Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024)

Verdict

The Acer Aspire Vero 16 is an eco-friendly and relatively affordable laptop with reliable ability in several key areas.

It’s fast enough for everyday workloads, has a good screen and a battery that lasts all day. While other laptops are faster, the $840/£899 price is solid, too.

It may not beat some rivals in particular areas, like performance or screen quality, but it’s a rock-solid daily workhorse with bonus sustainability credentials.

Introduction

The Acer Aspire Vero 16 is the latest addition to a laptop range that claims to do the right thing for consumers and the planet – and, at $840/£899 for a Core i7 model (AV16-51P-72K1), it’s also easy on the wallet, but the 16-inch form factor has grown in popularity over recent years and this isn’t the only notebook that can impress in this area of the market.

Take the Huawei MateBook D16 2024, which deploys a full-power i9-13900H for £899 – or the Asus VivoBook 16X, which makes its ageing 12^th Gen processors seem more tempting with a bargain £599/$479 price. The Acer may impress on the sustainability front, but it’s got a tougher battle ahead in more practical departments.

Design and keyboard

• Good-looking, eco-friendly and sturdy
• A reasonably satisfying keyboard
• Decent connectivity, but no microSD

The Vero design language is becoming familiar: the background hue of grey plastic is livened up with yellow flecks that represent a chassis made from 60% recycled plastic, and the E and R keys are reversed to represent recycling.

It’s distinctive and attractive – enough to spark conversation if someone looks closely – and bolder than its generic aluminium rivals.

At 1.8kg and 16.55mm thick, the Vero is thinner than both rivals and only marginally heavier than the Huawei, and build quality is reasonable. There’s flex in the base but MIL-STD-810H testing adds reassurance. The screen could be a little stronger, but it’s no terminal issue, and this laptop is easily strong enough to be slung in a bag without concern.

Above the display you’ll find a 1440p webcam that’s sharp and accurate, with an impressively wide field of view and a manual privacy shutter. Connectivity is good, with a pair of full-size USB ports, two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports and full-size HDMI. A microSD slot is the only real omission. Internally, there’s Wi-Fi 6E (with Wi-Fi 7 certification) and Bluetooth 5.3.

The Asus has an SD card reader, but aside from that the Acer competes well here: the Huawei and Asus both only have one Thunderbolt/USB-C port, and the Huawei only has one faster full-size USB.

The Acer is competent so far, and that continues with the keyboard. It’s got a numberpad, a Copilot key, backlight, and solid typing with a surprisingly snappy and satisfying bottoming-out action. The only thing missing is a bit more travel. The trackpad is large, smooth and accurate, and the only misstep is the fingerprint reader awkwardly shoved into the top-left corner.

Then there are those eco credentials to discuss. In addition to its 60% recycled plastic, the trackpad is made from reclaimed ocean plastic. The device has had its carbon footprint offset, and the packaging is fully recyclable. You don’t even need a Torx screwdriver to get inside, which encourages sustainability through upgrading.

If you want a laptop that puts the environment first then this is the one for you.

Screen

• A spacious 16:10 panel
• Good contrast and colours
• Underwhelming speakers

The Vero’s 16-inch display has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which means generous vertical space for working and browsing. The 1920 x 1200 resolution is fine if conventional, and the 60Hz refresh rate keeps everyday computing smooth.

The display’s 382cd/m² brightness is good, the black point of 0.3 is similarly decent, and the resulting contrast ratio of 1,273:1 is solid– enough to create rich highs and deep lows, even if the Vero’s panel can’t match OLED for depth.

The 99.5% sRGB coverage level and 1.8 Delta E mean decent colours for everyday usage and undemanding creative work, too, further bolstering the Vero’s versatility.

This screen is brighter and has a broader colour gamut than the Asus, which makes it bolder and better for colour-sensitive tasks. If you’re fussed about creative work, Huawei’s 0.66 Delta E puts the MateBook even further ahead.

Don’t get your hopes up about the speakers though. While they pump out good-quality sound, they’re not very loud, so you’ll want a Bluetooth speaker to convincingly fill a room.

Performance

• Ideal for everyday computing
• The rival Huawei notebook is much faster
• No fan noise or heat issues

At $840/£899, it’s unrealistic to expect high-end surprises, and the Vero arrives with conventional components: the Intel Core i7 Ultra 155U has two multi-threaded P-Cores with a 4.8GHz Turbo speed and a modest Intel graphics chip. Acer pairs that with 16GB of dual-channel LPDDR5X memory – sadly soldered – and a 2TB SSD.

The Acer’s single- and multi-core Geekbench scores of 2,056 and 6,971 are fine, and its PCMark 10 pace of 5,594 is reasonable. It’s ideal for an everyday laptop, with enough power to tackle browser-based workloads, multi-tasking in Office and some light creative work. Gaming is out except for the least demanding games. Fan noise is consistently modest, at least.

There’s little to choose between the low-power Intel CPU in the Acer and the older chip inside the Asus, but the Huawei’s i9-13900H is faster and a better option for demanding workloads.

That’s evidenced in Cinebench R23’s multi-core benchmark, where the Acer scored 5,034 but the Huawei hit 14,095.

If you want to save money you can drop around $100/£100 from the Vero thanks to its Core i5 version, which has enough power for everyday workloads, minus the ability for any creative tasks.

Software

• Underwhelming Acer apps
• Several irritating pre-installs

The Acer’s software is mediocre. Head into the Apps menu and you’ll find lots of Acer tools, including utilities for managing PurifiedView and PurifiedVoice –AI modifications for video and audio – and AcerSense, which collates Windows power, update and performance options into an Acer-branded front-end.

On the taskbar, you’ll find shortcuts to Booking.com and Dropbox. An occasional McAfee pop-up is an irritation, and in the App list, there are shortcuts to Evernote, ExpressVPN, and some bad games.

The Huawei is certainly better here but the Acer is not egregious.

Battery

• Capable of a full day of work
• Nearly a half battery from a thirty-minute charge

The 65Wh battery does a decent job: with the display at half brightness and the laptop playing media, it lasted for fourteen hours and 19 minutes – if you’re running Office tasks or want the screen ramped up, expect ten hours.

That test figure outlasts both the Huawei and Asus, which means the Vero will give you a full day of work.

The battery also charged nearly halfway in thirty minutes, so it’s easy to get a quick burst of juice if the battery is empty.

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