Acer’s new inexpensive notebooks with 11.6 inch displays, Bay Trail processors and fanless designs are now available in the United States.

The Acer Aspire E11 is a small notebook which sells for as little as $250, while the Aspire V11 has a touchscreen display and a starting price of $350 (it’s worth noting that this model also has more memory and storage space than the cheapest non-touch model).

I’m actually writing this article on an Aspire V11 that Acer loaned me to review. I probably won’t have a full review ready for another week or two, but I can say that the notebook is thin, light, offers decent performance for basic tasks, and should get reasonably good battery life.

acer aspire v11

Here are a few configurations I’ve found that are already on sale in the US:

There are a few things to keep in mind about these little laptops. First, while they have no noisy fans, they do have hard drives instead of solid state storage — and thanks to the moving parts in the hard drives the notebooks aren’t entirely silent.

Second, while these notebooks have some of the most powerful Intel Bay Trail chips available, even the most powerful of the bunch is a 7.5W processor which isn’t going to offer the same kind of performance you would expect from a 15W or Haswell processor. The good news is that Bay Trail chips are generally much cheaper, which is why these systems are so affordable.

I’m testing one of the $369 models right now, and it looks like Acer’s estimate of 7 hours of battery life seems reasonable. At the same time I haven’t had any problems surfing the web with over a dozen browser tabs open or streaming internet video… and that’s about all I’ve had time to test so far.

Stay tuned for more details.

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29 replies on “Acer’s Aspire E11 and V11 fanless laptops now available for $250 and up”

  1. Just bought last week and I think I did a big mistake. I was looking for a less weight computer, because I have to carry all the time in my bag. So i thought this would be the great choice. But Its so slow. I have done all what I could do to speed it up but all in vain. Now I am taking it back to the shop from where I bought it and want some solution.
    Any suggestion to speed it up?

  3. Bought recently Aspire E11 with 2gb ram and 320gb hdd. ( E3-111-C0WA )

    It was preinstalled with windows 8.1 and bunch of unneeded software. Antivirus included. When first started to “get to know him” ( surf web, download software, skype, messengers, etc.. ), it was so laggy that I thought it was a mistake to buy it. Only after some time I realized, that it could be antivirus that slowed everything down so badly…

    But, I had spare SSD at home and 4gb DDR3 ram. After reading that it’s not hard to replace these things, I replaced HDD with 120gb SSD ( it will be enough for me, as it’s not main or work computer ). Installed Ubuntu on it and it is now flying. Like I can’t even believe how fast and quite ( absolutely no sound from it ) it is based on specifications. I can surf web with dozens of tabs open, skype, lamp server is on, phpstorm, terminal, something is downloading at software center and it’s flying.

    After that I tried replacing 2gb RAM to 4gb RAM. I succeeded in replacing ( wasn’t so hard actually ), but after replacing, I turned it on and screen was black, but light was on, but after some time it turned off completely. I don’t know why this happened. But I put old 2gb ram back and it is ok now. Too bad that it didn’t work out with 4gb, but anyway… I’m really glad I bought this fun netbook 🙂

    If any one have some idea why replacing ram didn’t work or you replaced and it was ok , please let me know.

    Have a good one 😉

  4. Even if fanless, your article says the V11 is not completely noiseless because of the spinning HD. Could you include in your review the level of noise for this model? What about the vibration of the V11 when sitting on a table? Thank you!

  6. Neither Microsoft nor Amazon have the Acer Aspire V11. Is it possible that the name of this laptop is
    Acer Aspire V3-111P-C9Z3 ?

  7. Looking at if can install LUBUNTU (fast and light on resources use). Can you do this with this system?
    And, can you swap out HD for a RunCore (or other) SSD – if so, can that swap be done fairly easily?

  11. Brad, would you do the readers a favor by listing the main differences between the E11 and V11 series? And if you want to go further, the diff in specs of the three listed Atom SoCs? Granted, the reader can go and Google for the specs himself, but hopefully you can minimize that burden.

    1. It looks to be somewhat replaceable as it connected by a simple connector after you remove the bottom cover (a few screws) – but obviously finding replacement parts for consumer grade gear is hard a year or more down the road.
      It looks like you can replace the HDD and RAM too…
      If this thing is durable enough (I don’t trust Acer crap generally) this may be a really attractive option.

    1. Particularly, the WiFi chip especially if it’s a Realtek or Ralink chip. Those Realtek and Ralink chips often have problems on both Windows and Linux.

      Please test for thermal throttling too. I’ve had heat issues with past Acer 11.6 inchers. So it’s possible Acer might not have a good thermal design around the low power Bay Trail chip.

    2. Please test SD card speed both under Windows and Linux. I have a Ricoh
      SDHC/XC card reader in my notebook and it’s a lot slower uner Linux than under Windows.
      For SDXC cards I can get get 80-90 MB/s under Windows but under 20 MB/s
      under Linux (sdhci-pci driver).

  15. How do these compare to the Acer B115P? The B115P seems like it has smaller bezels so a possibly smaller footprint. Do both just have Bay Trail options (ie. no Haswell)? Is it easy to swap the HDD and RAM for both models?

  16. Whats the difference between performance & power consumption between the celeron/pentium in these? Its hard to tell by the pricing which is the better device.

  17. Do you know if there are any differences between these models and The TravelMate B115-models? Both specs and looks are really similar.

    1. I’d like to see side by side comparisons of the E11 and B115P in a single article too.

  18. Please when you do a review, open it up so that we can see if the hdd(to ssd), memory and battery are upgreadable/replaceable.

          1. No. The official datasheet indicates that you can upgrade to 8gb of ram.

          2. The Bay Trail T is limited to 4GB but unless the system maker limits it then Bay Trail M/D (Celeron/Pentium) can support up to 8GB…

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