Acer Aspire One Happy N55DQ

Acer continues to add to its range of netbooks. Among the latest, is the Aspire One Happy N55DQ. It's a 10.1 inch model in bright colours built around an Atom N550 CPU, one of the most powerful netbook processors.

Design and build: sober and practical

Here plastic is the order of the day. There's no metal to be seen. The hood comes in sky blue, pink, violet and apple greeen and is slightly glossy. Finger marks don't show up too much though. The palm rest, the same colour as the hood, is matte and the rest of the shell is matte white. Overall, this model feels well-finished, except for the way the plastic on the keyboard has the rather doubtful tendency to bend in when you press on it.


In spite of this over-flexibility, the keyboard offers comfortable and relatively quiet keying. The only issue we have is with the overly small arrow and 'Enter' keys. Obviously a few concessions have to be made when you're dealing in such a small area however.


The multitouch touchpad is of good quality and precise. Its coating gives a good glide and you don't need to keep jumping back to get the cursor across the other side of the screen.

The N55DQ's webcam won't go down in history. The image lacks sharpness and movements are blurred and slightly delayed. It'll be ok as something to fall back on but if you're someone who uses the webcam regularly, you'll want to go for an external model.

The connectivity is pretty standard for a netbook. On the left you'll find the power socket, a VGA out and two USB 2.0 ports. On the right, an RJ45 (Ethernet) port, another USB 2.0 port - bringing the total to three - the headphones and mic sockets and a card reader. There's also wi-fi n and a Bluetooth connection.

At idle this machine is pretty quiet. When you push it with more resource-heavy tasks, the fan kicks in. Both the noise levels and temperature readings remain within reasonable limits however. Any ambient noise will cover the noise of your computer.

Processor power: mainly office docs and Internet

The N55DQ has an Intel Atom N550 processor as do the Asus 1015PN and the 1015PEM.  In spite of having two cores, we don't recommend it for anything except office document work and Internet browsing (CPU index: 24). While, technically, it can do a bit of photo retouching and video encoding, even the most adventurous among you are likely to find the wait somewhat trying.

When it comes to video playback, you can't go beyond 720p here. Neither the CPU nor the integrated graphics chipset (Intel GMA 3150) can decode 1080p with any fluidity.

Windows 7 Starter 32-bit takes 55 seconds to boot. It turns off in nine seconds. There's a second OS here too: Google Android. It takes 30 seconds to start up and essentially allows you to consult mails and carry out Internet searches.

There's a slight problem though. The N55DZ starts up on the Google OS by default. To avoid this, you have just two seconds to press 'F9'. Otherwise you have to wait to get to the desktop before you can change over to Windows. Thankfully, in Windows, the 'Acer configuration Manager for Android' allows you to chose which OS you want to be your default.

A few old games, nothing more

Generally speaking, gaming on netbooks is only for real enthusiasts willing to put up with highly compromised quality. Only models with ATI or NVIDIA ION graphics chips can handle a few recent games and the N55DZ just has its Intel GMA 3150 chipset.

Audio: controlled and clear

The speakers don't have much oomph but Acer doesn't push them too far and you get a clear sound without too much saturation whatever the volume setting you go for. The headphones out is also fine.

Battery life: no complaints

The N55DQ won't go down in history for its battery life: 5h36 (wi-fi deactivated, headphones plugged in and brightness at 100 cd/m²). This is nevertheless really not bad at all and enough for, say, a student to take notes all day, though with brightness obviously quite low on the screen.
Coming to portability, we have pretty standard dimensions here. This netbook can be easily transported in a rucksack and at 1.25 Kg it won't be too much of a drag to carry round.