We will update this review once we've tested it. Unlike the 6-cell battery on the D150 (4400 mAh), the 6-cell battery being offered with the AOD250 will be a 5200-mAh, which should provide even more runtime. Acer will also offer a 6-cell battery which, if the battery on the D150's past performance is any indication, should provide about 6 hours of battery life. The 3-cell battery achieved a runtime of 3 hours and 4 minutes, which is about 15 minutes longer than the average 3-cell netbook battery. The D250's 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card performed well, achieving a throughput of 20.1 Mbps and 16.9 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet from our access point, respectively (whereas 18.9 Mbps and 15.7 Mbps are the netbook averages at those distances). Still, zooming in and out of lower Manhattan with 3D buildings enabled proved choppy. While it took a few seconds to render the Grand Canyon in Google Earth, we were able to fly around the southwest U.S. We had no problems streaming videos and playing movies off the hard drive. The Intel GMA 945 GPU notched a score of 741 in 3DMark03, more than 100 points above average, and its score of 123 in 3DMark06 was about 30 points above average. The D250 was capable when it came to our graphics benchmarks, however. That's about 2 MBps faster than the netbook average, but about 1 MBps slower than the AOD150. On the LAPTOP Transfer Test (duplicating a 4.97GB folder of mixed media), however, the drive was marginally slower, taking 5 minutes 9 seconds to complete, at a rate of 16.5 MBps. The 160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive booted Windows XP Home in a decent 49 seconds, almost the same time as the D150. Similarly, when we transcoded a 114MB video file from MPG4 to AVI using Handbrake, the D250 took 28:51 to complete the task, which is about 30 seconds faster than the netbook average and on a par with the HP Mini 110, but about 90 seconds slower than the Eee PC 1008HA. Its PCMark05 score of 1,492 is about 100 points higher than the netbook average, but not quite as robust as the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA (1,584), which has the slightly zippier 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280 processor. Like every other netbook with a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, the D250 provided fairly decent performance. Since its internal components are identical to the D150, we weren't surprised that the D250 garnered nearly the exact same scores in every department as its predecessor. But the card slot is now on the right side (instead of the left), and the VGA, USB, and audio jacks have been moved further forward on the left side. The speakers would sound a lot better if they were placed on the keyboard deck, rather than on the underside of the front edge of the chassis when we tilted the netbook backwards, songs not only sounded louder, but more detailed, too.ĭespite its slimmed-down physique, the D250 still manages to accommodate three USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, a 4-in-1 memory card slot, and headphone and mic ports. Listening to Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" through Pandora, we felt the bass was on the thin side. The speakers on the D250 were about what we expect from a netbook not all that powerful, and a little tinny-but they get the job done. While horizontal viewing angles were excellent, tilting the screen forward almost immediately results in a distorted image.
The glossy screen was crisp and displayed colors superbly watching episodes of Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons on Hulu at full screen, we were impressed with how brightly it rendered colors. Even though it's a spacious 10 inches, at this size, every pixel counts.
We're glad that Acer didn't skimp on the 24 vertical pixels in the name of boasting a 16:9 display. As with the AOD150, the 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen on the D250 has a resolution of 1024 x 600.