Good laptop, with some minor problems
938696
Has issues working with Apple Airport Extreme (wireless keeps dropping once an hour)
Battery life sucks
Power plug is flimsy and is giving me problems 6 months into using the laptop

Otherwise, great machine.
2888770
PROS:
I got this computer around christmas of 2008 and it has run pretty darn steady ever since. This machine is very capable, I've been able to get it to run a variety of programs old and new, Try out different Linux Distros, and play a variety of games from AOE to Minecraft, All with very few problems.

-Great Compatibility
-Good Performance
-Very stable aside from 2 issues (Which can be fixed without having to spend a lot)

CONS:
 I, Like others have mentioned, also had run across the annoying blank screen problem as well, However this seemed to be remedied by an update to the Bios. I also experienced bad overheating problems, but I have cleaned the fan and this seemed to go away

-Structure is a bit flimsy, USB ports can become wiggly and not get as tight a connection at times. Volume can become weak and not work well
-Blank screening problem needs to be addressed with BIOS update
854017
This laptop is a very good running laptop. It can stand running Photoshop and After Effects, which that is impressive! I am going to say that it can lag if you abuse its power and speed. So be warned if you run 2 million things at once, IT WILL LAG.
2475722
I bought this computer from a different store that just happened to have a HUGE discount.
Ive been using it for about a month now and so far I am very happy with it.
The main usage will be for school and for some light engineering work.
 I ran some benchmark testing and the performance is at best average for a laptop like this:
PCMark 8 Creative Conventional = 2388
3DMark Cloud Gate = 5128
3DMark Sky Diver = 2686
3DMark Fire Strike = not surprisingly, it choked, running at times at 1 fps with overall score of 745

Some of the reasons I bought this particular model and they are also the things I love about it:
- the screen flips back 360 degrees, so it becomes a tablet (a bit thicker than I would like, but still a tablet).
- It comes with an active (Wacom) type pen. This was in fact one of the main reasons I chose this computer as it is one of the least expensive that would have an active touch display.
- It is relatively small.
A few negative things about it:
- They could have fit a 13 display in this machine. The computer has the overall dimensions of my Toshiba 13 work laptop, but the display is smaller.
- The Wacom pen is not very precise. It has a calibration program but it does not seem to work properly. When I use the pen to touch small controls, it clicks a bit off the button, so I have to touch the target a bit offset for the click to happen right where I wanted it.
- Some keys have small LED lights that illuminate to indicate those buttons are active: Speaker Off, Mike Off, Function Locked. But the one I would find most useful would be: Caps Lock, which doesnt have a light.
- And the most annoying issue I find is the touch pad buttons. I had before laptops and they all had under the touchpad the left/right click buttons. They were physical buttons and they were not touch sensitive.
On this computer the touch screen extends all the way down. But you can still click by pushing the touch screen (it does actually click). However, because it is touch sensitive, when you click, the pointer tends to move a bit so the chances are that you miss the target area.
I couldn't find a way to turn off the touch property of the bottom area of the pad, so that I could use it only for click.
Also, I would like to point that the computer is a bit heavier than I thought it would be. If you turn it into a tablet and want to hold it in one hand while reading, you will have a problem with the weight.
Considering that I bought it at a big discount and because an active pen is very desirable for me, overall I think it is a good buy.
Nevertheless, it is a nice computer and none of these issues alone would be important enough to cut any stars from the rating, but all together are enough to give it only a 4 stars.
Please leave a comment if you would like any more information.
4006082
It's a very solid laptop, very good build quality, and good components inside. I have 2 issues with it: the slow HDD, it boots really slow, fortunately its a fixable issue with some hardware upgrades, and the delicate top cover which is really pleasant to touch but it scratches off way to easy. You put the laptop in the backpack and its already scratched.
3105352
I bought this in December of 2016 and have been using it as my main laptop for the past 8 months. Overall, it is a pretty good laptop for the price. A couple of things that are inconvenient:
- the speakers are on the bottom, so if you are working on your lap, you are pressing them into your legs, which limits the sound.
- the speakers are also pretty quiet, but you can use headphones to work around that.
- the battery deteriorated fairly quickly. After 8 months, I only get a ~4 hours on a battery, which is considerably less than the initial 8+ hours I saw at the beginning.

