Aspire V7-482PG-9884

The top of mine is plastic, the keyboard deck might be metal, but some people disagree with me.

 

So, a couple days/reboots later, and my laptop is back to normal. I'll attribute it to some lingering configuration changes, and leave it at that.

-Jim

 

That number is from this review, and it's in Fahrenheit. It's also with the gpu fully loaded, and the review seems to be biased against the laptop on all fronts. There are a number of issues raised (the "squishy" keyboard, for example) that I find to be either exaggerated or just a matter of personal choice.

I'm not sure if I've had the fans kick on when I haven't been running a game. Such as right now, I have no idea if they're running or not. Mind you, if you start playing a power-hungry game, the fans kick on, and move a lot of air. It's not so much that they're loud, but you really hear the air moving.

Easily.

Pretty decent. I rarely use the touchscreen, but the hinges hold the screen firmly. And the touchscreen is extremely responsive (much better than many that I tried). I find the keyboard to be quite easy to type on. I'm a software engineer, so I do a lot of typing. The whole system looks quite nice. My screen is very nice, though like (almost) all IPS panels, it does have light-bleed along the edges. I tried a lot of laptops before I bought this one, and it's got one of the nicest looking screens.

Speaking of the screen, I turned off the Intel "Display Power Saving Technology" to get rid of an occasional flicker and washed-out look when on battery. It causes auto contrast and brightness changes, but I didn't think it was worth the small amount of power saving.

The touchpad is somewhat middle-of-the-pack. In general, it's not bad, but it's not the nicest I've used. On the plus side, it doesn't seem to screw up detecting a two-finger scroll (a lot of laptops that I tried would suddenly start pinch-zooming during a scoll). But it doesn't "feel" as nice as the best ones that I tried. But I can't really describe why.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my purchase.

 

Finally got my i5 version. I can totally feel the problems with the keyboard but with such slimness, i think its allowed. The trackpad is also quite horrible coming from a Macbook Pro, but the screen is simply gorgeous. I installed a Samsung 830 256GB SSD in mine and did a clean install of everything. Its a total beast now. Havnt ran any games or any graphically demanding software, have exams in the coming weeks so wouldnt be doing such. O yeah i got mine from TigerDirect for $930 and it was shipped for only about 3 days. Greatest bargain i found around

 

I think TigerDirect's model ships with a 1 month warranty. Did you purchase Square Trade on their website?

 

I got mine from one of the vendors on amazon and I asked them before I bought it if its has a warranty they said yes one year.
I think as long as its a us version it has a one year.

Do I have to register with Acer I have to check that.

 

As far as I know all Acer laptops come with a one year international travelers warranty. Both of the Acers I have had, have had that warranty.

 

Just posting this because so many people are interested battery life.
Went into my advanced battery settings, and set it up so that max battery had every possible battery savings mode enabled, cpu min down to 0, limit max cpu to 80%. Panel refresh enabled etc. The only thing I did was set the wifi power savings to max power. I need the strongest wifi possible, I am over 100 feet away from the router I use.

So today I have been surfing the net for 3.5 hours, with the screen on max brightness, the battery just got to 50%. So I am saying, you could get 7 hours battery life easy, with high screen brightness and wifi use. I also listened to a couple of YouTube videos, but that would only be 15 minutes at most.

I am thinking I should limit the max cpu even more and see if I can get 8 hours, which I bet I could.

 

Even more if you lower the screen brightness , but some people likes it on high so that was a good test

 

Hello Everyone,

new member here and new and first time Acer owner. I got the 14 inch version of the V7 with the i5 4200u processor with the GT 750m graphics cards. so here are my first impressions and other thoughts so far. the V7 is well built in my opinion and is in league with Samsung and Asus' similar end notebooks. bottom has a rubberized texture feel which is nice to hold although it may have some issues in the future especially when the temp gets to those 80C temps which is fairly common to gaming laptops. laptop is very thin and really nice. I love how the screen almost totally occupied the display areas from corner to corner leaving only a small margin of the display screen on the edge. keyboard layout is pretty spaced out and keys are shallow which made the feel very unfamiliar and unnatural. this maybe an annoyance or issue (minor or major) especially to those someone like me who is already pretty accustomed and memorized the position of the keys. I typed a lot without looking at the keyboards and I rely on the feel of the keys like what I'm doing right now while typing this report on my netbook. so this could affect the rate of my productivity as of the moment and I don't know how long I would be able to adjust or would I be able to adapt to the new layout. but it's not bad at all, just completely different. besides, I had worst ones.

