Acer is expanding its family of low-cost, low-power Windows notebooks with a new model that also functions as a tablet. The Acer Aspire R 11 is a laptop with an 11.6 inch touchscreen display that folds back 360 degrees for use in tablet mode.

Acer plans to bring the Aspire R11 to North America in July for about $249 and up.

Update: Put the emphasis on up. The Aspire R11 is now available for purchase, but the cheapest models available sell for $400. Acer says retailers have chosen not to opt for hardware configurations that would carry a lower price tag.

r11_05

The convertible laptop will be available with Intel Celeron or Pentium Braswell processors, it supports up to 8GB of RAM, and will be available with 500GB and 1TB hard drive options. Not all configurations will be available in all markets.

This is a budget laptop though, so there are some compromises. The laptop has a relatively low-quality display with limited viewing angles. It also has an all-plastic case.

But the notebook has a nice touchpad, a decent keyboard, and USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports as well as full-sized HDMI, SD card, and Ethernet ports. It also has Intel’s latest low-power Celeron or Pentium chips which should offer decent performance while operating at low temperatures, which is why the only holes in the bottom of the case are for the speakers: there’s no fan, so there’s no need for extra ventilation.

 

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14 replies on “Acer Aspire R11 is a $249 convertible notebook with a fanless design”

  1. The problem is the $250 version is sold as a Windows 10 Now notebook but doesn’t have enough memory to support the update. Spent 3 hours with Microsoft remotely accessing my unit attempting to install Windows 10. Finally the tech gave up and told me I should just return it. Gee happy birthday honey Daddy bought you a hunk of garbage. Way to go Acer! R&R reset & return

    1. Just stick in a the windows 10 will notify you that there is not enough space to download and you can choose to download it to another location, I used a USB flash drive. Installed fine.

    2. Windows 10 will not fit on this laptop. The 32gb ssd is to small and also soldered onto the motherboard. Ram is the only thing that can be upgraded. Yes you can do windows 10 on a usb, but who wants a usb sticking of laptop all the time. The only thing that makes this laptop bad is the 32gb version. My advise is stick to the version with the 500gb HDD. Also remember this is a budget laptop.

  2. I think the problem with this device (and I went to Walmart to see it there firsthand) is that just like the Aspire V5, this keyboard is just mushy. It’s not decent, it’s not as bad as the V5, but it’s still not that great either. The V5 was actually really bad when I had it and many reviews I saw confirmed that. But I was considering replacing my Timeline 1830T since it’s an older model and no longer supported. After working with the keyboard on this and seeing the internals on another site, I realized that my TimelineX 1830T has this one beat. I can use a 9.5mm drive, while I still have 8GB of RAM as a ceiling, I can use the regular DDR3 RAM where this one is limited to DDR3L. It’s easier to replace the RAM on mine vs. this and while this one has a touchscreen, the keyboard on my 1830T is so much better than this one but mine was a higher end laptop many years ago. I just wish people started making quality components at a decent price and stopped cutting corners on things like the keyboard and the screen. The screen is OK and is comparable to my 1830T but the viewing angles just seem worse on this one than mine. Still, I can get an 1830T on eBay for about $130 and get an i5 motherboard for about $50. It’s just a nicer machine and like this one, it supports Win10 also.

  3. This isn’t bad (especially considering the full sizes ports) but I’m so out on Acer the reviews would have to blow me away to consider it.

    1. I know. They used to make really good laptops years ago (Timeline 1830T is still the best I ever owned for the size and performance — as well as being one of the few mini laptops that makes swapping out memory, Wifi card, and the hard drive really easy.

    1. Not necessarily a bad thing, this screen looks pretty bad, and for your $300 you would probably get a low performance BayTrail based Celeron and 2GB RAM from Acer too.

        1. Low end Celerons are the same BayTrail architecture as Atoms. Some Celerons perform even worse than the standard Z3740 or 3735F Atom. The only problem with BayTrail Atom netbooks is the integrated 2GB RAM.

          1. This machine has removable hard drive (7mm, I believe) and a single DDR3 memory slot which can take an 8GB module that’s the DDR3L, I believe. The cache on it is supposed to be good but I think the lack of L3 cache and lack of hyperthreading is giving me second thoughts. I like the design and it’s a nice laptop when I saw it at Walmart for a great price…. but I’m still reminded of the keyboard on the Aspire V5 that was so mushy that it was very hard to use. The inclusion of HD Audio (at least on the D3050 spec) seems to be a good thing. Still, after using a Timeline 1830T for years, the viewing angles isn’t too big of a deal. But the lack of hyperthreading reminds me of how it felt to go from the 1830T i3 motherboard to the i5 one. It was really noticeable especially when doing things like using Handbrake to convert my videos to MP4 H264 format.

    2. Yes, but then you have to deal with ASUS which is less than stellar in terms of support. Acer may be as bad but their quality is definitely slipping. The V5 was one of the worst laptops in terms of quality (keyboard was crap, performance was crap)…

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