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- In this box right here, we have the Acer Aspire Vero,

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which apparently is made from largely recycled materials.

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Which is great, if it's a good laptop. If it isn't, then it's an e-waste either way,

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so who cares? (laughs) Let's get right into it.

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So, here we have a box. The box is 100% recycled paper,

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and I believe 100% recyclable, which is cool.

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Oh yes. It says it right there. They use soy ink.

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They also, instead of using plastic on the charger, use this little, recharge the planet, cardboard thing.

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One thing I just want to note here, is that, depending on how you're thinking of saving the planet,

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cardboard can be good, or bad, because it takes a lot more energy

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to make cardboard than plastic sometimes. But then plastic ends up in the ocean for years and years.

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It's a really difficult problem. I'm not going to do a lifetime analysis

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on all of the parts of this computer. (laughing) I had to do a course on that.

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That's really interesting. Anyway, here's the laptop.

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Let's just give it a little, pull.

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Oh, it's big. And this is a really cool texture.

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Also, whatever they put it in, feels really nice.

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It's very soft. And I am guessing,

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this is a bunch of documentation, to tell you how good of a person you are, yes.

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To be clear, I think that, this is an awesome product

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and I'm really glad that they're doing this, but so much of the marketing materials is just,

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it's over the top. It's just like, it's so wanky.

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So here it is, the recycled plastic laptop.

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And I have to say, this finish is really cool. Like this is a $700 laptop.

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Realistically, you're going up against, a bit of stamped aluminum, mostly plastic chassis.

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And this one, I have to say, damn, they did a good job.

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Like, I'm pressing here and you can see the whole thing, is flexing a little bit.

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But it's the whole thing flexing. It isn't like squishy, weird areas.

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Their chassis rigid, is really good. This, I think it looks good to Jonah.

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Like what do you think? Yeah.

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It's a cool color. It's got some texture. It's got the little like, yellow, grainy things.

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You want to feel it? Give it a stroke, Jonah.

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Yeah.

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Initial impressions: very positive, I have to say. Before I turn it on,

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let's have a look at the I/O here. So USB type C, 2 type A's,

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a full-size HDMI, that's 2.0 spec, and an Ethernet jack.

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Right there's power input, headphone-microphone combo,

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another type A, and a Kensington lock. That's really solid actually.

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(indistinct) several years going by, but like in a good way.

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Actually, should we sticker bomb it? No, don't do it?

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Screen's a bit floppy. The whole thing is, a bit on the heavy side, for sure.

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Let's bring out our scale here. 1.8 kilograms, which is 4 pounds.

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That's a lot of pounds for a laptop that,

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well, it's not very powerful. It's not supposed to be super powerful, but it's like a 4 core I7 I believe.

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25, 30 watts of cooling is all that's needed.

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It's a lot of weight for that. (laughs)

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A banana for scale. Is that a thing we're doing now Jonah? LTTstore.com.

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Banana. I want to see data sheets on this banana Jonah,

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about 1.8 bananas, in width. (general laughter)

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According to the bananas, they're all 6 inches. Okay. Anyway.

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Now I want to turn it on, but what I want to do even more

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is segue into our sponsors, Vessi. Thanks to Vessi Footwear for sponsoring today's video.

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Vessi's Footwear is known for being lightweight, easy to pack, comfortable, and most importantly, waterproof.

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You won't have to worry about the weather anymore. The shoes are made with a material called Dyma-tex,

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which keeps your feet cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They're easy to slip on and off,

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and lots of us here at LNG wear them all the time. Keep your feet dry for the future wet months,

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and save $25 off, with the offer code short-circuit, at fessi.com/short-circuit.

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Before we get into it, instead of having the text,

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like, however you normally text on a laptop,

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it's actually like pressed into this. It looks pretty cool, although I have heard it described

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as looking kind of like soap, and I understand that.

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Oh, I'm afraid this screen is already at max brightness. Oh, it isn't, perfect. Oh, it's still not very bright.

