The Acer Aspire V3-571 is a powerful laptop with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2450M processor, 6GB of RAM and a 15.6in screen with a native resolution of 1,366x768. It doesn't have a dedicated graphics processor, but its on-chip Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU can handle some 3D games at low quality settings. We achieved a frame rate of 18fps in our Dirt 3 test at high quality, 4x anti-aliasing and a resolution of 1,280x720. That isn’t smooth enough to play the game, but the frame rate improves if you drop the quality settings a little further. A dedicated graphics processor will do a better job, but this is very respectable performance for an integrated graphics processor.

We were impressed by its performance and raw processing power in our other benchmarks, too. The V3 got an overall score of 58 in our benchmark tests, making it more than powerful enough for any standard desktop application, even if you like to work with multiple programs and tabs open simultaneously. Its 6GB of memory stands you in good stead for image, video and audio editing, too. Surprisingly, given its power, the V3’s battery held out for an impressive 6 hours and 44 minutes in our tests.

The Aspire V3-571 is rather chunky in this age of ultra-slim Ultrabooks, some of which have a similar screen size, but with the extra size you get a lot more power, extra storage and a slightly lower price for not too much more weight or bulk. The laptop's styling involves a pleasingly inoffensive combination of a metal plate around the keyboard and shiny black plastic on the cover, bezel and wrist rest. The plastic picks up fingerprints and smears easily, but it wipes clean.

The keyboard has flat, widely spaced keys but it's comfortable to type on and provides a good sense of contact and movement when you strike the keys, unlike some other laptops that have adopted this style. Unfortunately, we found it easy to brush the touchpad with our wrist or the edge of our hands as we typed, accidentally moving the cursor to random locations in the document on which we were working. The wrist-rest also became a little warm at times, but not uncomfortably so.