Travel Gadget Review – Acer Aspire One AO522 HD Netbook

I’m an advocate of light traveling. I love to travel light. Wherever I travel to, abroad or domestic, I always carry only what I really need to and light in weight, and leave those unnecessary and heavy stuff at my home. By doing this, I can walk more on travel without feeling tired easily and straining off my body energy. I reserve these energies of my body for things that are more productive such as climbing up stair to the top of cathedral tower, snapping more photos with more steady hands, rather than sitting there or taking undergrounds each time I wish to go to another travel attractions just because I feel tired of carrying heavy backpack around. In order to do that, we have to make sure stuffs we are carrying along in our backpack have to be light in weight and less in numbers.

Travel Tips: The first priority factor to consider when buying your travel gadgets is its weight, not performance.

If you are like me who always take photos, process photos, and writing blogs on the go, you most probably need a laptop to do all these. However, laptop computers can weigh you down on travel if you are walking all day long, and some of you may feel uneasy to leave it in hotel room. Here is a solutions for you, and me. I will carry a Netbook computer to my Europe Travel MkII. Netbook is a smallish and compact laptop computer which spots a 10.1″ screen size and weighs less than 3 pounds! I know some of you iPad 2 users will argue with me on this, but for doing real works on my photos and blogs, I still prefer netbook over iPad for its real keyboard, SDHC card reader, 320Gb storage capacity and more, sorry iPad fanboys.

The reasons why I reluctant to use netbook a year ago was its speed from Intel Atom processors and screen resolution of 1024 x 600px which I thought was a pain to me to manage photos that I took from the field. Not anymore now. Acer Aspire One AO522 HD Netbook has changed my perception towards netbook.

Albeit being packaged in the similar style as other Aspire One, Acer AO522 HD is a totally different machine inside.

A look at its bottom, its 6-cells Lithium Ion battery is detachable and can last for 6 hours in normal situation. I’ve tried and found no problem using it intermittently for a day outside. As long as I don’t have to look around for a power socket and bring the charger along my day trip then it is perfect.

Once the lid is open, you can see a large keyboard which is 93% of a standard keyboard size. In this case, I need little adjustment on typing style to sut this little netbook, which is another thumb up to me! The keypad is supposed to be black. what you see here is actually the protective screen I put on that make it greyish.

If you take a loser look, you can find the difference of this Acer AO522 HD netbook with other Acer Aspire One from this red sticker. It is fitted with the AMD C50 Dual-Core processor which is a breakthrough in netbook range of computers. With this new AMD C50 Duo-core processor, the netbbook can handle multiple task quite well. I’ve been using it for a week now, though there are still some sluggishness in operation especially when initiating certain softwares and commands, other tasks such as photo processing, blogging and web surfing are all being handled very well and much better than the earlier generation of netbooks which I tried before. It also has High Definition ATi Radeon Display Adapter built-in with 256Mb dedicated graphic memory to display HD movie and sharp and crisp picture, which is another breakthrough. The the help of 2 GB DDR3 RAM built-in, processing photos with this mighty little machine with ease.

Acer Aspire One AO522 also features a High Definition LED display with 1280 x 720p resolution which definitely won a big welcome from me and those travel photographers who need sharp and maximum resolution LCD / LED to display and process their travel photos. The latest model comes with 320GB HDD storage where I can store all my Europe tour photos in it as backup. 🙂

What is the main factor of a netbook for travel other than weight? Yes, its size. Measuring 7.3 x 10.2 x 1 inches, Acer AO522 could be easily put into any Daypack? Jean can even put it into her handbag! The above photo shows how much size difference is it between the 10.1″ Acer AO522 Netbook and my HP Pavilion 15″ laptop.

What other things I would concern with this Netbook? Since I’m very particular in LED colour accuracy, I compared it with my calibrated ACER H233H Full HD 23″ monitor. The factory setting shows a flat and dull colour image on the LED, with a slight blue tint. But no worry. The ATi Radeon display adapter comes with a comprehensive control panel which most of the display properties could be adjusted to your preference. I boosted some contrast and saturation of the display as well as tweaking its RGB setting slightly to make all my photos in this AO5322 Netbook look similar as in my Acer H233H Full HD monitor. The above photo show how it looks after being calibrated (not by Spyder but my naked eyes).

Here is the complete list of specification of Acer AO522 AMD Duo-Core HD Netbook at the time when this article is being written. (Apparently Acer has upped its game by upgrading the HDD and RAM capacity of this model when I got mine recently. Please check with your local dealer for the latest specification of this model):

• 6-cell Li-Ion battery (4400 mAh)
• 10.1-inch HD CineCrystal LED screen (1280 x 720 resolution)
• 1.0 GHz AMD C-Series processor C-50 (1 MB L2 cache)
• 320 GB hard drive (5400 RPM)
• 2 GB DDR3 RAM Memory
• ATI Radeon HD 6250 Graphics Display Adpter built-in
• Wireless-N Wi-Fi networking capability with 802.11b/g/n.
• Multi-gesture Touchpad for circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, and page flip.
• 1.3-megapixel webcam.
• Bluetooth 3.0+HS
• 84-key FineTip keyboard, 93 percent of standard-size.
• Mono speaker
• Preloaded with Microsoft Windows 7 Starter 32-bit operating system, and Microsoft Office Starter 2010 free software.
• Weight: 2.87 pounds
• One-year parts and labor limited warranty with concurrent International Traveler’s Warranty
• Energy Star certified
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• HDMI high-definition audio/video output allows a single cable to transmit uncompressed 1080P high-definition video to your digital TV or LCD
• Fast Ethernet (10/100)
• VGA video output
• Multi-in-1 memory card reader compatible with MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, and xD-Picture Card

Bottom line? If you need to bring along a computing device on travel to act as a photos backup device, photo processing, blogging and emailing tool, as well as keeping in touch with families at home using MSN, Skype or others, then you need a laptop. If you love traveling light like I do, then you should pick up a Netbook. If you are also an avid travel photography hobbyist who concerns most on the display quality of the Netbook, then you should buy this Acer Aspire One 522 AMD Duo-Core HD Netbook now! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.