After first encounter with eMachines notebooks we weren’t that impressed with design but now some things have changed and impression is not that bad. These are still black models made out of average quality plastics but on the other hand with lowest price in their league. Simplicity of design can be evaluated through presence of only one additional button: wireless on/off button. Both models have identical chassis and only difference is stickers on palm rest. Only “extravagant” detail on this notebook is ring around power and wireless button that lights with green light in case of power button and in case of wireless button it is lighted in orange.

On the left and the right side are located two USB connectors that are marked with pictograms on top side so those can be easily located. Since there are no additional connectors it is obvious how Acer managed to achieve low price for these notebooks. There are no modem, memory card reader neither Express Card slot. To be quite honest, we don’t find lack of these a huge problem because those are anyway very rarely used by notebook users.  You can always buy what you need and plug it into one of 4 USBs. Fact is that you will need to invest additional resources for these devices but those are not that pricey and you can always use specific device that suites you and your demands the best. On the other hand we were surprised with presence of S/PDIF connector that allows you to plug-in this notebook into any 5.1 surround speaker system. When we take into account average quality of speakers that are used in these models, this is welcomed feature.

Cover cannot be open for full 180 degrees but still its position angle is more than enough. Since these are one of the cheapest notebooks on the market, we didn’t expect extraordinary display quality. Vertical viewing angles are below average and coating that should provide better color display also provides noticeable reflection of person and surroundings in front of notebook but this is perfectly normal for one glossy display. Keyboard has unusually big Enter key: feature that we always like to see on notebook keyboard. Bending is slightly noticeable in the center of keyboard but in the amount that won’t bother anyone. Bottom line is that these models have pretty solid keyboard for this price range. Touch pad is big and precise with sensitivity that is just right: not too sensitive but also it’s not one of those that will produce blisters on your fingers because of too much pressure that needs to be applied to use touch pad efficiently.

Webcam is, as expected for an Acer notebook, best that can be found on modern notebooks. It gives great picture quality with low noise levels even in poor lightning conditions. Also this webcam has good frame rate so you will most certainly be satisfied with quality of video conferencing sessions that this notebooks can provide. Only fault that we found is occurrence of jagged edges on some object under some conditions but this is not something that should bother you too much because this was noticed only few times during few weeks of testing time.