, so the battery life tests are a better indication of a true power requirements. Still, it's interesting to see just how little power these netbooks consume relative to entry-level laptops -- let alone your typical gaming desktop.

As you would expect, power requirements more or less mirror what we see in the battery life results. Without using EeeCTL to increase the brightness level on the 1005HA, it typically has the lowest power draw of the tested netbooks. Running a 3D application changes the situation slightly, but that's mostly because the GMA 500 doesn't perform nearly as fast as the (already slow) GMA 950.

Netbook LCD Quality

We ran our standard LCD quality tests using ColorEyes Display Pro to see how well this 11.6" LCD panel performs. Unfortunately, this is definitely a case of two steps forward and one step back.

The good news is that we still really like the larger 11.6" panel, and in particular the native 1366x768 resolution helps immensely. Most modern operating systems simply aren't designed for use on a 600 pixel height display. Yes, they can do it, but it's a big step back from modern high-resolution displays. The bad news is that the contrast ratio and color gamut remain very poor. It's not the end of the world, and we would still take the higher resolution LCD over higher quality, lower resolution displays. Ideally, what we want are displays that offer good contrast ratios, good colors, and high resolutions. Considering there are only a few LCD panel manufacturers, that's easier said than done. Frankly, we wish LCD panel manufacturers would simply stop making these ~200:1 contrast ratio displays; they've had the ability to make better panels for half a decade at least.

Acer 751h: Size Matters

The Acer 751h doesn't radically alter what we expect from a netbook, but one of the sore points we've had with every netbook we've used on a regular basis to date has been the low native resolution. This was particularly troublesome on the original Eee PC with a paltry 800x480 LCD, and while the jump to 1024x600 has helped matters it's still far from ideal. With a move to an 11.6" chassis, the 751h finally gives us a resolution that we are happy with in a netbook. We would be okay with a 10.1" chassis, but at the bare minimum we really want WXGA resolutions. The Acer 751h gives us exactly that, and what's more it doesn't have to sacrifice battery life much in doing so.

That's not to say that the 751h is perfect, as there is still definitely room for improvement. Parity is the name of the game when it comes to netbooks, so what Acer has done with the 751h is easy enough to copy -- and in fact there are already other 11.6" netbooks on the market (i.e. the ASUS 1101HA), plus others like the Dell Mini 10 with a high-res 1366x768 panel. How do you differentiate your product from the others when performance is essentially the same? It's in the extras, like tweaking for optimal battery life and providing higher-quality components in the areas you control like the LCD and chassis design.

The LCD resolution is great, but contrast ratio could be much better. The keyboard works well and we have no complaints; we feel it is slightly better than the 10.1" netbooks since the keys are regular size. One of the areas that we aren't particularly pleased with is the touchpad; it works and it isn't horrible, but it definitely isn't as good as the GIGABYTE M1022 touchpad.

One of our biggest complaints is actually Intel's fault: the integrated graphics in the Poulsbo chipset. Despite the name (GMA 500), the graphics and drivers have very little to do with other Intel graphics solutions. GMA 500 uses a PowerVR SGX 535 core licensed from Imagination Technologies, and the result is that the drivers are far less mature than the GMA 950 drivers. It also means that getting good Linux drivers is going to be far more difficult, should you be inclined to try installing some flavor of Linux on your netbook. We did experience a few crashes during testing which appear to be caused by the graphics drivers, and the latest XP drivers available from Intel state that they are "intended for use by developers". Our interpretation is that they're beta drivers, and we would expect future driver releases to help with performance and stability. Unfortunately, fixing graphics driver problems has never been one of Intel's strong points (i.e. the G35 launch). Windows Vista drivers look to be a bit newer/better, but using those drivers under Windows 7 actually resulted in worse stability and performance. In general use, we didn't have any difficulties with the Acer 751h; it was only when we tried to push things to the limit that we experienced problems.

Overall, with the correct tweaks in place we feel netbook users now have another choice: do you want a slightly larger LCD with a higher resolution, or do you prefer slightly better performance and a smaller chassis? Obviously we haven't tested every netbook out there, but from what we've seen our pick for performance and battery life continues to be the ASUS 1005HA, plus it has a nice looking, high-contrast LCD (even if the resolution is lower). The Acer Aspire One 751h is a reasonable alternative that might just be easier on your eyes and hands, and the price and features are right. x264 accelerated playback works well with the PowerDVD 8 H.264/AVC codec and even 1080p works, which is more than we can say for the GMA 950/945GSE combination we see in other netbooks. We would still recommend the 1005HA to most users, but after using the 751h going back to a 1024x600 LCD is more than a little painful. If you place a higher priority on getting a decent resolution than on raw performance, give the 751h a look. If you already have a netbook and you're happy with the current status quo, it's not likely to change your overall impression of what a netbook can be, but choice is always good.

For those waiting for the "Next Big Thing", we have a few other netbook alternatives in our queue that mix things up by providing larger chassis designs with faster graphics while keeping the weight close to three pounds. Looking further out, the next major platform release for netbooks is coming in a few more months. Pine Trail/Pineview should improve performance and battery life, and integrating the graphics core into the CPU could really boost performance in an area that's truly lacking at present. The question is, can Intel create graphics drivers that will compliment the performance? GMA 500 is not the right solution at present for that task, so hopefully Pineview will do better. We'll find out in the coming months.