Acer’s $200 Aspire E11 laptop now available with flash storage

1. I have had this for a few months it runs office well, and handles some basic tasks that my chromebook couldn’t do. I can use windows and chrome apps so I have the best of both worlds. I also use virtual box to run Linux and Unix machines from a 128 gb SD card and run portable apps off a micro usb flash drive as well. I upgraded the ram and will be upgrading the Wi-fi card to ac soon.

2. All they had to do was give it 64gb instead of 32.. why is the battery life so terrible?

3. *sigh*. How about a SATA version with a Core-M?

   1. Everyone seems to be building 2-in-1s with the Core-Ms 🙁
      No love for the regular old laptop…

4. I have one of these when Best Buy had a one-day sale for $115. Yes, $115. It is unbearably slow. I upgraded it with a Samsung 840 SSD and a new INTEL 802.11AC wifi card. I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro and it runs rings around this despite Passmark scores being higher in single thread. The multi-core Bay Trail is superior than these celerons. The Wifi chip onboard is really slow at maxes out at 72Mbps. That is why I upgraded the Wifi because I had iPhones, Android tablets and the Venue loading up websites much, much faster. The slow wifi contributes to the overall feeling of slow-ness.

   WIth the upgraded SSD, I get 7-8 hours consistently.

   As for Linux, it is a real pain to install; due to the way the BIOS is set-up and the bootloader. It is doable. I still have this and I use it with an admin I app I use to manage VMWare servers and that is just it. It is too slow to do anything else.. It does have a USB 3.0 port and Gigabit ethernet. USB caps out at 225 MB/sec transfer w/ USB 3.0 SSDs.

   You are better off with a refurb Bay Trail tablet w/ bluetooth keyboard.

   1. Almost certainly a different device device because I don’t think you can upgrade this to an SSD. Also, this is a bay trail CPU.

      I suspect you bought an older netbook, and yes it would be much faster with an SSD. My five year old device certainly is.

      1. The one I bought was reviewed by Brad Here just a few months back. It is this E3-111 which is their E11 series laptop with the Pentium N2830/N2840. The SKU is a bit different on Best Buy’s website but it is indeed a Bay Trail Celeron CPU – N2840. This one is merely the same one w/out the slow spinning drive. All the specs are the same including CPU, USB 3 and gigabit. They’re all labelled under the E3-111 or E11 model.

         1. Chippy took this version apart, there’s one RAM slot on the opposite side of the motherboard but there’s no SATA connector soldered and thus you can’t add a drive, while it appears the main drive is a eMMC type instead of SSD…

            https://www.umpcportal.com/2014/11/acer-aspire-e11-es1-200-netbook-first-impressions-video/

            1. Ya and yellowdroid has the E11 version with the mechanical SATA hard drive which he replaced with an SSD…

            2. Yes, but people should be made aware the non-HDD version can’t have a SSD installed!

            3. If that is the case,that is a step-backwards, E3-111 /E11s can be had all day long for $150-$175 on sale.

            4. Everyone will just have to be sure it’s the version with HDD… easier to replace an existing drive than to modify the motherboard…

   2. I don’t doubt your experience, but can you explain why the customer reviews on Amazon give it (this model in this post) virtually 5 out of 5 stars (just shy of that)? If you bought a laptop for $115 I wonder if it was refurbished or something else. Further to that, if you got it for $115, you got a full laptop for less than the price (by a lot) of the official Nexus 9 keyboard cover. It’s quite hard to use a keyboard case when you don’t have the tablet. Even further to that, keyboards that are less than 10-inches….suck. Netbooks proved that point. But if you bought a laptop for $115 new, off a store shelf, I would be hard pressed to have anything beyond low low expectations. Certainly I wouldn’t be expecting a performance beast of any sort. If it’s not bottom of the barrel, then Best Buy has a serious pricing issue.

      1. I bought it brand new and I’m not complaining. The regular retail is $199. It normally goes on sale for $175. Yes, $115 is insanely cheap and I knew what I was getting going in. However, I know a few people who bought it with different expectations.

         I had my expectations but was wildly amuse to know a 2 year Acer 710p Chromebook was much more faster in just about every metrics except battery life. And my Chromebook was a definitely a refurb that I got at a much lower price, $80. It just goes to show how Windows isn’t as efficient and how manufactures skimp out on parts to meet a price target; namely the mini-pcie Wi-Fi because they had to pay a Windows license where they didn’t on their chromebooks.