Otherwise, it is good. Videochat capabilities are strong, Chrome OS is pretty solid, and typing is comfortable. I recommend!
1309099
Generally this is a very good, powerful laptop.  The display is excellent, and the speed and power are all there.  The quality also seems very good.

The built in touchpad is quite temperamental, however, and by design there is no way to press both integrated buttons simultaneously, which sometimes is required.
3414312
A nice laptop bundle that comes with a decent backpack for storage. Even though it runs a bit hot, there's a button to toggle the fans on full blast to pull out a bit more heat. This particular laptop doesn't come with an SSD, but it isn't too hard to put one in yourself; just search for a link on Youtube on how to do it without scratching the case. Do note that it only has a built-in slot for an M.2 SSD rather than a standard SSD, but there are adapters for the optical drive if needed.

Pros:
Decent graphics: I can run most of the games that I play on near max settings without screen stutters.
Lighted Keyboard: I've spent more time tinkering with the settings on this than I care to admit. I love how it changes colors!

Cons:
Heat: The keyboard will start getting toasty even on Comfort mode if you don't have a third party cooler. I use two Opolar LC05 fans for the heat vents and haven't had any issues so far.
2384083
I bought this laptop a little over two years ago, and it's still running fine. If you're interested in buying this laptop, here's what I can tell you:

Pros:
- Personally, I don't have the best judgement on how powerful computer parts are. But, from what I can tell, and what others have told me, this laptop should be a fairly decent deal for price per performance.
- I've primarily used this laptop for older PC games (Games from around 2000-2008). Most older PC games should run fine with high settings. I haven't particularly played too many newer games on this laptop, so I couldn't tell you what.
- The keyboard that comes with this laptop is fairly decent. The laptop I had before this one had a mushy and small keyboard, so it's kind of a breath of fresh air when using this laptop for the first time.
- It comes with a 1366 x 768 screen. It's displays clear imagery and works fine.
- The speakers are decent. They have good audio quality. I've used this laptop for a while, and decided to try using my old laptop for a while and now notice how low quality the speakers on my old laptop really was, heh.

Neutral:
- Keyboard isn't backlit. Things like Caps Lock should be displayed on screen when activated, though.
- This laptop comes preinstalled with Windows 8. Windows 8 is apparently notorious, but personally, I don't really have any problems with it.
- This laptop doesn't come with a disc drive. You can't use discs on it. Although, there's a piece of plastic in place. The plastic can be removed, which I think implies that you can buy a disc drive and install one yourself. Normally, this is a con, but I personally don't quite need a disc drive.
- After a year or so, parts of the case have cracked a little. Normally this would be a con, but they're small cracks that currently don't pose as a problem and probably won't ever will for a couple more years.

Cons:
- The speakers are placed on the bottom of this laptop; AKA the last place someone would decide to place speakers on a laptop. Surprisingly, it doesn't sound too muffled for me, but then again, I'm not an audiophile.
- After half an hour or so of gaming, the laptop will start to get hot and performance will start getting throttled. The hotter it gets, the more often slowdowns will occur. If you aren't interested in installing a new cooling system, the problem can be fixed by elevating it on some small boxes while playing, helping it by giving some air flow. Usually this kind of issue due to dust buildup, but I've had this issue since buying it new so I think it's more of an insufficient cooling system. This shouldn't be too much of an issue as long as you have some boxes or something of the sorts.
- The biggest issue that I've had about this laptop is its faulty trackpad. The main issue is clicking. You can click by lightly tapping on the trackpad or by pressing down on it. Tapping works decently at first, but gradually gets unresponsive the more you click. Pressing down on the button to click is generally unresponsive and faulty. Trying to click and drag is absolute mayhem and will take multiple attempts just to drag a single object. Over time, the trackpad has gotten even worse and now I can't even press down on it to click, I can only tap on it now. A USB mouse is a must-have if you plan on buying this laptop.

