Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: A solid laptop that’s greener than most

Of all the threats to the environment, the seemingly endless and insatiable demand for the latest technological gadgets is a big problem and one that the Acer Vero 16 is aimed squarely at combatting. This problem may not be on people’s minds in the same way as greenhouse gas emissions and the degradation of the clean water supply, however.

If you, like me, are feel guilty about your constant lust for new tech, here’s a way of atoning. That’s because not only is this laptop more environmentally friendly than most by design, Acer is also undertaking to improve, albeit in a small way, the environment for every unit it sells.

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: What you need to know

In short, the Vero range is all about minimising the environmental impact of buying a new laptop, including using recyclable materials in the chassis and planting trees every time a laptop is sold. It has also now teamed up with adventurer and TV personality Ben Fogle to tackle plastic pollution alongside the launch of the 16in Aspire Vero.

For every Vero laptop purchased and registered in the UK Acer pledges to, in collaboration with Plastic Bank, remove 80kg of plastic waste from the environment. This surpasses the average annual plastic waste generated per person in the UK of 76kg. So, buy a Vero 16 and – in theory – you become plastic-neutral for a whole year.

Of course, eco-credentials are not of much value if the basic product isn’t good enough to lure buyers away from more conventional products and that, sadly, was the case with the Acer Vero 15, a laptop hamstrung by a very poor display that made it hard to recommend. Fortunately, the Vero 16 is an altogether more capable machine.

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Price and competition

Configuration tested: Intel Core Ultra 7 155U CPU, Intel Graphics iGPU, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 16in, 60Hz, 1,920 x 1,200 IPS display; Price when reviewed: £999

The new Vero comes in three flavours. Two are built around the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U CPU and come with either 1TB or 2TB of SSD storage, while the third runs on the Core Ultra 5 125U processor and has 512GB of storage. They are currently selling for £899, £1,000 and £799 respectively.

Given that all three models are identical bar the CPU and storage, that the performance difference between the 125U and 155U is rather narrow and that a perfectly decent 1TB SSD can be picked up for £50 – the Vero 16 has two 2280 SSD mounts – I’d suggest the cheapest model is the obvious choice, although Acer has sent us the top-of-the-range machine to review.

From an environmental viewpoint the new Acer Vero doesn’t have any direct competition but here are three potential alternatives to consider if saving the planet isn’t on your to-do list.

• The Samsung Galaxy Book4 is a direct competitor of the Vero 16 as a basic laptop running on a U-series Core Ultra CPU. At the right price, the Galaxy Book 4 can make sense but the drab screen and 720p webcam are hard to forgive at Samsung’s £1,099 asking price

• The Arc 530M model of the Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9I that I tested seems to have shuffled off this mortal coil, but you can pick one up with an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU for just £738 at the time of writing and it comes with a good 144Hz Full HD display. As a cheap general-purpose laptop with some gaming credentials, it’s a tough act to beat

• Huawei’s MateBook D offers a lot of performance per pound thanks to a low price of just £899 and a potent Intel Core i9-13900H processor. The rest of the specification is a little dated – there’s no 6GHz Wi-Fi for instance – and the display is drab, but you can’t argue with the speed of the thing

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Design and key features

• One of the “greenest” laptops on the market
• Unique cement-themed finish
• Space for two 2280 SSDs

The Acer Aspire Vero 16’s chassis is made from 60% recycled plastic (up from 50% in the Aspire Vero 15), has a touchpad made from 100% recycled ocean-bound plastic and comes delivered in completely recycled packaging.

Officially, the plastic bodywork is described as being inspired by “warm cement” and the colour is called Cobblestone Gray. I can see where the designers are coming from. The speckled finish is indeed redolent of smooth cement.

The casing of the Vero 15 was one of its best features: Unique, stylish, tactile and resistant to scratches and fingerprints, it was both practical and visually interesting. The Acer Vero 16 is very much the same.

Like the old machine, the new model still bends rather more than a laptop made from some sort of metal, but in general use it’s not something you’ll notice. For added peace of mind, the Vero 16 is MIL-STD-810H standard resistant to shocks, temperature change and particle ingress.

