Video: Hands-On With The Acer Ferrari One Notebook

A luxury notebook is a lot like a luxury car. When you first set your eyes on it, the appropriate reaction should be: Ooooo and Ahhhh. Good design and attention to stylistic detail is a high priority. If you do it right, then it won’t matter if the machine doesn’t go very fast. All that matters is the driver looks good behind the wheel (or the screen).

Though there aren’t too many people who can afford a Ferrari car, a $599 Ferrari ultraportable  is easily within reach. Acer’s Ferrari One zoomed into our offices today and, of course, every guy within a 20 foot radius had to ogle it. I’ll admit, I quite like this 11.6-inch system’s style from the sports car red cover to the embossed logo to the red accents on the sides and deck.

Looks aren’t everything, though. The real test of any notebook is how well it performs. We just started benchmarking it, but I took a few minutes to check out how HD video looked on the beautiful WXGA glossy HD display. The colors are great, but playback was slideshow-like with a 720p trailer, as you’ll see in our hands-on video below. Update: we discovered that it wasnt the system, but the player that was to blame for the poor HD playback. When we had more time with the Ferrari One, we discovered that HD playback is very smooth. See our full review here.

Specs:

• AMD Athlon™ X2 dual-core processor L310
• ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
• Up to 4GB of RAM
• 160 GB or larger hard disk drive
• 11.6” HD 1366 x 768 (WXGA) pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD
• Acer Crystal Eye webcam
• Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR
• ATI XGP connector, 6-in-1 card reader, Three USB 2.0 ports, VGA port, Headphone, Microphone, Ethernet