touchpad texture is ok in my opinion. pretty mediocre but not bad. which means you can use it for what it is intended for on those certain functions during travel or working on space constraint areas. 2GB of vram is more than enough in my opinion for that extra push although I would have preferred a GDDR5 memory but I guess certain aspects of heat, power consumption , etc... is more of a priority for the ultrabook rather than really making it an extreme performer. it's a black label Nvidia although I'm not sure of the significance of the color coding between this gpu version. I saw a green version on the Asus version

I would have preferred a quadcore Haswell but unfortunately they don't have it on the V7 14 inch. besides, a quadcore version might not come in the same form factor, dimensions and weight. it may also be a lot more expensive and battery hungry which defeats the purpose of battery use. I could have gotten an Ivy Bridge i7 Quadcore which is really great but again, it doesn't come on the V7 but earlier V5 models with no touch and just good display. anyway, as already mentioned, difference between ULV i5 and i7 Dual core is negligible unless the i7 ULV has a significantly higher base clock over the i5 or the i7 is a quadcore. if the difference is only 100-200 MHz, it is not worth the extra $100 unless they are the same price.

laptop is silent. I mean WoW. I just love the silence. other aspects are yet to be covered due to bad news.

now, here's the bad news. it's my first Acer product acquisition and I got a LEMON. now, call me unlucky or what. I'm sure I got other devices failing on me after a few weeks or months or years after but I never got anything defecting upon opening the unit. sadly, the unit has a defective display panel with some stuck and broken horizontal pixels. I returned the unit just after a few hours and will get a new unit by either tomorrow or Halloween. because of that, I'm not really that happy as far as my first impression goes. I know that crap happens but I think it's understandable and knew the feeling when you have to return the unit even before you even get a chance to use it. not really disappointed but just annoyed. although if I get another lemon upon opening, then I'd be disappointed by then. hope it is just a rare incident and not a QC issue.

 

hi
nice write up ,sorry about your display was it a sealed box when you got it?
hope the second one will be perfect.
i have a 15 " one with nvidia 720 gpu and grey label also I5

and you did not mention about the speakers its sound real good when is on dolby mode imo

 

just got my 2nd unit a few hours ago. both laptops came in factory sealed. 2nd unit seems to be fine and more responsive. no horizontal line nor dead/stuck pixels, so far so good. also some variation or difference in cosmetics. imo, the 2nd unit is better. touchpad appears to be much smoother and a bit more glossy compared to the 1st one. also very responsive. sticker location of the intel logo has changed from right side of the keyboard to the left side. I would have preferred the right side just for OCD preference. also, there seems to be a missing sticker or two at the back of the 2nd unit laptop which was present in the first laptop if I remember correctly. I'm not sure if this is a concern or not or would it affect any warranty issues in the future since it seems to contain the full detailed specs of the unit as well as S/N and P/N number. but anyway, I have a receipt. I forgot to check the manufacturing date on the first unit since I shipped it out almost immediately upon first inspection. on the 2nd unit though, it was only recently manufactured last month in the first week of September.

I also was unable to try out the speaker on the first laptop due to immediate replacement. have to ship it out asap. I haven't fully tested the speakers on the 2nd unit yet but so far my initial impression is great. it doesn't sound like your typical laptop speaker but more like a full pledge hi/fi speaker. so basically, it is capable of playing and standing on it's own without having to ask for some additional external speaker setup.

I'm still familiarizing myself with Windows 8 so this could take some time before I get comfortable with it. although I'll be running 3 O/S on this one along with Windows 7 and Ubuntu. gonna replace the mSata cache drive with a 256GB Plextor O/S storage one. no idea exactly what size the cache drive is but the specs say it's 20GB. Msata drive is a Kingston type btw. HDD is a Toshiba.

also, still going to test the fans since they seem not to engage yet with only basic functionalities. the only audible sound I could hear is the HDD, so that's how silent the laptop is. I would assume the processor runs cooler as it doesn't need to dissipate nor expel heat constantly nor stress/force the fans to go berserk. this is good since a fan going overdrive is very distracting for me. I'd prefer a slower fan rpm than a turbo jet engine.

keyboard feels farm especially on the mid/upper left portions of the keyboard, but manageable. nothing to distracting nor bothersome compared to a fan spewing hot air on your lap or any body part that is directly positioned on the exhaust areas.

 

thats good news ,yes the fan is dont run much , i only notice it when i start to watch like a you tube video.
mine also was manufactured recently and all the stickers is on the left side of the touchpad.

 

I'm planning on grabbing an SSD, but I might get the m500, just due to it's bitlocker support.

