Speaking of performance

Speaking of performance

Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Sony laptop battery

The built in tray-loading DVD burner is a throwback to the now-dying standard, though it will come in handy from time to time if you have a large library of movies or boxed software. Movies looked clear on the laptop's screen, with room filling sound from the Dolby-optimized speakers.

The system comes with an Intel Core i3-processor, six GB of system memory, a 500GB hard drive, and Intel integrated graphics. Until this year, you'd expect to possibly get an Intel Pentium or AMD E-class processor, 2-3GB of memory, and a 320GB hard drive for $499. With this setup, you're unlikely to find many programs online and off the shelf that won't run on the V5-571-6891. 6GB is a nice touch, you'll be able to keep many tabs open in Internet Explorer or Chrome with that much memory. This level of equipment is refreshing, because until recently, netbooks still had problems running programs like light 3D games that require DX10/DX11, netbooks had much lower resolution screens, and many apps ran dog slow on systems with an ultra low voltage 1.5GHz processor like in a netbook. The V5-571-6891 comes with a standard one-year warranty.

Speaking of performance, the V5-571-6891 ran all the benchmark tests. The system isn't a speed demon, but it has enough oomph to make short work of day-to-day tasks. Its PCMark7 score of 2090 points is on par for what we've seen from budget laptops like the Asus U56E-BBL6 (2,255 points), our former budget Editors' Choice laptop. We don't have comparable budget laptop numbers for our new Handbrake 0.9.8 test (1:57) and Photoshop CS6 (8:43) yet, but suffice to say this is a decent baseline number. You can do occasional multimedia tasks on the system, but it's really made for consuming media like online videos and photos, both of which display without a hitch, even 1080p HD videos like the latest Battlestar such as Sony VGP-BPS6 battery, Sony VGP-BPL6 battery, Sony VGN-UX92S battery, Sony VGP-BPL21 battery, Sony VGP-BPS21 battery, Sony VGP-BPS21A battery, Sony VGN-FW90S battery, Sony VGP-BPS13 battery, Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery, Sony VGN-CS190 battery, Sony VGP-BPL13 battery Galactica: Blood and Chrome webisodes. Its 3D gaming is understandably weak, though the system comes with Intel HD Graphics 4000 instead of the base 2500 version, so you'll get a little better performance than you'd expect. High-end games are out of the question, but lighter fare like World of Warcraft or Torchlight is easily in the system's capabilities.

The V5-571-6891 comes with a removable 4-cell battery, which is good for a somewhat anemic four-hour battery life (4:07) on our video rundown test. This is significantly less than Acer's five-hour battery life claims, but the battery life is sufficient for a movie plus a bunch of Web surfing around the house. If you're buying the V5-571-6891 for home use or even students that may forget their power adapter in their dorm room, four hours battery life is enough, as you wouldn't be straying from a power plug for too long. Of course, the battery won't last you a cross-continental airline flight, so this system is less suitable for road warriors. If you are one of these type of users, it would be best to upgrade to a higher-capacity battery or look for a system that will last a little longer like the Dell XPS 12, or the Acer Aspire S3-391-6046, both of which last about five hours on the same rundown test. Tablets running Windows RT like the Asus Vivo Tab RT last even longer: almost ten hours.

The Acer Aspire V5-571-6891 is an interesting beast. It has everything you'd want in a $500 laptop, minus a long battery life. Its pricing recalls the netbooks of 2008-2011, but it's so much more powerful than any of those, with a much larger screen. The budget Toshiba Satellite C655-S5542 is less expensive than the V5-571-6891 by $99, but you give up USB 3.0, HDMI, 3GB of memory, and quite a bit of performance due to a Celeron processor. For $500, it's surprising to find a latest-generation Intel Core processor, 4 to 6GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, large screen, and a full keyboard and Windows-8 compliant trackpad It balances its thinness and large screen well, to the point that it is quite portable around the house or campus. It's a lot more modern than the Asus U56E-BBL6, which uses a second-generation Intel Core processor, is bigger and heavier, and doesn't come with Windows 8. The Acer Aspire V5-571-6891 meets the requirements for the basic user, with extra flourishes like a numeric keypad, good sound, and exceeds expectations for a budget laptop. Therefore we award the V5-571-6891 our Editors' Choice for budget laptops.