Acer Aspire One 751 Benchmarks Show Atom Z520 Grossly Underpowered

The Acer Aspire One 751 is such a good looking netbook that we were willing to give it a second chance.  After disappointing with the first round of testing, primarily because of the underpowered Intel Atom Z520 1.3GHz processor, we crossed our fingers that a second round would prove them to be some bizarre aberration.  Sadly, going by the figures at NetbookNews.it, our hopes are unfounded.Video of the 751 falling flat after the cut

YouTube HD videos played reasonably well, with – aside from the occasional visual glitch – nothing going wrong, although CPU use hovers around 100-percent for the duration of playback.  Vimeo HD videos, however, were unwatchable, with the processor at 100-percent and even that not being enough.  Reviewer Riccardo even re-installed Windows, thinking perhaps something had gone wrong initially, and disabled every possible CPU hog he could find.  Even then, the Aspire One 751 failed to deliver.

Benchmarks showed that hard-drive and RAM performance are pretty much on a par with other netbooks, really leaving only the Atom Z520 to blame.  Full details – and comparisons with other models – over at NetbookNews.it; sadly, this could be the end of the road for our Aspire One 751 love affair.