By the way, anyone switched over to Pro? Any gotchas to be aware of? (I can't imagine there would be, but then I never thought I'd see computers shipped without usable keys for reinstallation.)

 

There are too many good SSD drives out these days. From the Samsung 840 Pro and 840 EVO. The Toshiba Q series Pro, the Seagate 600 series. And of course the Crucial M500 and Sandisk Extreme 2. All of these companies make there own Fabs, they make ther own chips, which means they should be of the highest quality and most reliable. And I think they all run Marvell processors also, except Samsung which uses their own. I am looking at the ~250GB versions of all of these chips. Some are MLC 2 bits per chip, the Samsung EVO in TLC 3 bits per chip. Some have a dedicated cache of SLC 1 bit per chip. I think I want an SSD that works well at its core. I know the Samsung EVO can use spare system resources (up to 1GB of ram) to boost performance past 600MB per second. But still it seems like using the OS to boost performance might make other things not run as well, like when I am playing a game. So, with so many good options, I do not know what to get.

 

If you want to stick with msata, you're a bit more limited. Unless (like me) you're planning on upgrading to Win 8 Pro, and using bitkeeper, the plextor seems to be everyone's favorite (here and elsewhere). Right now, the m500 is the only msata drive that supports edrive.

For standard SSDs, my friends seem to love their 840 Pros.

 

Right now I am between the more expensive Sandisk Extreme 2, and the Toshiba Q Pro. These two companies make their chips together, like Intel and Micron. Toshiba is a big OEM supplier of SSD drives. I trust Sandisk and Toshiba reliability. Took the Crucial M500 out of the running because of slow write times. But I do like that Crucial has a power saving feature. Seagate is too expensive for no gain. Samsung 840 Pro is older and more expensive. 840 EVO is good, I just like the idea of Toshiba using higher quality MLC 2 bits per fabs. Samsung has to use a cahce to make thier drives fast, without the cache they would be slow, and I am not sure I like using my laptop ram and some trick programming to make the ssd "faster." I say faster because, benchmarks do not always equal real world results. But I will not discount the 840 EVO completely, Samsung does have the best software to go with their ssd drives.

 

SSD performance stability always rely on firmware. nothing is wrong with that. even sandforce is using such. the only concern about sandforce is performance, stability and reliability over time as they are more susceptible to failure. this is why marvell controllers can be more expensive because they are less to deteriorate over time. anyway, I got myself the Plextor M5M while they are cheap. runs similar like the SSD Pro version. my complaint about the Acer V7 is the damn Bios and Windows configuration. it's pretty messed up and makes it painstaking difficult to reconfigure everything no thanks to the secure boot. I can't even update the Plextor's firmware due to this crappy bios. Acer has to release a Bios update soon.

 

Good warning about the locked down bios in this laptop. More reason for me to get an ssd that is good to go right out the box, like the Toshiba Q series Pro which runs Toshiba-customized Marvell controllers. And of course uses 19nm Toshiba nand, which is world-class.

 

I have this in shortlist along with Dell Inspiron 15 7000 . Which one you think is better? (build quality, specs, price etc)

btw, in my country only has one version , V7-582PG , i7 4500U/8gb ram/24gb ssd + 500gb hdd/ 1080p IPS, 15.6" screen/ GT750M

 

WATCH THE ACER WARRANTY!

Yesterday my laptop and wifi was working fine. At 2PM I set the laptop to sleep and did a few things, came back at 4PM and my wifi was gone. The Hardware was gone, the Driver was gone, nothing. I tried to reinstall the driver, it installed but nothing changed. I did a partial restore using Acer Recovery Management, did not work. I got the Intel Wifi Driver from the internet using another laptop, use a USB to put it on mine, installed, nothing. Called Acer and they said go ahead and send it, you pay the shipping, we will fix it, and send it back.

They want me to pay the shipping for an in warranty issue. I did not know this, my fault, they do not hide it. But this is a crap warranty, Lenovo, HP, Dell,I have had all of these and sent them in for warranty service and those companies pay for shipping both ways.

This laptop is expensive and UPS wants to know the value of the package to have insurance, it was going to cost me $50 to send it to Acer, the wifi card only costs ~$35. So I decided to upgrade the warrranty to a 2 year TNP Acer Extended warranty, it covers shipping both ways. It costs $140, or $70 per year, I figured for the price it was better than paying for shipping. So I got it, and Acer says it is too late, we already know of your wifi issue, so you have to use your old warranty. SO I told them forget it, the wifi was working. I did a full destructive restore on the latop, still no wifi. So I took the back off, unplugged the wifi card from the mobo, unplugged the battery and antennas first of course. Plugged it back in, and wow, wifi works again.

