The Acer Aspire V5-122P looks very much like a standard netbook but its slim for factor places it straight into the ultrabook category in terms of aesthetics. It weighs in at just 1.38kg so is very light and portable and you’d have no trouble carrying the device with a single hand. With the screen closed flat the laptop has a thickness of 20mm, again helping with portability. The faces of the laptop are finished in a brushed metal which gives it a nice modern look.

After opening up you’ll find a well built keyboard that is comfortable to use as well as feeling pretty solid for a laptop that costs just £300. The only minor annoyance we found was that the hash and enter key were a little squashed together and sometimes we mistakenly pressed the wrong button. The trackpad also worked well for us, however it is very, very small and when you’re not looking at it, it’s easy to slide your finger off and wonder why the cursor isn’t moving.

The integrated speakers are ‘okay’ but I wouldn’t permanently rely on them for audio as there just isn’t enough detail. The sound is good, but the volume lets them down, therefore I’d definitely recommend external speakers here.

In terms of processor the Aspire V5-122P is packed with an AMD A6-1450 which runs a 1.0 GHz. With this low clock speed of just 1.0 GHz performance is some what restricted although for basic multimedia and document editing tasks you should be fine. However with all 4 cores used effectively performance can be boosted somewhat.

The processor is integrated with a Radeon HD 8250 GPU which has a clock rate of 300 MHz, this can be pushed up to 400MHz when in turbo mode. Unfortunately this means this laptop is by no means a gaming device and you’ll struggle to play any recent games.

Also included in the 122P version of the V5 is 4GB of memory and a respectable 500GB HDD.

The screen is probably one of the best features about the laptop and to top it off its touch-sensitive. The resolution is 1366 x 768 which may be a little lower than some were expecting but I assure you that on a screen this size the display is crisp. The touch-screen functionality has also been implemented well and is very smooth to use as well as being responsive. I actually enjoyed using this function more so than the trackpad, especially on Windows 8.

Connections and ports on the laptop are quite limited. Around the edge you’ll find a single USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 port as well as an SDXC card reader. There is also no HDMI or Ethernet port which restricts you in terms of adding a second display as well as a wired internet connection. You’ll find an ‘Acer Converter Port’ here which is much like a Mini DisplayPort.

Bluetooth is another missing feature and with the lack of USB ports it’ll be difficult connecting a few different devices at once. For us the easiest way to get around this was to use a USB hub.

When we tested the battery life on the device lasted for around 4 hours which was 30 minutes longer than the stated time of 3.5 hours from Acer. Even with the slightly extended battery life it still falls a little short of what I’d expect from a modern laptop, particularly one which is meant to be used on the go.

Our Verdict

For the price of this little laptop it really is well built. The brushed metal surfaces give it a sleek, modern look. It is by no means a powerhouse and you certainly wouldn’t be using this for heavy duty tasks such as HD video editing or gaming but for simple tasks such as word processing its a great choice. It best feature is definitely the portability factor as well as the touch sensitive screen which proved very smooth to use. In terms of performance and computing power however this little laptop won’t be competing in the higher leagues just yet.