It's a decent laptop that has its faults. It should be fine as long as you have a cheap USB mouse, maybe a couple of boxes, and an external disc drive if you want to use some discs on it. At first, the cons seem like somewhat serious problems, but there are easy workarounds for them.

Edit: Oh, I also forgot to mention: Windows 10 doesn't work too well on this laptop. The graphics card will constantly crash during gaming if you try to upgrade to Windows 10.
340495
The laptop has worked beautifully so far. I changed the hard drive for an ssd and it has met all my expectations. The display is a little bit dim during the day but you need to be out in the open to really notice it.

the keyboard has a very nice feeling to it, I really like it.

It is not as fast as I expected it to be but has worked well within the limits.

The only problem it has shown concerns the display driver, which has given me trouble and I have not yet been able to fix it. The screen suddenly and unadvertenly goes black for a few seconds until a window appears telling me that the display adapter stopped functioning but that it got reinstated.

The power button is not very well placed and it is too sensible, many times I have gone into hybernation mode because when I grab the computer from the side, as I try to put it into tablet mode, I press the button accidentally.

Battery life is better than I expected. It can go for several hours without needing charge (is it because it is new??? maybe)
2237245
A great computer for the price but has a few minor annoying flaws.

Pros: powerful, elegant design,great price, unique design

cons: keyboard scratches the screen unless you put a cloth underneath the screen everytime you close it, the frame feels kind of cheap, if you lift the laptop from the bottom right corner with the two top corners still on the table, you can already see the frame slightly begin to bend
4814711
I have had this laptop for a few weeks now and really enjoy it.

The one downside: the first thing I did when I got it was to try to uninstall some of the bloatware (the Norton 360 antivirus protection in particular, since I already had my own antivirus software and having two versions on the same system can cause all sorts of problems). Uninstalling that one program caused several error messages that I couldn't resolve (I'm not very tech-savvy).  It wasn't worth my time to fix it, so I did a system recovery and restored the computer to "out-of-the-box factory version" or similar terminology.  That fixed the error messages, but of course the Norton was back.  Being lazy, I've just decided to pay for the Norton rather than go through the hassle of uninstalling the bloatware.  So just thought I'd pass on my experience.

Otherwise, I really like this laptop.  It's perfectly functional for what I need (web browsing, word processing, iTunes) and seems sturdy and durable.
1402231
Overall, I'm very happy with this laptop. I only use it for games like WoW, Starcraft 2, Star Wars the Old Republic. The performance on these is wonderful, even on high quality settings (not quite up to snuff on ultra), but there's just a few complaints. I know mousepads aren't wonderful for gaming, but this laptop's mousepad just seems to stick often and you have to drag multiple times to get it to move. Not that big a deal though, I can just use an external mouse. The other complaint is I've already had quite a few occasions where my games just quit unexpectedly, sometimes with the computer restarting afterwards.

But everything other than these few problems is wonderful. Design is beautiful, lights on the keyboard is a nice touch. On the rather hefty side, which isn't much of a problem for me, I don't move my laptop around much. Cooling system seems to work very well. And as said earlier, performance is great. Overall, I'd recommend this laptop, but it would be a STRONG recommendation if it wasn't for the unexpected exits/restarts. Not very conductive to raiding or other MMO scenarios where you just can't have your computer randomly restarting.

UPDATE:
It's been a few more weeks with this laptop. I'm still extremely happy with the performance of the machine. The random restarts haven't happened since I wrote my original review. Mousepad still stinks but like I said, no big deal; I know that's one flaw of laptops.

