Acer Injects Aspire One with AMD Athlon II Neo

By Kevin Parrish
published

Two new Acer Aspire One netbooks sport AMD's Athlon II Neo and ATI Radeon HD 4225.

Acer America said on Friday that it's now offering two new versions of its popular line of Aspire One netbooks: the 11.6-inch Aspire One AO721 and the 10.1-inch Aspire One AO521. Both utilize AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processors and ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics with 384 MB of dedicated system memory.

The Aspire One AO721, starting at $429.99, features an HD 11.6-inch CrystalBrite LED backlit display. The device is housed in a black matte, mesh-textured cover that limits fingerprints and smudging. It measures less than 1-inch thin and weighs around three pounds while offering a full-sized keyboard. Although the netbook comes packed with 2 GB of DDR3 memory and Windows 7 Home Premium, users can choose up to 250 GB of HDD space, depending on their budget.

As for the Aspire One AO521, this device features an HD 10.1-inch CrystalBrite LED backlit display. Starting at $349.99, this netbook isn't quite as meaty as the AO721, providing a 93-percent-sized keyboard, 1 GB of DDR3 memory, Windows 7 Starter Edition, and up to 250 GB of HDD space. The AO521 is also a bit lighter, weighing around 2.75 pounds.

Friday Acer said that both netbooks share similar features including HDMI connectivity, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and fast Ethernet LAN, a built-in webcam and microphone, a Multi-Gesture Touchpad, and a standard one-year parts and labor warranty.

The Aspire One AO721 and the Aspire One AO521 are now available at retail and e-tail outlets nationwide.

Kevin Parrish
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • HibyPrime
    Its about time, a netbook with decent specs at a decent price
    Reply
  • thejerk
    i can has dual cores, plz?
    Reply
  • drutort
    ya thats silly no dual core why not the k325 at least :P or how about those turion k625 :P for what 3 more watts :P wonder if the price would have differed that much...

    just searched for a sec I guess if you want the dual core you have to go with something like Aspire 1551, at least good to know that they do have them :)

    funny I remember someone saying netbooks will go away... forget what ceo that was im sure someone will refresh my memory :P but a lot of these are packing nice systems for daily system and maybe even light gaming
    Reply
  • ordcestus
    This seems like a nice netbook. i don't really want or need one though
    Reply
  • falchard
    Finally a netbook that uses ATIs graphics chip instead of VIA. You know what this means. A netbook you can game on. I must spread the news.
    Reply
  • dEAne
    Yeah good thing and good price netbooks now I can buy one for my grandma.
    Reply
  • DjEaZy
    ... nice specs...
    Reply
  • rrockman
    I'm disappointed: nobody pointed to the real problem with this One. BATTERY. They don't talk about battery life. ATI graphics is not going to turn off to save battery, so the battery life of this thing is always going to be very inferior compared to Atoms. A pity.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    rrockmanI'm disappointed: nobody pointed to the real problem with this One. BATTERY. They don't talk about battery life. ATI graphics is not going to turn off to save battery, so the battery life of this thing is always going to be very inferior compared to Atoms. A pity.
    You mean the Atoms strapped to a chipset that requires 6x the power of the processor at one stage? ATi chipsets are actually quite efficient, and so is there low end video cards.

    You want battery saver, you get something specifically for it, this is more an all round unit by the sounds of it - much better for every day usage etc.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    and AMD needs to perhaps bring an old K7 design back (Athlon XP), scale that down to 45/32nm, ATi IGP chipset for it (super efficent) and dump that on the market, even at twice the TDP/Draw of an Atom it would still be fine aslong as its overall quicker, and cheap (easy seriously - this is atom were talking about)
    Reply