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(general laughter) So Brandon, I'm going to try my best

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to not (beep) on this display, but I am going to have to get lightly mad at Acer,

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because they do this thing all the time, where they have these displays that are not great

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at producing greens, specifically. This greens kind of hard to do.

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Your eyes are very sensitive to it. And then they have these

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very green backgrounds that just look terrible.

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It is because their logo screen- But look at this, (general laughter) it's so much better now. (laughter continues)

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I changed the background, and now this display looks great,

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instead of just looking like, I don't know, someone had, a bunch of wasabi and threw up.

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But it looks good now. At this price range, it's the sort of thing,

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where you don't know if you're getting good core (indistinct) of a laptop.

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This is expensive enough, like $700, it all needs to be good.

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Nothing can get, in the way of you using it. But sometimes companies take shortcuts

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in ways that makes it terrible to use. And it really doesn't seem like Acer has done that here.

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So we have a nice large Trackpad. I'm actually surprised at how nice and large it is.

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It feels great to use. The top of it is...

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is this, glass coated? Yeah, I believe this is a glass top trackpad.

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It's actually a really good one. I'm surprised.

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I don't think this trackpad is made of recycled plastic. Let's go, quickly, to their eco claims.

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So 50% of the key caps are recycled,

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30% of the chassis and bezels.

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And all of it was built in ways that reduce CO2 emissions by 21%.

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All of which is pretty cool, but which does not mention the trackpad, which I'm guessing they just bought from somewhere.

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For something like the trackpad, I'm not going to grade it on being green or not,

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if it's made of recycled materials, I'm going to grade it on being green of,

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if I can replace it down the line. I think that matters way more, but, we'll get there later.

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So first of all, (indistinct) you can just go die in a hole.

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Taskbar settings, I need to go over to the left.

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This is, a very good keyboard, I have to say. It's got a nice little snap at the start,

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lots of travel afterwards, and over all,

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the key stability is pretty good. I like it. I would give it a solid A, not quite A+,

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but, you'll be happy. So let's move in and unpack.

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Now as for the display, I'm guessing this is 1080 P,

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this looks like maybe 300 (indistinct). It's not particularly bright, although

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when you're looking at it straight on, it's honestly fine. I'm not getting any weird,

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like reflections or crap from the back there, even though there is a massive light,

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and it has caused problems for other laptops, that have reflective screens.

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It's not amazing, but also I don't think you'll hate it.

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Oh, one thing about the keyboard that I didn't point out right there,

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they have R and E backwards, and yellow.

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Another cool Windows 11 feature, if you go to set up the fingerprint reader

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and you don't already have a PIN, you need to leave the menu,

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and then go back in for the setup icon, to up here.

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Honestly, it reminds me a lot of Windows 10 when it first came out

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and, broke all my audio drivers and crap. And the real test of this fingerprint reader is

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if it wakes up the laptop. Okay, that's pretty good.

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I feel like it's the kind of thing where, if I just improve the recognition on my finger a bit,

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it might be better. Either way, that was fast enough for me.

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The important bit of that, is that I don't want to come all the way over,

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hit the power button, and then have to hit the fingerprint sensor, cause that's stupid.

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I want to be able to just hit the fingerprint sensor, and get logged in. That's what this does- love it.

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(rave crowd cheering) All right, before we get, too into crowd rave,

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one thing that I would like to see, is 16 by 10.

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I always say it, every single time, if the display came down here, a little bit further,

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I would be happier. (upbeat steel drum music plays)

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Okay. That's actually pretty solid.

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It's not super loud, but I can hear everything from the highs and mids and lows,

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which is kind of all you can ask for in laptop speakers.

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They're not incredible, blow you away level, but I think it's acceptable for sure.

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That said, of course, we have to put it up against the XPS,

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as is tradition, even though the XPS, the MacBook just ended it,

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but whatever, we're still here. (steel drum music playing)

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(computers play steel drum music simultaneously) It sounds broken.

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Did Windows 11 break my drivers and that's why the Mac sounded so much better.