So, if you want to buy an Acer, just realize that the warranty sucks compared to most other companies. I would say get a good extended warranty. Actually the only reason I had not gotten an extended warranty so far is because again with other companies (HP, Dell, Lenovo), you can buy the extended warranty up until your original warranty runs out.

So my wifi works now, and I have a better warranty until July 2015. Now I have to download a ton of stuff again, (Steam, Olympus Viewer, Windows 8.1) and get all my stuff off of my back up HDD. Also I am telling you, if you care about your stuff, get a cheap External HDD, I have a Western Digital Passport, also I back up some important things to Skydrive.

Be warned you pay shipping, unless you get the TNP warranty.

 

Hi

I have the same version as you would buy and so far I love it I was going to get the dell 7000 but I liked the Acer better its thin its lighter great screen ,battery very good build quality , ssd cache, fast better keyboard than dell , get it!!

 

thanks. the balance features of this laptop does attract my attention.
anyway, anyone tried to linux in this laptop yet?
I'm thinking to install linux in this laptop for my programming and work stuffs (I prefer Linux as my OS) and leave Windows in smallest partition possible for gaming purpose only (Games will be installed in separate partition). can anyone recommend best option for the storage?
Can I re-use the existing mSATA for Windows installation and change the normal HDD with normal SATA for linux and other stuffs?

 

Yes, but keep in mind the cache ssd is pretty small. I'm not sure if the stock load would fit.

Currently, instead of dual-booting, I'm running Linux under VMware Player.

 

anyone using Polar Black color? how bad is the fingerprint marks? Acer in my country only bring this color

 

So i flipped through most of the thread and did not find a clear answer. From what I understand, it only gets hot when you are gaming.

I'm interested in how hot it gets when you are web browsing or performing office work? does it stay cool to the touch? barely warm? hotter than your average ultrabook?

Im interested in using this as a gaming rig when needed but generally using it as a lap computing machine on a couch. Is it comfortable in this setting?

 

Completely cool to barely warm.

 

Thanks for the response!

How about the trackpad and keyboard? Is it just bad and a constant aggrivation or is it something you have gotten used to?

 

I honestly think the keyboard is fine. If you've never used a "chicklet" style keyboard, it might take some getting used to.

The trackpad is the low-point, but it really isn't that bad. As I've said, it's considerably better than many of them out there. Playing with the settings can help a lot. It's certainly not a constant annoyance. I'm really picky when it comes to trackpads, and it doesn't bother me (at least, not too much). I'll put it this way: I'd buy it again.

-Jim

 

Anyone else having issues with Windows 8.1? I have had to do a system restore twice now because of first, wifi issues with 8.1, then sluggishness and a weird grey screen saying please wait making the laptop unusable again the after I installed 8.1. So here I am with Windows 8 again afraid to upgrade. Now I will say that I used a newer Intel wifi driver, and newer Nvidia driver than those you can get from acer.com. I have talked with Acer support many time in the past week. They tell me that using drivers from Intel and Nvidia are not supported and only use drivers from Acer.com. Another tech also told me not to upgrade to 8.1 since I kept having issues.

Anyone else have 8.1 issues?

 

no issues with 8.1 so far other than Microsoft adding some features and removing some in the process which pretty much defeat the purpose of it. kinda stupid if you ask me. so far, I'm not using the 8.1 which was on the HDD drive that I removed and replaced with an SSD. I'm now using a 256gb msata SSD and 512gb sata SSD Plextors (M5M and M5 Pro which are both really fast). have to set the bios to legacy from UEFI since the Bios is crap as of the moment. I'm dual-booting Ubuntu and WIndows 7. kinda hated the lack of driver support compatible for Windows 7. and some drives missing and incompatible for usage unless used UEFI or with Windows 8. Acer needs to fix this asap. user review will come out possibly in 2 weeks as I needed more time to play around with the V7. so far, I kinda liked the tweaking aspect of it.

 

Hey, I was having issues with my wifi. Sometimes it would work and sometimes not. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers which didn't work. But I tried this yesterday and so far so good. This computer comes with McAfee anti-virus etc. I felt that it was McAfee's "site advisor" that was slowing down my wifi, since it likes to scan every site I visit. So go into uninstall, choose the McAfee software, and it lets you uninstall just site advisor if you wish to.
Hope that helps, and let me know how it goes, since I'm hoping that's the only problem.

