Acer Aspire Vero review: an eco-conscious laptop you can rely on

To cut to the chase of this Acer Aspire Vero review, this is the best laptop you can buy if you're looking for a PC that was created with sustainability in mind. 

While it won’t blow you away with super speedy performance or a contemporary design, it has been built using eco-conscious materials and it will last you for a long time because you’ll be able to upgrade the hardware and repair it without any problems. 

The Acer Aspire Vero is one of the best student laptops as well thanks to its big screen which is well suited to all kinds of word processing and web browsing. 

In this Acer Aspire Vero review, you can find out everything you need to know about this laptop, from its price, design and display to how its performance matches up to other PCs, and how long you can expect the battery to last. 

Acer Aspire Vero review: price and availability 

You can buy the Acer Aspire Vero now starting from $799 in the US, £649 in the UK and AU$1,420. Prices will vary depending on the configuration you choose. 

Take a look at the widgets on this page to see where you can buy it in your region and the best deals available on it from across the web right now. 

Acer Aspire Vero review: design and screen 

The Acer Aspire Vero's most convincing feature is its eco-conscious build and design. You start to see that as soon as you take it out of the box. Made from post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic, the chassis hasn't had any paint or surface treatments. Largely grey with small flecks of colour, it very much looks like it’s made from recycled materials. Even the box it comes in is partly made from recycled paper and the print on the packaging uses soy ink. 

Admittedly, Acer hasn't gone all the way and I'm sure they could do better. At the moment, the body and bezels are made from 30% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic while the keycaps sit at 50%. While it’s great to see this in the first place, those figures seem pretty low to me.

When it comes to sustainability, there’s one other big problem in tech outside of the use of plastic, that being the fact that it can all be so hard to repair. Ultimately that means that most devices will often only last a few years before you need to replace them. Acer has tried to tackle that in this laptop by using standard screws which will make it easier to take apart and put back together as well as making both the memory and storage easily upgradable. Because of that, this laptop should last you a long time. 

Ignoring the eco-angle on this laptop, it doesn’t look as sleek as a lot of other PCs and it feels a bit clunkier too. Measuring ‎23.85 x 36.34 x 1.79 cm and weighing about 1.8kg, it’s not by any means a super slim notepad-sized laptop and the 15.6-inch screen is surrounded by quite thick bezels in comparison to the barely-there framing around some displays. But this laptop isn’t really about that, the focus is on the use of PCR, and there have clearly been some sacrifices to be made in order to achieve that. 

The low-profile keyboard is well-spaced out and it works well. It’s both fast and accurate to type on although perhaps not as smooth as more expensive devices because the keys feel a lot more clicky.

Below the keyboard, there’s a large trackpad with a small fingerprint sensor in the top left corner. I’m not convinced by the sensor's placement, it makes much more sense to have it closer to where your fingers naturally sit on the far sides of the keyboard. It’s also a little on the small side so it does sometimes miss you. Other than that, it does do a good job and gives you peace of mind over the PC’s security while the trackpad itself gives you plenty of room to work on. 

One really good thing about this laptop is the number of ports you get, there's a total of 4 USBs including one USB 2.0, two USB 3.2s and one USB-C, as well as a headphone jack, an HDMI and Gigabit Ethernet. There’s no SD card slot though, and the USB-C can’t be used to power the device.

You get a huge 15.6-inch display on the Acer Aspire Vero with FHD resolution of 1920 x 1080p. It’s not the best or sharpest screen in the world and the colours aren’t particularly vibrant, but for typing out documents, browsing the web and streaming videos, it’ll be good enough.

You’ll quite easily be able to use it throughout the day without straining your eyes too much as well, and the matte finish means you can still see it in bright sunlight, although it does only go up to a peak brightness of 250 nits which is a long way off the 500 nits you can find elsewhere.

Acer Aspire Vero review: performance and battery life 

The Acer Aspire Vero I tested out came with an Intel Core i5-1155G7 processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. You can buy it with various other configurations as well depending on how much you’re willing to spend, where you live and what you need from your next laptop. 

When it comes to performance, the Acer Aspire Vero does what it needs to but it can hardly be described as a powerhouse. While it will be fine for word processing and other types of office work, it won’t cope so well with more demanding tasks like downloading large files or playing PC games. 

I ran the Geekbench 5 benchmarking test on it, and the Acer Aspire Vero picked up scores of 1,068 in single-core and 3,952 in multi-core which is okay but it’s not exactly knockout performance. Similarly, on 3D Mark’s TimeSpy test, it got a score of 1,095 which places it middle-ground against other laptops in its gaming capabilities. 

The 48Wh battery will get you through a morning of work but you can’t expect too much more than that. When I played an HD video on it and dialled the screen brightness all the way up to full, it took about 4.5 hours to run the battery down to empty which won't get you very far. But on the flip side charging it up again took less than an hour and a half so you won't be waiting long to get it back up and running.

Because Windows 11 is in the driving seat, the Acer Aspire Vero will be very easy to use and navigate. The menus are intuitive, you can display handy widgets to get information like the weather every time you visit your desktop, and it’ll work well alongside your Android smartphone. You can even download Android apps onto it which is a brand new feature of Windows 11.

Sat inside the top bezel, there’s a webcam that will be handy for video calls but it’s not particularly good quality. You might look a little grainy on your Zoom calls and it's very unlikely that you'll use it to snap any selfies. 

If you need a laptop for streaming video, the speakers are powerful enough to do so out loud, even if the sound isn't completely accurate. One slight issue was that the speakers point downwards so the audio could sometimes come out a little muffled especially if you use it on a softer surface like your sofa.

Acer Aspire Vero review: verdict

If you’re determined to make more eco-conscious buying decisions, the Acer Aspire Vero is the best choice of laptop for you, even though it could go a lot further in its quest to be more sustainable. 

It’d be great to see a much higher percentage of post-consumer recycled plastic used when it comes to the chassis, bezels and keycaps. But in saying that, it’s also nice to know that this laptop is built in a way that means you’ll be able to repair and recycle it when the time comes. 

Outside of that, this laptop is pretty average across the board, there's nothing about it that will make you go 'wow'. That’s fine though, not everyone needs a productivity powerhouse with a stellar screen, and the Acer Aspire Vero will be good enough for most day-to-day tasks. Just don’t buy this if you’re a PC gamer or video editor! 

Acer Aspire Vero review: also consider  

If you want a laptop that is somewhat sustainable but also works well and looks great, you should consider an Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020). Granted it doesn’t quite go as far as the Acer Aspire Vero, but Apple does use some recycled materials to build their devices as well as offer trade-in recycling services, and they use renewable energy across their business. 

One of the best laptops you can buy with a big screen is the Dell XPS 15 9510 OLED. It is a lot more expensive than this but you get just about everything you could need or want from a laptop. It’s powerful with a gorgeous screen and the battery lasts for ages!