The Acer Aspire Vero from last year was a good green machine. It was made with eco-friendly users in mind. Almost a year later, Acer has made some important changes to its environmentally friendly laptop that aren’t always obvious. The 2022 Vero is a step up from the original, which is still one of the most eco-friendly notebooks you can find. It has an updated 12th Generation Intel CPU, more storage space, and a better battery and screen.
The Acer Aspire Vero has a very different look from the rest of Acer’s Aspire line. The bottom of the laptop is an interesting block shape with no tapering edges to make it look slimmer than it is. The lid and main chassis are a light grey colour with a hexagonal pattern and tiny yellow and grey dots. Acer says that it didn’t paint the chassis and that this finish is because it was made with PCR plastics.
The laptop feels sturdy, and the lid and keyboard don’t bend much. All of the labels on the laptop, including the Acer logo, are pressed into the plastic, so there is no need for paint or stickers. The Acer Aspire Vero has a lot of ports on the outside. The right side has a single USB 2.0 Type-A port, a Kensington lock slot, a headphone/microphone combo jack, and two status LEDs.
The charging port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one of which can charge even when the laptop is off, and a USB Type-C port are all on the left side of the laptop. The Acer Aspire Vero has a full-size keyboard with white backlighting and black chiclet-style keys. Acer says that the key caps are made of 50% PCR plastics.
The keys are generally easy to use, but I didn’t like how the Up and Down direction keys are too small and close together. The palm rest and trackpad on the Aspire Vero are big. The second one doesn’t have the best touch sensitivity, but it does the job. The trackpad even has a fingerprint sensor in the top left corner.
The battery life is also not too bad. The Vero has a 48Wh battery, and in our video rundown test, this kept the lights on for just a little longer than nine and a half hours. For the record, the battery rundown test was done in Eco mode, while all the performance tests were done in Performance mode.