 

I deleted McAfee within 10 seconds of using the laptop. I always get rid of the free antivirus programs that laptops ship with. For windows 7 I was using MS Security Essentials which is free. And Now windows defender is the same thing and comes with all Win 8 computers.

I just decided not to try 8.1 again, I am using 8 and it works fine. I am also only using the drivers from acer.com

 

I think Acer messed it up pretty badly by trying to peomote Microsoft's WIndows 8 and made backward compatibility impossible or painful. I'm going to pay them a call one of these days and need to fix things up. for some reason, the computer is having some driver issues. I would blame this to the O/S and Bios. personally, I would give a failing mark to the computer with this issue alone. User-friendly NOT. just horrible even for experienced computer users.

 

Is this thread only for the USA version. Is there anyone who lives in the USA and purchased the Canadian version? That one seems to be a better deal. How is the bilingual keyboard?

 

i upgraded to 8.1 and works fine

 

I bought the Canadian one. Took a couple days to get used to the layout. It's not too bad, since it seems to be a rule that your new laptop will always have some keys moved from where they were on your old laptop.

-Jim

 

could you take a picture of the Canadian keyboard? I've been looking for one and can't seem to locate it anywhere.

I'm trying to decide whether I should purchase a replacement keyboard now so that I have it when the laptop finally arrives next week.

 

Here's a post with the picture: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/724622-aspire-v7-482pg-9884-a-32.html#post9361144

There are two differences with the US version (other than extra markings on some of the keys):

• the left shift key is split, with the right half of the key becoming a backslash-pipe key
• the backslash-pipe key moves from above the enter key to the left, with the enter key rising up two rows.

As far as the multi-lingual markings, they're in a dull-green color, and frankly not that easy to see. Especially since they don't light up with the backlight.

-Jim

 

I'll add, I'd prefer the standard keyboard, and I'm someone who regularly tears devices apart to modify them, but I haven't found it annoying enough to replace.

-Jim

 

What's the difference between the Acer v7 482pg 6662 and the Acer v7 482pg 6629? I just ordered the former from NCIX, because I couldn't find the 6629 on their website.

 

I'm about to jump on board this with you guys.

I've been extremely, extremely out of touch with PC tech though; I pretty much fell out after the GeForce 4xx generation, right when Sandforce was getting popular
So I have no idea what I'm doing with SSDs, nevertheless mSATA SSDs, can someone point me in the right direction?

 

I hate those two split Keys on the L-Shift and Enter Button.

 

what do you need to know?

 

Have you considered replacing the keyboard?

 

Just in general SSD reccomendations? I'm looking to get something around 128GB, so far I've read good things about Plextor's PX-M5M as being one of the fastest out there right now, but I don't know if any SSD's nowadays have any weird quirks that I need to watch for (e.g. back then TRIM support and firmware updating were weird ).

 

not as of the moment. but if it gets too incovenient and breaks, I definite would especially I find it flimsy and too shallow. the buttons and keys seems or feel like they would fall off or break easily and not properly placed. for home/office use, I'm using an external bluetooth based keyboard for it. I'm only using the built-in keyboard while on the road and travel or emergency situation. personally, the keyboard is not built for gaming usage.

I see. SSD firmware updating can be a pain and I suggest updating it on another system rather than on the V7. I blame the Bios + windows 8 (UEFI) affiliation on this. I'm using the Plextor right now and it is mighty fast. specifically I would recommend Plextor, Crucial M5, and the Samsung EVO due to reliability and durability. you can go for Intel as well. I'm not really fond of Sandforce based controller SSD's due to obvious reasons, so I'd stay away from them as much as possible.

any of those brands that I suggested are good so your selection would either be based on price per performance or price per storage capacity. your pick.

 

Dang it, NCIX voided my order because they won't accept Discovery cards. Could I use my discovery card through paypal?

 

you meant use your credit card thru paypal and not pay via your discovery card alone? that would work since that's what paypal is for and as long as the store is accepting paypal payments. also, this is the reason why you have to contact them if you are have some disputes with regards to your purchases online. this is the difference between ordering via credit card as you have to contact your credit card provider instead which is faster when it comes to resolving issues or shady business. the only limitation is that the credit card may not be universally accepted by the store which is the function of paypal as a universal medium for online transactions.

 

Just got mine today. The specs are i7 / 12GB RAM / 256GB SSD / GT750m

So far loving it except there's a vibration sound when I do tapping on the touchpad, seems like the body is hollow. I read somewhere that the spec with ssd only is using mSATA, and the space for HDD is left empty. I suspect it could be the reason. Anyone with the same spec experience the same?