First we can start with the "on paper" stats of what is the same:
- Price - both are around the same price (Acer is slightly cheaper now but was slightly more when I got it)
- Small things - USB ports, backlight keyboard and roughly similar screen size (13.3 vs 14 inch)
Now we can tackle the differences, and really it comes down to preferences in certain areas. I can say both are great products that compete well with each other and give a run for the money in either case so let your tastes decide, here's the breakdown:
CPU - both have the powerful intel core i series processor, the Air has i5 clocking in at 1.3 GHz 3 MB shared L3 cache which is very fast (also thanks to the fully solid state drive of course but we will touch on that later).
On the other hand the V7 has a more powerful, lower energy i7 4500U clocking in at 1.80 GHz 4 MB L3 (but sometimes slower because of the hybrid drive that is not fully solid state).
So overall both have very fast processors that are new and low energy and should have no problem handling what you throw at them. The i7 vs i5 seems like a better deal although I have yet to notice real world difference.
Memory - The Air has only 4GB which is shared with video memory while V7 doubles this at 8GB and 4GB dedicated video memory. Windows is known to hog memory but with windows 8 they solved a lot of issues and I normally sit at ~3.6 GB so there is plenty of space for intensive tasks. On the other hand OSX is considered very good at memory utilization but if you plan on memory intensive tasks you can run into problems and have to figure out how to clear memory on the operating system (admittedly, I am not very familiar with it)
Storage - Air has only 128GB while V7 has 500GB, the downside to more storage is slower tasks like moving files, installing programs, boot time (but it's still very fast). The hybrid solution seems to work well, I wish that flash (solid state) storage was more affordable with larger drives but if the speed factor is more important to you than having storage you might not care about it. I wanted to do some video editing and took up over half the space available on the macbook, that was not a huge problem but one of the several reason I choose the V7.
OS - Finally the main determining reason I replaced my Air to the V7. Some people may not like windows 8 as much but it is still based on the long lived ecosystem with almost endless possibilities for programs and settings. I am a big fan of Linux and OSX being based on Unix is good but the lack of software and maybe even familiarity. Don't get me wrong, OSX is fantastic, beautiful, powerful, in fact there are many benefits but at the end of the day the popularity and longevity holds out and I am a sucker for those traits.
Battery - The Air claims to be up to 12 hours, that is a bold statement and I don't think I have achieved this but the battery is quite fantastic. I have done video processing and it lasted for a long time even when I feel it getting hot. The V7 claims up to 7 hours but I can normally get over 4 hours and this is great for windows type laptop and realistically I don't see a huge need to go much more than that. (although it would be nice)
Build Quality - I am under the impression that the macbook had a higher quality, standard and it looks and feels like a premium product. V7 is still a very premium product, it has great use of good materials and I have no complaints but in a comparison one might find that Apple products have a better look and feel. And this is of course something they work very hard to achieve, they have done this successfully for a long time so it's no wonder. But for Acer to make such a great competitor is fantastic, they have achieved a very good standard for this product. Both keyboards feel nice, I think the macbook has better volume and brightness layout rather then having to use the Fn key on the Aspire. Also the trackpad is pretty lousy on the Acer but Apple's wasn't a whole lot better. At least I can use the touchscreen on Acer as well.
Outside of the standard metrics there were a few more factors that went into my decision. The touchscreen aspect was something that I really wanted in a laptop and there are no Apple laptops available with this feature (yet?). I admit it is not the best quality touchscreen, material but while on the screen topic the resolution is superior to the macbook air on the acer v7. There may be higher quality displays on the "retina" apple products but those are at least double the price which I was not willing to spend.
In addition, the V7 has a built in HDMI output port which is very useful when the screen is too small it can be attached to any HDMI ready TV to display full HD. I know that there is an adapter for the Air but this is an inconvenience that I am not willing to accept for the price. And I am not even talking about the cost of the adapter (~10?) but the fact that I need to be ware and carry this adapter. That is simply not fair. Battery life is great on both meaning there's no reason to carry extra cables to charge the laptops so if there's a chance I want to connect to HDMI I should not require and adapter.
Also, both have great sounding speakers that are very loud, the headphones jack in Acer is the updated mic/headset all in one type which I like. On the other hand the noise from the Acer fan is louder, sometimes you will hear hard drive ticking sounds but it seems to stop after some time (probably because of cache). Acer does weigh in at ~2kg which is at least ~.7kg more than the Air.
Finally, as I said it really comes down to preference and which features matter more to you.
Let me know what you think, have you tried any of these? would you like one over the other based on those or other features? add your comments below.
