Home > Consumer Reviews > AVERATEC 2573 - Turion 64 X2 TL-60 - RAM 3 GB - HDD 250 GB - DVD?RW / DVD-RAM - Mobility Radeon X1270 - WLAN : 802.11b/g - Vista Home Premium - 12.1" Widescreen TFT 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) - camera

I recently purchased this laptop and am very pleased with it. Compared to other laptops in this class, it is a steal at the price it is being offered at. It is stylish, ultra light, packed with enough power to suit most needs, and has excellent screen resolution. As far as I can tell so far, this laptop is sweet! In addition, I don't mind that Averatec isn't tacking on several hundred dollars to the price to help offset their multi million dollar U.S. advertising budget as appearantly they don't have one! lol. This is a quality well engineered piece of equipment.

Although I'd never heard of Averatec until this week, I have found this laptop to have an excellent balance of speed (AMD Turino 64 x2 TL-60), mid-size foot print (12.1" screen) and lightweight design (3.9 lbs.) with solid construction. It comes with Vista Home Premium (not Basic), although I would have preferred XP.

It can handle high-def video files with ease and doesn't get very hot at all after hours of use. The setup to get all the Vista updates installed (36 of them took close to 1 hour) and then installing a full copy of Office 2007 kept the machine hopping but it just got slightly warm, not hot and toasty like my Dell does.

Granted it does leave out a few features (bluetooth, HDMI or S-Video out, line out). But this one doesn't break the bank either, so compromise is the key.

As a comparison, the Acer Extensa 4420-5212 is another option with the same processor/memory combo but $80 more. It doesn't have a webcam, but it does have 14.1" screen and weighs 5.3 lbs. So it's a matter whether you want to spend the extra for 1.4 lbs more weight but have a 2" larger screen. Not to mention a few more ports. However, it's available on-line only and I got to give the Averatec a trial run before buying it so that tilted my decision.

Usually small and light laptops eqaul poor performance and no CD/DVD drive. This unit bridges that gap and doesn't make you pay a premium.

When shopping for units near this size with a DVD, this one was the price champ (fyi - $499 at microcenter.com).

My daughter will be loving this birthday present (lucky for her this has Vista or I'd keep it!!!).

What I like about the Averatec 2573 is that it falls very nicely between the more expensive full-sized laptops and the super annoying, headache inducing micro-screened netbooks that have gained popularity in the last year or so. I hesitated a bit at first on purchasing the 2573 since its screen was quite a bit smaller than what I was used to but it didn't take long to make the adjustment. After using the 2573 a while the screen size just started feeling normal. I didn't feel like I had to strain as much to read small text on the 2573's screen as I did on the 10" netbooks.

The Averatec is extremely lightweight and easily portable. It has a small footprint which comes in handy if you're frequenting public internet hot spots or toting it to college classrooms. The keyboard is the same size as on the full-sized laptops so there's no adjustments necessary like with the reduced size keyboards found on some of the netbooks. Battery life is average at about 2hrs. You could probably get more time out of the battery if all you do is type or surf the internet. Anything more like watching a DVD on the DVD super combo drive will sap the battery quickly.

It has a powerful AMD Turion64 processor, built-in ATI graphics a 250GB Hard drive and a whopping 3GB RAM which makes it possible to use as a game playing laptop though I'm not sure how it will handle the more demanding FPS games. So far I've only been able to install and play some older Windows games with success. Another nice feature is the built-in SD memory card reader.

My only gripes about the 2573 are that it doesn't come with some of the features found on laptops in the same price range. The 2573 has just 3 USB ports. I know it's a smaller laptop but just one more could have made a big difference.

The 2573 also has only VGA port to feed an external monitor. Not bad but it could have put itself in a bigger league by including a DVI port instead. As well it would have been great if there was just on HDMI port. Too bad.

Very disappointingly You can't upgrade the hard drive without getting into the case itself. I found this to be 2nd most annoying thing about the Averatec but with 250GB already on board it will take some time and serious effort to fill it.

Lastly and certainly not the least is the HORRIBLE speakers and tinny sound. I have another full-size laptop that sounds like a portable symphony compared with the speakers on the 2573. Additionally the Realtek software incessantly notifies you that you've done something like plug in headphones. No kidding. I did?

Overall this is not a bad value for the dollar. Its pros outweigh its cons by far. Now that the 2573 is out of production it would be a great value of one were found on closeout!

I have had Averatec computers in the past and have been VERY impressed by them. Mine crashed after 2 1/2 years, but I'm also very hard on computers. This computer took 2 1/2 years of commuting to a college campus every day and honestly, i dropped it pretty much on a weekly basis. It's amazing that it lasted as long as it did and I was very happy with it. It was fast and efficient and easily covered all of my needs.