Acer Aspire Vero 16 review
The Acer Aspire Vero 16 is Acer’s latest take on a more sustainable laptop, following on from 2022’s TravelMate Vero and Aspire Vero 14, not to mention the Chromebook Vero we looked at back in 2023. Acer promotes the range on its eco credentials, pushing the device’s carbon-neutral lifecycle and 60% recycled plastic build. Yet, even beyond these (and a Ben Fogle ad campaign), the Vero line has consistently delivered decent specs and sensible designs at the kind of pricing that small businesses can afford. Indeed, larger enterprises might still find them attractive.
This isn’t the kind of laptop that sets hearts racing or gets envious glances in the departure lounge or meeting room, but it’s very usable and might help your business with its green credentials or its wider ESG policy. Most of all, it’s going to do so without serious compromises on features, usability or performance.
Acer Aspire Vero 16: Design
As with previous Vero products, the Aspire Vero 16 has a distinctive look and feel. It’s fashioned from a chunky plastic, itself formed from 60% post-consumer recycled plastics, with a slightly industrial, speckled appearance that’s apparently cement-inspired. Acer has also reduced the quantity of printed circuit board material used by 52%, upped the portion of recycled paper used in the packaging to up to 90%, and teamed up with the charity Plastic Bank to remove 80Kg of waste per laptop sold in the UK.
We noticed some slightly rough edges on this year’s model, but overall it feels smooth, comfortable, and tough. It meets MIL-STD-810H standards for durability, temperature, sand and humidity resistance, vibration, and up to 1.22m of drop shock, even if there’s a little more flex than we’d like in the lid. The 16-inch screen inevitably makes for a fairly large desktop footprint – 359.4 x 247mm – and at 1.8Kg we’re far from ultraportable territory here. But as a device primarily for home office or office use, that shouldn’t be a problem.
The payback comes in the ergonomics of a bigger keyboard and a bigger screen. The screen tilts back to a comfortable working position, raising the back of the keyboard slightly off the desk. You then have two large and comfortable palm rests to work with, beneath a spacious layout with a slim numeric pad. We’re not a fan of the weird split left-shift and back-slash key or the small Ctrl, Fn, and Alt keys on the left, while we’d like to see more separation for the cursor keys on the right. We’re not quite sure that the reversed R and E keys have the conscience-raising impact that Acer thinks they do. Otherwise, though, it’s a comfortable keyboard, with a soft but not spongy action and no irritating bounce or movement in the deck.
The touchpad may be plastic rather than glass, but it’s reasonably big at 12.5 x 8.2cm, and consistent and reliable in its tracking. What’s more, it has a fingerprint scanner in the top-left corner, with a significantly better hit rate than some of the supposedly smart scanners we’ve seen recently that have been concealed inside a keyboard key or power button. It just works, every time.
Connectivity is basic, but you get two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports, though you get both of the Type-C ports crammed together on the left-hand side rather than spread more evenly across both sides. You’ll also need one of these for charging with the compact 65W power brick provided. Otherwise, there’s an HDMI port for connecting to external displays and a good, old-fashioned 3.5mm audio socket.
Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi 6E rather than the newest Wi-Fi 7 standard, but given the high cost of current Wi-Fi 7 routers, that’s a drawback that won’t affect most of us for a couple of years at least. What’s more, Wi-Fi 6E is fast enough for most business purposes, especially in homes and offices where the Internet connection is a more likely bottleneck.
Acer Aspire Vero 16: Display
If there’s an obvious criticism of the Aspire Vero 16’s screen, it’s that its Full HD+ resolution is a little too low for the 16-inch size. 1,920 x 1,200 pixels can look fine on a 13in to 14in display but a little chunky when stretched out across a screen this big, even with the 16:10 aspect ratio, and a 1600p resolution would have made for a sharper image. Otherwise, it’s pretty good. We measured brightness at 419.9cd/m2 with a contrast ratio of 1266.3:1, and sRGB gamut coverage is close to perfect, at 99.7%. Indeed, it covers 79.5% of Adobe RGB and 83.5% of DCI-P3, which is a big improvement on the majority of mainstream business laptops. Color accuracy isn’t ideal, with an average Delta-E of 1.76, but we suspect that the designers and creative professionals who might notice any distinction aren’t part of the target market.
