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Acer Aspire One Cloudbook is a $200, compact workhorse

The battle for the lowest cost, high-powered laptop continues, with Acer’s latest warrior on the front lines –the Aspire One Cloudbook. Priced at just $190, it comes in a thin and light package, with full Windows 10 support and the ability to expand its on board hardware with cloud powered extras, meaning that for entry-level PC users, there shouldn’t be much difference between this and a more expensive alternative.

Of course, one downside to these very low cost notebooks, is that they don’t tend to be the biggest, which means a relatively small screen. However, if you don’t mind that the display on the A01-131-C9PM Cloudbook is just 11.6 inches, it at least offers 720P resolution. Not a lot, but it’s reasonable for an 11-inch system.

In terms of its internal processing capabilities, it packs an Intel Celeron N3050 dual core CPU, running at 1.6GHz, alongside 2GB of DDR3 memory. Storage is restricted to a maximum of 32GB, but with support for the latest Wi-Fi standards, uploading any content to cloud storage to expand what’s already available should be simple.

Along with the notebook itself, buyers will also receive a year’s free subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365 suite of work-related software, as well as access to it’s OneDrive platform, which gives as much as a terabyte of added space for those that need it.

For those that might like to take their new Chromebook on the move too, this one is particularly portable. Weighing in at just 2.54lbs and just 0.7 inches in height, fitting the Aspire One Cloudbook in a bag shouldn’t be a problem.

If you want to stay in touch with friends and family while out and about too, it comes pre-fitted with a 640 x 480 pixel webcam and dual digital microphones to allow for high-quality voice calls – and interaction with Windows 10’s Cortana if you’d rather chat to an AI instead.

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Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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