Acer Aspire One D250

Mini-notebook screen sizes have been creeping up ever since the 7in Asus Eee PC launched in 2008. Now 10in screens are the norm, and that's exactly what you'll find on the Aspire One D250.

Something we noticed straight away was that the display coped extremely well outdoors – we were able to use it even under direct sunlight. Dotted around the case are three USB ports and a memory card reader – the latter will come in handy when copying photos from a digital camera's memory card. Microphone and headphone sockets are also included, along with a VGA socket for attaching the computer to an external monitor.

The vast majority of mini-notebooks, including the Samsung N310, use Intel's Atom N270 processor. The D250, however, has the newer N280 version – this is ever-so-slightly faster than the N270 and, more importantly, doesn't get as hot, which means better battery life and less need for a noisy fan to cool things down. A total of 1GB of memory sits alongside the processor and, running Windows XP Home, the D250 felt sprightly when web browsing and word processing. The computer's battery life was reasonable – we measured just under four hours on a single charge.

It weighs just 1.1kg and is also very compact, but unlike the Samsung, the Acer’s keyboard doesn’t fill its full width and is fiddly to type on: we struggled to type at speed without making errors. The trackpad was small but supports multi-touch, which means you can use two fingers to perform various functions, such as zooming in and out of photos using a pinching gesture. However, the left and right buttons, which take the form of a single rocker bar, were overly stiff.

Support for connecting to Bluetooth devices and wireless networks are built in, but we were a little disappointed that the newest wireless standard (802.1 1n) isn't supported. We've no complaints about the 160GB hard disk, though, which provides plenty of room for videos, music and other files.

The Aspire One D250 is well-built and comes with a good range of features. It's by no means perfect, though, and as with all mini-notebooks, it's important to remember that only suitable for relatively basic computer tasks.