Acer Aspire One D255

The Acer Aspire One D255 is an update to the D260 netbook we reviewed recently.

Acer's rather silly naming convention means there are several D255 models available, with different prices and specifications.

The one we are looking at is the AOD255-N55DQws (not to be confused with the AOD255-2DQws which is more similar to the older D260 models) and costs £280. Other versions start at £230.

This One has an Intel Atom N550 processor and 1GB of memory. The processor is a dual-core model, which means it's likely to be slightly faster for most tasks than older ‘single-core' processors (as used in most netbooks before 2011).

That said, while it was reasonably speedy for internet and office tasks it still isn't going to be suitable for games or video editing – our video-editing lab test, which takes under an hour on most larger laptops, took over three hours on this one.

It shares the great slimline design of its predecessor with a large battery. Battery life was less than we expected at just under four hours. The keyboard is small and shallow but we didn't find ourselves hitting too many wrong keys. We did find the mouse touchpad buttons hard to press.

There are three USB sockets, a VGA socket for monitors, a memory card reader and headphone and microphone connections. It connects to wired and wireless networks but not Bluetooth devices. As with all netbooks there's no CD or DVD drive but there is a 250GB hard disk.

This and some other D255 models come with the Android operating system, more commonly found on phones. Android is pretty much pointless on a netbook computer, offering little that Windows doesn't. It also comes with the better Windows 7 Starter operating system, which is slightly cut-down from the full Home edition but doesn't skip many useful features.

Some not-especially-useful programs and trial software are supplied, but so is the very useful Microsoft Office Starter, including word-processing and spreadsheet programs.

The dual-core processor adds a little oomph to the D255, making it a good-value netbook.