         1. Ah, I see you also are doing the Chromebook comparison..;-)

            I know you are saying the wifi is slow, but is 72Mbps really “slow”? What does Netflix recommend for 1080p streaming? 10Mbps? Less than 10Mbps? Where I’m from if you’re getting 25Mbps from the wall then you’re doing amazing. I can’t quite understand a wifi complaint especially with an ethernet port on this computer.

            I appreciate you know what you are talking about. However, with all things considered, the average consumer out there (who are the vast majority) should not and have not shunned the E11. 4.5 out of 5 stars does say something.

            1. agreed, the speed i pay for is supposed to be somewhere around 30mbps, but im more likely to get somewhere between 10 & 20.. idk where these people live that they get gigabyte speeds

            2. The problem is the 2.4GHZ is highly congested in many areas. I have about 30 wifi hotspots just in my cul-de-sac of a small neighborhood. 5 GHZ is pretty much a requirement if you don’t want stuttering in your video streams

         2. Good to see your insider info. I have a one year old c720 n2955 processor at work that runs a vbox macintosh for my particular task. Now I wonder if I want to run vbox on the n2840 . I need to say that , in Linux, you can change the CPU gorvernor , and i tried n2840 chromebook Samsung and it was zipping fast.

            Everything is very confusing at this point, and I basically have given up on using any personal laptop/PC at all. I have lived for the past 2 years without a laptop/PC for personal use. All I use is a 6.44 inch phablet. My instructions are at https://nocomputerbutphone.blogspot.com .

            I have anxiety for not catching up with the world without a personal laptop/PC. But I don’t know what else I can do. I have tech exams that I need to pass. But I don’t know how I am going to persevere without the aid of a laptop. But a laptop just kills me all together.

      2. i loved/love netbooks, they were the best thing to ever happen to computers, and the keyboards were fine as long as you didnt by a PEEOHESS acer

      3. At $115 I think the low price might make me feel very generous towards a lot of a device’s minor faults… 🙂

5. What’s the max RAM supported? Is it 4 or 8 GB?

   1. 8GB but it uses DDR3L ( the 3.5 volt, more expensive ones). I have one and it doesn’t make sense to upgrade a cheap slow netbook with expensive ram. I couldn’t upgrade with the dozens of DDR3 sticks I had lying around as spares. DDR3L is getting very expensive. a 8GB stick is $80 on Amazon. Wifi is pitifully slow. SO upgrading RAM and WiFi, you are better off spending more money on a machine with all of that.

      1. I don’t mind (I think) that it’s cheap and slow. I want lots of RAM so that I can run a second machine in VirtualBox instance.

         But if you have any suggestions on a sub $600 machine that is silent and with more RAM from the get go, I’m all ears 🙂

         1. You’ll grow a long beard running VB on this, even with more RAM.

         2. Look at the X140e Thinkpad Brad just posted for the deal of the day. Looks like a hot deal A4-5000 which has similar specs to an I3. The AMD is very good with hyperthreading for running VMs and you can easily upgrade the X140. I’ve had many X120, X130 so I have high praise for them. He has a link for $230 which is a good deal by just casually doing price checks online.

            1. Too fat and heavy. And I bet it also has a noisy fan…
               But thanks for the suggestion 🙂

6. This would make a perfect Linux netbook.

   1. Except it’s not, because of the bootloader issues.

      1. If it has a 64 bit bootloader, there should be no problem.

7. Oh wow. Asus take notice. Most of the regulars here (including Brad although he may be in denial) will have seen this movie before. First Asus, then Acer, HP, Toshiba, etc. Cheap, portable and now in 2014, a heck of a lot more useful.

   This Acer really rocks! I’m a bit surprised, but it blow the others away. Ethernet port? That’s a win. The USB 3.0? That’s a win. Upgradeable RAM? Seriously? Full HDMI out? Bring it on.

   I think the bad part is that Acer put so much into this, that others will have to follow. No question Asus could have done the same, and now they have no choice. It’s called competition.

   I’m excited about this trend. It’s very familiar. Give me an Asus with an AMD chipset with these specs, and to me you have an unbeatable proposition for cheap and portable.

8. I can see where this would appeal to some, but I’d prefer it come with a small SSD instead, so that you can change it out for something larger if necessary.

9. Hmmmm…. I think that a NetBook-Showdown-2014 between this and the x205 may be in the making…

   1. The early reviews on the x205 from users indicate that the battery life on the x205 is phenomenal (and the weight, too).

      1. Too bad about the touchpad.

10. Decent design, but sad that it has the worst battery life out of the new cheap 11 inchers.

    1. I think that’s largely the Celeron/Atom trade off.

       1. Stream 11 has the same processor and gets 7 1/2 supposidly.

          1. Yes, but similar Atom devices get over 10!

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