For all our reservations about the resolution, it’s a very comfortable screen in everyday use. There’s plenty of screen space for multitasking and split-screen views, while photos, presentations, and videos all look great, with rich and vivid colors. The sound’s a little boxy for music listening purposes, but it’s clear enough for video calls and online meetings. Meanwhile, the 1440p camera captures very detailed and nicely balanced video, even if a little noise creeps in as the light levels drop. Interestingly, Acer provides its own control panel with AI-based microphone and camera enhancements, though I preferred to stick with Microsoft’s Windows Studio Effects.
Acer Aspire Vero 16: Performance
While cutting-edge ultraportables are moving to Intel’s Core Ultra 200 series processors or the new-fangled Qualcomm and AMD Ryzen 9 AI chips, the Aspire Vero 16 sticks with last year’s Core Ultra ‘Meteor Lake’ CPUs. This isn’t a problem from post perspectives. In general performance and productivity benchmarks, there’s little to separate the Aspire Vero 16 with its Core Ultra 7 155H from the Asus ExpertBook P5 with its Core Ultra 5 226V. It scores 2360 against 2480 in Geekbench 6’s single-core tests and 9639 against 9735 in the multi-core tests. In PC Mark 10, its score of 6003 puts it just slightly behind the Asus with 6138, not to mention the Lenovo ThinkPad E16, with 5,642.
Laptops based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors are faster in Geekbench 6’s multi-threaded tests, and the same goes for Ryzen 9 AI devices, though the Vero 16 beats the Qualcomm-based laptops when it comes to 3D performance, with a score of 1997 in the 3DMark TimeSpy test. Snapdragon X laptops tend to score between 1700 and 1900 here. Again, those applications where it struggles to keep up – like 3D rendering – aren’t the sort of applications that anyone sensible is likely to buy it to do. A Cinebench R23 score of 7048 for multi-core performance is only disappointing if you’re expecting powerhouse number-crunching skills. Most people won’t.
In general use with productivity apps and mainstream image-editing applications, the Aspire Vero 16 feels more than fast enough. With less performance-oriented laptops, there’s sometimes a tendency to skimp on high-speed storage, fitting a cheaper, low-spec SSD. Acer has resisted this temptation with the Aspire Vero 16. We measured sequential read speeds at 5047MB/sec and write speeds at 3677MB/sec; not blazing fast, but far from slow. Interestingly, our model shipped with a 512GB drive, but UK models are generally shipping with 1TB SSDs.
The Aspire Vero 16 surprised me with its battery life. With a 16in screen and the Core Ultra 7 155U we expected somewhere between 10 to 12 hours in our HD video playback benchmark. Yet, thanks to its 75Whr battery, the Acer kept going for a very respectable 15 hours and 1 minute. That leaves it trailing laptops featuring the more energy-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon X and Intel Core Ultra Series 200 processors, but you can still comfortably get through the average working day on a charge, and still have some power in the tank for the commute home.
Acer Aspire Vero 16: Is it worth it?
This isn’t what you’d call an exciting PC, but it is a practical one. It’s fast enough for general productivity uses and has decent ergonomics. Its connectivity isn’t cutting-edge, but it covers everything you need right now. We’d love to see it with a more efficient Core Ultra 7 200 series CPU and a 1440p resolution screen, but either might have sent the price north of £1,000. What’s more, the screen you have is fit for business – and a big improvement on the displays of Lenovo’s ThinkPad E16 and Acer’s own office workhorse, the TravelMate P2.
The ThinkPad has a better keyboard, but the Aspire Vero 16 beats it in most other respects, including value. Its green features are a selling point, but it doesn’t need to rely on them alone. At under £900 inc VAT you’re getting a substantial business laptop with solid eco-credentials on top.
Acer Swift 14 AI specifications
| Display | 16-inch 1,920 x 1,200 IPS, 60Hz refresh rate | Row 0 – Cell 2 |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 7 155U, 12-core, up to 4.8GHz | Row 1 – Cell 2 |
| GPU | Intel Graphics Xe 4-core | Row 2 – Cell 2 |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR5X | Row 3 – Cell 2 |
| Ports | 2x USB3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0 | Row 4 – Cell 2 |
| Camera | 1440p webcam | Row 5 – Cell 2 |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe4 SSD (Samsung) | Row 6 – Cell 2 |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth v5.3 | Row 7 – Cell 2 |
| Weight | 1.8Kg | Row 8 – Cell 2 |
| Dimensions | 359.4 x 247 x 16.5mm | Row 9 – Cell 2 |
| Battery Capacity | 75Wh | Row 10 – Cell 2 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home | Row 11 – Cell 2 |
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