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Dell, uh, it looks way better,

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that's probably the thing that you'll notice even more. I wasn't expecting, them to be close,

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but side by side, Jeez, like...

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Although if we don't look at the laptop that has a $400 display on it,

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I would say that this is perfectly usable. I wouldn't want to create content on it.

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Your stuff's not going to turn out right. I would probably just pull out my phone. It probably has a more accurate display.

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But if you're watching stuff on this, like you're going on YouTube or watching Netflix

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or I don't know, Crave TV or whatever, you're going to be perfectly happy with this.

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I guess, that's kind of like this whole laptop,

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just summarized in one thing. None of it's amazing, but none of it's offensively bad.

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(steel drum music continues) So for performance we have a I7, 1195G seven.

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So that's four cores, eight threads, frankly,

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this would be a better laptop if it was AMD: incredibly good, cheap processors

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and you have eight cores. And eight cores is better than four.

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AMD is also more power efficient. And this only has a 48 watt-hour battery.

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They do say this will be good for like 9 1/2 hours battery life.

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And it probably is, actually good, for like 7.

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So like, that's not bad. I don't know how many people that buy these

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will need eight cores ever, but it does just make multitasking, nicer.

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You also have 16GB of RAM, 500GB SSD.

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Oh, beautiful, Intel Wi-Fi 6, AX201.

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In these sort of mid-range laptops, they sometimes cheap out on the wi-fi card.

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I don't know, save that money somewhere else. And Iris XE integrated graphics.

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And we'd might as well test them right now. This seems pretty not bad, actually.

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It seems pretty close to 60, at 1080 P on low. I might even be able to take it to medium.

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Yeah, we got medium grass. Okay, this feels like more like 40 now,

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but like, hello, yeah. (general laughter)

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Is that better? You can sort of see it. I can't screen tap on this laptop, Brandon.

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You're not going to play Battlefield 2042 or anything, but like, this is totally acceptable.

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We've already done videos on Intel XE graphics. Expect like 1080 P, medium-low settings games,

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which is pretty good for a lot of people. The most important thing about this laptop though,

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is it repairable? Take a look. It's all Phillips head screws.

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They're all the same length, super easy to get into. The Loctite they used on the screws,

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is color matched, with the little feet.

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Couple of screws and a guitar pick, and you are in, wow.

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This looks like everything was designed for a 13 or 14 inch laptop

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and they just put it in a 15. I'm surprised by the amount of cooling in it.

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We've got 2 fans, 2 rather pinner heat pipes,

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but like there's quite a bit of exhaust for 4 core mobile chips, like that's pretty darn good.

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For how much CPU there is, that's a lot of fans.

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So basics first, you have a single sewed-in slot,

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so you can upgrade the RAM, but unfortunately the other 8 gigabytes

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are soldered to the back of the motherboard. So unless you're like into SMD repair...

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We also have, our SSD right here. It looks like that's the only one you need to have,

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but it is upgradable. So points there. Battery is super easy.

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Look at that, It just comes right out.

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Trackpad, damn. Yeah. There's the trackpad, whole thing.

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You can just replace it. What I'm trying to see, right now, is if the keyboard's replaceable.

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Cause if it is, that would be awesome. There's the whole motherboard.

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That's, (laughs) that's the whole thing, right there. Keyboard's plastic-welded in, so that's not repairable.

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But everything else seems like it is. Not quite full marks, but good job, Acer.

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You can replace motherboard pretty easily, battery super easily, I guess the cooling,

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if you want it to it, it doesn't normally go bad. Storage RAM, I guess your I/O if you so happened

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to spill some water on that, or something. And the trackpad.

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So overall, the Acer Vero, is a laptop

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that is quite upgradable. I think it looks good.

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And if you're into your computer being recycled,

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go for it, really. At $700, I would strongly recommend it.

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There's no super big downsides. And if you're into the environment, bonus.

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Yeah now I have to put it back together, great. You guys like this video, hit like, get subscribed,

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and tell your trackpad that you like it. And if you have a track point, um.