The Acer Aspire R7 series with its “neck” or officially “Ezel hinge” and the trackpad positioned above the keyboard is one of the innovatively designed laptops on the market and surely the weirdest looking one. Besides different keyboard / trackpad input experience, it has ability to keep the 15.6-inch touch-screen in various positions – from rear-facing and laptop modes to almost flat tablet mode and all positions in between. The R7-571-6858 is one of the Acer Aspire R7 configurations, providing mid-tier internal components at a price of $900.
Although the price is a bit too high for a laptop with the last year’s Intel i5-3337U dual-core processor, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, 6GB of main memory, and a 500GB hard drive, the screen (besides the aforementioned design and good aluminum-based build quality) justifies the price to some extent. The display has full HD resolution and IPS technology for wider viewing angles of up to 178 degrees. It supports 10-point multi-touch interaction with pre-installed Windows 8 and with programs. If you prefer traditional typing than on screen-input, it’s important to note that the keyboard has backlight, but keep in mind that some users may consider absence of palm-rests on the R7 as a turn off. Also worth mentioning is 24GB of solid state drive storage for better responsiveness.
The laptop features a 4-cell 3560 mAh sealed battery which can provide up to 4.5 hours of run time according to Acer, stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus Home Theater audio enhancement, a 720p video chat frontal camera, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 ports for your peripherals, VGA and HDMI for video connectivity, an SD card reader, and Acer’s proprietary Converter port. With help of the separately sold Converter cable, you can expand ports selection with Ethernet LAN, which is missing on the laptop itself, but also an additional USB or VGA.
Besides innovativity, design of the R7 has led to more chunky dimensions and a weight heavier than usual. The system measures 1.1″ in profile when closed and weighs 5.3 pounds. It’s thicker and heavier than probably all or almost all laptops with the ultrabook-use i5 “U”-series processor and without a built-in optical drive.