But to update my recommendation: 100% all in on this laptop. I would pick it again if I had the option and pay the same price.
1596064
I bought this laptop about three years ago, so I've had it for quite a while. Little to no problems. I customized mine with an extra 465GB of storage space, an extra 8GB of memory, and some extra RAM. Figured if I was going to go big, I might as well go all out. I'm not a gamer, but I love to play around with large photo and video files.

I only have a few minor complaints:

Yes, sometimes the laptop runs hot. Mostly when I set it on a bed for a couple minutes without closing it. I bought a $30 lap fan to always have under it, which helps a lot.

The fan: When I read reviews about the fan being loud, I decided that I didn't really care, and for the most part, that's still true. It's only annoying for things you don't really think about, like "overhearing" a nearby conversation. It interferes with eavesdropping. Seriously. Sometimes I play a game of close-the-laptop just so the fan will shut up enough for me to hear something.

I had a bit of trouble with my keyboard back light ONCE. It wouldn't light up again after I turned it off and I read reviews with the same problem and started freaking out, but then once it "rested" enough I guess, I tried again and it worked. No problems since. Yes, it's FN+Z to turn off and on. Press the Z twice to keep the back light on between pauses in typing. The keys seemed a little wide-spaced at first, but I'd had a netbook beforehand. Anyway, I got used to it.

Where the charger plugs into the laptop is secure, but I feel like that port could have a little more depth so the connection could be *more* secure. On the other hand, if someone yanks on the cord, there's little to no chance of damaging it, because it'll just pop right out of the laptop.

I would purchase this laptop again in a heartbeat. It's not light and it's doesn't have a long battery life (giant, heavy charger, too), but for at-home or fairly stationary work, it's fantastic. It handles video editing for videos under an hour long with ease. I can have YouTube, Netflix, Photoshop, AND video editing software open and it doesn't even slow down. This laptop is POWER. No, it's not Apple or a fancy brand name, but you pay for a brand name and since this laptop works great, I'd never pay more just for an Apple.

LOVE the track pad. It's really large and there's no button for your thumb to click, you just click the track pad (requires very little pressure) or double tap it. Occasionally I have trouble right-clicking, but if I'm aware of where my thumb is (bottom right corner), it's fine.

Overall, 4 1/2 stars. Maybe even 4.75. It's the bomb. Buy it and love it.
4464459
I bought this laptop because I needed a new one for travel that was both powerful and lightweight. Although there are aspects about it I really like, and acknowledge that it's a great buy - especially at the boxing day price that I bought it at (around $700 incl.tax), there are quite a few issues with it. As others have mentioned, the touchscreen issue is a real problem since once of the main reasons I bought it was because it also had a touchscreen for ease of use. I've tried numerous troubleshooting options from various forums and nothing has fixed this issue permanently. The speakers are not the best as they are a little pitchy. And its highest brightness is not that high in my humble opinion. Part of me wishes I had gone with a different laptop, so definitely do your research! If you're looking for a lightweight travel companion and not a main computer, it'll do just fine. However, I would wait until the touchscreen issue is resolved.
201442
Mine was one of those warehouse deals. It is a good laptop, but mine seems to have been refurbished in a hurry. The mousepad required me to push it down as it seemed that it wasn't quite locked in place, and same for one of the corners of the keyboard. It was freezing at first, just 20 minutes into using it the screen would freeze and the sound would too, forcing me to hold the power to kill it. I found out that this was due to the Wi-Fi. This laptop could not use wi-fi without freezing. But i wasn't really moving it around a lot so i got an ethernet connection for it and no problem. I recently had some issues with the hard drive, it stopped working all of a sudden (according to the tool that it has for analysis, everything else was fine), and then when it started working again everything started going real slow which triggered an ugly side of me and made me punch it which just made it worse. Now its just sitting here as i get a replacement for the hard drive to test it, or get a replacement. HOWEVER i really had fun with it. I used it mostly for games and movies and it was OK. Although that pre-installed thing from Dell that changes your brightness automatically is bulls***, sometimes it activates itself even if the option is off! but turning it on again and then off does the trick.  3 stars because league of legends and overwatch ran smoothly on it, but it had all that other stuff that made me uncomfortable some times.
4628005
I purchased this laptop almost 3 months ago (end of September 2013) and had an opportunity to evaluate it to some extent.  I think this laptop deserves 4-star rating, although it is currently averages at 3.5 stars.

