Acer Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer introduced a new design with the previous AMD based Aspire One, but not this time. It’s the third or fourth AA1 in a row to share chassis and design with the AOD255. Except for the textured touchpad button, which previous models don’t have, it is identical. Well, the color combination is new, but it’s not quite AMD green. It doesn’t make the AO522 less interesting, since the more important changes cannot be told from pictures. It uses an AMD C-50 "Ontario" APU, with two cores, clocked at 1GHz each, and a total TDP of 9W. This includes Radeon 6250 graphics, which support DX11 as well as UVD3 for accelerated video decoding. AMD wants to emphasise this with an HD Internet sticker on the palm rest, probably paired with a marketing campaign. One component is still missing for HD though. And indeed, Acer puts a 10.1 inch panel with 1280x720 screen resolution into the 522. It does have an HDMI port too, which is joined by all other standard ports, plus all the features already in the 255. However unlike the 255 it only has a single speaker. I doubt it makes a difference. Perhaps more interesting is battery, rated at 6 hours. Less than I expected for the new AMD platform to be honest, despite quite capable graphics and improved CPU performance. It’s 2 hours less than the 255. I wonder if the higher resolution panel plays a part in this.

Acer Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion