Expert's Rating
Pros
- Modest price for decent specs
- Bright, clear, and colorful display
- Cute and funky design
- Impressive microphones
Cons
- Doesn’t have good sustain
- Not as snazzy or speedy as competition
- Hinge can pinch
Our Verdict
The Acer Aspire Vero 16 is pretty average in most areas, but at just about every turn it avoids being bad. This makes for a good all-around package that’s pleasant to use and rarely feels like a letdown. Its affordable price makes it a viable competitor even though some of its competition can offer considerable performance upgrades for those with a bit of flexibility to their budget.
Acer’s eco-conscious project with the Aspire Vero family continues into 2024 with the Aspire Vero 16 (AV16-51P-5641). This new model carries on the recycled-plastic design and funky detailing — colorful feet and mirrored R and E keys. At $749 for a model with a decent set of specs offers a compelling budget package. It’s not the most exciting system, but as a piece of utilitarian hardware, it gets the job done. Too bad there are others doing it better.
Looking for more options? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops available right now.
Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024): Specs and features
The Acer Aspire Vero 16 starts out with mid-range specs, avoiding the minimal memory and storage pitfall of cheap laptops. For $749, you get a 12-core Intel Core Ultra 5 125U (2 performance cores, 8 efficient cores, 2 low power efficient cores), 16GB of soldered memory, 512GB of storage, and a 1920×1200 display. Configuration options are limited with a storage bump to 1TB, touchscreen functionality, and a processor upgrade to Core Ultra 7 155U bumping the total to $900. Acer has mentioned a configuration with a 2560x1600p display, but at the time of testing, we couldn’t see one available.
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 125U
- Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X
- Graphics/GPU: Intel Graphics
- Display: 16-inch 1920×1200 IPS
- Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD
- Webcam: 1440p
- Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x Kensington lock slot
- Networking: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
- Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint
- Battery capacity: 53 watt-hours
- Dimensions: 14.16 x 10.1 x 0.78 inches
- Weight: 4.0 pounds
- MSRP: $749 as-tested ($749 base)
Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024): Design and build quality
Somehow, the Acer Aspire Vero 16 avoids feeling like Acer’s many cheap Aspire models. Despite having much the same shape as Acer’s other laptops, the Aspire Vero 16 pulls something off with its visible and tangible use of recycled materials. The mix of different colors plastics makes for a unique chassis that has loads more character than the bland, shiny plastic on other models. This design may differ from the other Aspire models, but it’s largely consistent with earlier Vero models, which Acer has been doing for several years now.
Something about the texture also just feels more comfortable, as well. It feels more like I’m resting my hands on a park bench than on a slab of plastic slowly heating up from the system humming away inside. The chassis flexes a bit under pressure, but not to a worrying degree. And Acer has the system built to a few Mil-Spec specifications, including drop and cold resistances.
Since the display has a 16:10 aspect ratio, the Acer Aspire Vero 16 also steers clear of dated-looking bezels. It’s still flanked by strips of plastic, but they’re not terribly chunky.
The laptop is fairly sizable, though not overly so for a 16-inch laptop, and it still just narrowly manages to squeeze into a laptop sleeve meant for 15-inch laptops. It’s also not overweight for a 16-inch laptop, weighing in at just a hair over four pounds.
The base of the laptop sits on a set of four rubber feet colored in a pastel blue that continues to make this a more fun-to-look-at system than most Aspire models. The hinge design has a flaw, though. If you open it while the laptop is on your laptop, it has a propensity to pinch hard. That’s an ouch. The front edge of the laptop would also have been better with a little more rounding. Venting on the bottom lets you see right through to the heatpipes and fans, but this proximity to the surface can make the base feel more than a little hot, especially if the laptop is charging.
All told, the Acer Aspire Vero 16 is an attractive laptop for what it’s offering. It could improve in a couple small ways, and it would be nice if the Acer Jumpstarts app didn’t plug ads into the notification panel, but its faults are minor for a $750 laptop.
Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024): Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Mark Knapp
IDG / Mark Knapp
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</div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>
On the one hand, the Acer Aspire Vero 16’s keyboard is a step up from others in the Aspire line, but on the other, it’s still held back by one of the same issues. The tactility is on point, with poppy keycaps that snap back quickly and have decent resistance and stability for quick typing. But they have the same convex keycaps that make typing on Acer systems such a pain for me, as my fingers always struggle to naturally find and maintain center on the keys.
As a result, I have to settle into a slower typing speed to avoid accuracy issues. Trying to type at a fast pace, I end up with tons of errors. Relaxing into a rhythm of around 100 words per minute, I find it easier to maintain accuracy, and this bore out in Monkeytype, where I hit 108 words per minute with 99 percent accuracy after a series of much worse results that came from trying to go faster.
The keyboard includes white backlighting that’s generally helpful in dark conditions and offers two different brightness levels. Oddly, especially for a laptop presenting itself as environmentally conscious, the laptop defaults to turning the keyboard backlights on every time it wakes up even if they were manually turned off.
Acer isn’t setting a high bar with its trackpad on the Aspire Vero 16, but it gets the job done. It’s reasonably large, though definitely could have been larger. It’s pleasingly smooth, and it has a satisfying click to it. Acer has squeezed a fingerprint scanner into the trackpad, taking up just a small slider of space in one corner. Impressively, it doesn’t really impair the functionality of the trackpad in the least. A swipe over it will track just the same as a swipe anywhere else on the trackpad, though it has a distinct feel that makes it less pleasant to swipe over.
While the hardware isn’t much of an issue, sometimes the system introduces some latency to the trackpad that can impede fluid navigation. It also has a knack for rejecting hardware clicks if two fingers are on it. As someone who often guides the cursor around with a middle finger and clicks with an index finger, this can be more than a little frustrating, but it may be a niche case for others.
Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024): Display, audio

IDG / Mark Knapp
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="Acer Aspire Vero display" class="wp-image-2362812" width="1200" height="675" loading="lazy" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>
</div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>
The display on the Acer Aspire Vero 16 is a surprising strong point. It’s very easy for laptop makers to skimp on the display, especially when it’s fitted into a more affordable machine like this. But Acer has stepped up. At 1920×1200 it’s not incredibly sharp for a 16-inch display, but it’s plenty for most uses. With a peak brightness of 374.2 nits from its anti-glare IPS panel, it proves easily visible in most conditions. Its somewhat thick bezels are even that much easier to ignore when considering the 1250:1 contrast ratio the screen achieves — a step up from the typical 1000:1 of IPS panels. Where Acer goes above and beyond is in the color.
The display reaches 86 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which isn’t rivaling recent OLED displays, but is very respectable for just about any sub-$1,000 laptop. The color is accurate as well, measured at an average dE of 1.62 with no color exceeding a dE of 2.73. So whether you’re working on spreadsheets or web design, the display is up to the task.
The Acer Aspire Vero 16 doesn’t rock when it comes to the little down-firing speakers it has built in. They’re not very loud at all. But they do have a nice balance. Even when they’re cranked up, they don’t distort significantly, and they have a respectable amount of low-end, enough to give music and movies a little punch to the sound. Just about any pair of headphones or half-decent Bluetooth speaker will be better, but they’re certainly viable for solo listening in a quiet space.
Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024): Webcam, microphone, biometrics
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