PROS:
- Very fast for average user needs - AMD A10 processor
- Slim and lightweight design - love it
- Sound is great considering the slimness (loud and clear)
- 2GB DDR3 VRAM - gives you potential to play some games (Metro 2033 played alright, while BF4 online beta was somewhat laggy with 15fps and 20fps at best - rarely though)
- Ability to crossfire 2GB VRAM with 0.5GB integrated video memory (done in Catalyst Control Center - downloadable from AMD website)
- Good battery life even with 4-cell battery (of course depends on what you are doing, but I think I average 4-5 hours with web browsing and videos)
- Downloadable face recognition software that allows you to log in - AMD webside gives you free download for laptops with select APUs (including the one in this laptop). I love it - I turn laptop on, face the camera and I'm in.

CONS:
- Screen lid is flimsy, while the bottom part is very solid and feels quality.  I wish they made the screen top of the laptop as solid as the bottom, then it would be truly amazing.
- Screen visual quality - does not provide wide angle - not bad, but could definitely be better.
- Bloatware
- Windows 8 and 8.1. Bought it with W8, and installed free Shell software that puts the windows Start button and functions back.  Then there was W8.1 and they were saying that we would get back the native Start button back. Well, we did, but all it does is takes you back to the start screen.  So I kept my Shell app that kept the functions, while W8.1 gave me Windows logo for the Start button (LOL, MS can do better than that). Also, FYI, when you get W8.1 update, you lose the ability to run and see WEI Score (Windows Experience Index Score), a quick tool that I personally got used to to run a quick evaluation on a PC.  One can still do it but it takes more steps - google it if you are interested.

When I was doing the research, I was also considering other, similar laptops from Acer, I will list some of them for you for comparison:

1. Take specs from this laptop, plus touchscreen; plus 2GB RAM = 8GB; plus 250GB HDD = 1TB; different color -&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Acer-Aspire-V5-552PG-X809-15-6-inch-Touchscreen-Laptop-Champagne-Ice/dp/B00DKFFLH4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Acer Aspire V5-552PG-X809 15.6-inch Touchscreen Laptop (Champagne Ice)</a>

2. Almost same as this one, minus 2GB DDR3 VRAM and - 2GB RAM (comes with 4GB RAM and o. 5GB integrated graphics card); also has A8 CPU instead of A10 -&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Acer-Aspire-V5-552-8404-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Cold-Steel/dp/B00DDFEXWA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Acer Aspire V5-552-8404 15.6-Inch Laptop (Cold Steel)</a>

3. Same as # 2, but with 6GB RAM instead of 4GB, and black color -&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Acer-Aspire-V5-552-8854-15-6-inch-Laptop-Polar-Black/dp/B00DDFEYEW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Acer Aspire V5-552-8854 15.6-inch Laptop (Polar Black)</a>

4. Good rival for the laptop being reviewed (may be better than the one being reviewed, although physical feel/quality I expect to be the same - I wish I had a chance to set them next to each other though) - has i5 from Intel and 2GB VRAM from NVIDIA; minus 250GB HDD = 500GB -&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Acer-Aspire-V5-572G-6679-15-6-inch-Laptop-Polar-Black/dp/B00DKFFFXO/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Acer Aspire V5-572G-6679 15.6-inch Laptop (Polar Black)</a>

5. Same as # 4, except has i7 instead of i5 -&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Acer-Aspire-V5-573G-9491-15-6-inch-Laptop-Polar-Black/dp/B00DDFEX9S/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Acer Aspire V5-573G-9491 15.6-inch Laptop (Polar Black)</a>

Hope my review helps you make your decision.