Acer's eMachine line of laptops is something of a hidden gem. The company took them on when it acquired Gateway in 2007, quietly bringing some of the manufacturer's products with it.

The model on test here, the eMachines E510 is similar to some of Acer's home-grown Aspire range, but is finished entirely in black to give a touch more class.

We're going to talk you through its capabilities quickly without dividing up the test into different sections like we normally do. Listed at an attractive price, the aim of the E510 seems to be attracting customers who want a cheap, effective replacement for their current desktop computer with something smaller and a little more portable.

The E510 fits this profile and its hardware will allow you to play videos, surf the net and use basic office software, although a numeric keyboard would have been a useful addition if it Acer really see this computer as being an effective business tool. If this is a deciding factor for you, then the eMachine E620 might be more suitable.

The eMachine E510 is also capable of more complicated tasks like editing photos and videos, but takes a little longer than more powerful machines.

As you can see from the speed charts, it's far from lightning fast, and the only surprising figure is how speedy it is at retouching photos, better it managed to beat our reference model, the Asus M50Sv. For other time-consuming tasks, though, you'll have to get used to starting off and then going to grab a coffee while you wait.

Gaming is hardly even worth mentioning on laptops that have built-in graphics chipsets rather than separate graphics cards, and the E510 is no exception to that rule: it struggles with even the most basic 3D games.


Let's look at the battery life to end with: you get 2 hours 10 minutes of continuous video playback. It's just about enough to watch a movie, but it's a long way behind what you get from netbooks with large batteries like the Asus 901 and its five hours.

Its weight is another brake on the E150's portability: with 2.8 kg in your bag, you won't be moving quickly.