Performance
To see how the £250 Acer Aspire One D260 compares we'll be putting it up against a £330 MSI Wind U160 with an almost identical specification.
To give you an idea of how netbooks fare against next-in-line notebooks, we'll also provide comparative numbers from an 11.6in AMD-based notebook - the £500 Dell Inspiron M101z - and a 13.3in Intel CULV system - the £500 Acer Timeline 3810T.
Looking at the two Intel Atom-powered machines, Acer's Aspire One D260 features an eight-cell battery with a 49Whr capacity. The larger 65Whr capacity of the MSI Wind U160 has the edge, but will it have a significant impact on battery life?
Before we find out, here's a look at the key specifications of our comparison notebooks, as well as a brief rundown of the benchmarks we use.
| Comparison systems | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laptop | Acer Aspire One D260 | MSI Wind U160 | Acer Timeline 3810T | Dell Inspiron M101z |
| Processor | Intel Atom N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, single-core) | Intel Atom N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, single-core) | Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 (1.40GHz, 3MB L2 cache, dual-core) | AMD Athlon II Neo K325 (1.30GHz, 2MB L2 cache, dual-core) |
| Memory | 1GB DDR2 | 1GB DDR2 | 2GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 |
| Graphics | Intel GMA 3150 | Intel GMA 3150 | Intel GMA 4500MHD | AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 |
| Graphics driver | Intel 8.14.10.2117 | Intel 8.14.10.2117 | Intel 7.15.10.1666 | AMD ATI Catalyst 10.7 |
| Display | 10.1in - 1,024x600 | 10in - 1,024x600 | 13.3in - 1,366x768 | 11.6in - 1,366x768 |
| Battery | 6 cell, 49Whr | 6 cell, 65Whr | 6 cell, 56Whr | 6 cell, 56Whr |
| Weight | 1,202g (including battery) | 1,237g (including battery) | 1,645g (including battery) | 1,572g (including battery) |
| Wireless | Atheros AR5B95 WiFi (802.11bgn) | Ralink 1T1R (802.11bgn) | Intel WiFi 5100 (802.11bgn) and Bluetooth 2.0 | Broadcom WLAN Half-Mini Card (802.11bgn) and Bluetooth 2.1 |
| Disk drive | Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | Seagate Momentus 250GB, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | Hitachi 500GB, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | Seagate Momentus 320GB, 7,200RPM, 16MB cache |
| Optical drive | None | None | None | None |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Starter, 32-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Starter, 32-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 32-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Home premium, 64-bit |
| Benchmarks | ||||
| Geekbench 2.1.6 | A cross-platform benchmark used to measure memory and processor performance. Run using high-performance mode. | |||
| Cinebench 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses as many cores as possible. Run using high-performance mode. | |||
| 3DMark06 | A PC benchmark used to test the DirectX 9 performance of a system's graphics card. Run using high-performance mode. | |||
| Battery test | In order to measure battery life, we run the notebook on balanced power settings and loop a 720p movie trailer, measuring the time taken to hibernate. | |||
| Power consumption | Using balanced power settings, we record mains power draw whilst playing back a 720p movie trailer. | |||
CPU and GPU performance
If you haven't heard by now; an Intel Atom processor coupled with 1GB of DDR2 memory isn't the most potent of combinations.
Like most Atom-powered netbooks, performance is minimal but sufficient for everyday tasks such as web browsing and email. We did, however, find the Acer D260 to be a little more sluggish in use than anticipated - a consequence of the pre-loaded software, perhaps?
Looking squarely at CPU performance, Cinebench confirms what we already know; the Intel Atom N450 is a distant second to the dual-core AMD Athlon II Neo K325 and Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400.
And you don't get a whole lot of oomph from the integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics, either.
The D260 is able to playback 720p movies, but feed it anything at 1080p and it will begin to choke. High-def YouTube footage is prone to stuttering, too.
But then, this isn't a system you'll be using for video editing or 3D gaming. Netbooks primarily have two redeeming features; mobility and longevity.
Battery life and power consumption
Suggesting that battery life will be decent, the Acer Aspire One D260 consumes just 14W of power whilst playing back a 720p movie file.
As expected, battery life is very good - with the Acer netbook managing to loop our 720p movie for 5 hours and 25 minutes before being forced into hibernation.
Not quite as good as the higher-capacity MSI Wind, however, which manages an additional 21 minutes.
Acer reckons its D260 is capable of up to 8 hours of connected use, but even with screen brightness set to low, we wouldn't expect to hit that lofty figure. During casual use, we had to re-charge after roughly six hours.
Battery life is certainly decent, but it's not a million miles from the higher-end Intel and AMD platforms; which - admittedly at double the cost - provide a better mix of battery life and performance.