The left side of the Vero 16 is home to two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 video output and one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port (5Gbits/sec). On the other side, you’ll find a second USB-A port, a Kensington security lock and a 3.5mm audio jack along with a brace of status LEDs.

That’s a decent selection of inputs and outputs, even for a laptop that has no pretensions of being thin and light. At 1.8kg in weight and 16.5mm thick, the Vero 16 is anything but. However, do bear in mind that you will need to sacrifice one of the USB-C ports to charging duties.

It’s also a relatively easy laptop to get inside with only 12 small Philips-head screws to remove and some plastic clips holding it in place. Once inside, you’ll find two 2280 PCIe 4 SSD slots to play with (both occupied on my review unit). The memory is soldered in place but you can easily clean the fans and replace the battery if need be.

Wireless communications are managed by an Intel Killer AX1675i card which means Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E. These aren’t the latest incarnations in either case, but at least there is support for 6GHz Wi-Fi.

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

• Expansive backlit keyboard
• Small but lovely touchpad
• Excellent 1,440p webcam

The keyboard is unlikely to disappoint given that it comes complete with a numeric keypad, a two-stage backlight and is reasonably solid. The keys themselves have a smooth and well-damped action with a firm end-stop. For this sort of money, you can’t ask for more.

The keen-eyed will have noticed that the lettering on the E and R keys is printed in mirror image to promote the three pillars of Acer’s environmental philosophy: Rethink, Reimagine and Revolutionize (down from the four pillars of the original Vero: Review, Rethink, Recycle and Reduce). These are worthy concepts to be reminded of, but even after a week of using the Vero 16 as my daily driver, I still found the reverse lettering rather distracting.

The 125 x 85mm touchpad could be larger, given the amount of free space that surrounds, it but I found it very pleasant to the touch, with a lovely warm feel, and it worked perfectly, with a nicely calibrated, near silent click action. I’m not a big fan of locating fingerprint scanners on touchpads, as is the case here, but I can’t say it got in my way.

The 1,440p webcam is one of the Vero 16’s strong points. It’s bright, crisp and colourful and, courtesy of the Core Ultra CPU’s Neural processor, it’s able to take advantage of all the special effects that come courtesy of Windows Studio Effects. There’s no support for Windows Hello IR facial recognition but you do get a physical privacy shutter.

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Display and audio

• The display is much better than that of the Vero 15
• 60Hz maximum refresh rate
• Speakers are quiet but competent

The screen was the Achilles’ heel of the Vero 16 so it’s good to see that Acer has upped its game with this laptop. The basic spec of the IPS screen is still just that, basic, with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 and a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. The panel is now brighter, though, peaking at 345cd/m² rather than 264cd/m², and it has a better contrast ratio of 1,314:1.

It’s also much more colourful. While the Vero 15’s display was only capable of producing 58% of the sRGB gamut, the new Vero 16 generates 116% of sRGB (equivalent to 82.2% of DCI-P3). The 16in panel is much more accurate, too, recording a perfectly decent sRGB Delta E variance of 2.3 (lower is better), where the Vero 15 scored a wonky 5.9.

Not only that, but the screen also has a matte finish, which does a good job of keeping reflections at bay. In short, the Vero 16’s screen won’t win any awards and there’s no support for HDR content, but it’s pleasant enough to look at and it works well in any lighting conditions.

The speaker system isn’t great when it comes to volume – 67dBA is nothing to make a song and dance about – but in a quiet environment it does a solid enough job, with a soupçon of bass along with a reasonable amount of detail.

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.

Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2024) review: Verdict

The Aspire Vero 16 is a far more impressive package than the original Aspire Vero 15 thanks to a much superior display. Combine that with its undeniably green manufacturing credentials and the interesting plastic offset campaign and I’d describe it as a compelling offer, assuming you don’t plan on using it for any jobs that will expose its performance shortcomings.

At the top end of the range, I think the Vero 16 is over-priced, but go for the entry-level model with the Core Ultra 5 125U CPU, buy a second SSD with the money you save and you’ll have a good value package that might let you sleep at night.