Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: A solid laptop that's greener than most | Expert Reviews UK

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Performance and battery life

• Core Ultra 155U CPU is no powerhouse
• Solid battery life
• Lacks the latest Arc integrated GPU

Words I won’t be using to describe the Vero 16’s performance include rip-snorting, potent and vigorous. You see, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U is very much a lover rather than a fighter. Of its 12 cores, a mere two are rated as Performance cores and it has a maximum TDP of only 28W.

Compared with the Core Ultra 7 155H, which has 8 Performance cores out of a total 16 and, in machines like the Huawei MateBook 14, will run at a maximum TDP of 65W, it’s a little lacklustre

In our 4K multi-media benchmark test the Acer Vero 16 scored 183 points compared to the Huawei’s 303. That’s how much you lose by having a U rather than an H-series Core Ultra CPU. Of course, that score of 183 is not a disaster. It’s higher than the 178 scored by the LG SuperSlim Gram 16, which runs on a Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, but suffers from some serious thermal throttling issues.

Thermal throttling isn’t something the Vero 16 is immune to, either. Under extreme stress testing the CPU utilization dropped to 40% while the GPU kept chugging away at 100%. After running for two hours, though, the Vero wasn’t even warm to the touch and the fan noise seldom rose above a whisper, both benefits of turning the wick down.

For day-to-day use, by which I mean basic productivity tasks, media consumption and very light gaming the 155U does a decent job and the Vero 16 never feels subjectively slow. And the performance of the SSDs inside helps with that sense of responsiveness. The two Samsung drives in my review unit proved to be much faster than the Kensington unit in the Vero 15, recording average sequential read and write speeds of 3,720MB/sec and 3,196MB/sec.

This being a U-series chipset, however, you have to make do with Intel’s basic integrated GPU rather than the much more capable Arc alternative. In Performance mode, the Vero 16 ran Serious Sam 4 at an average of 38.4fps in 1080p resolution, which was better than I expected, but it’s still hardly a heroic achievement given that it is not a demanding game.

The arrival of laptops built around the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X and Intel Lunar Lake CPUs means we have to recalibrate our language when it comes to battery life. Six months ago the Vero 16’s 13hrs 40mins from a 65Wh battery would have been considered an impressive showing, but with Windows laptops regularly running for between 16 and 24 hours it’s merely average.

Of course, the fact that some laptops can do better in no way detracts from the fact that the Vero 16 will easily get you through a full day at the office.