We've heard nothing but good things about Acer's Aspire 1810T recently, but is this tiny CULV laptop really as good as it appears? First off, it's affordable, with a price that's in-keeping with the current crop of high-end netbooks.

Design-wise, it's suspiciously similar to Acer's own Aspire Ferrari netbook - with the same 11.6-inch WXGA screen, familiar lines and a compact footprint that's more in-keeping with a netbook than a laptop.

The screen is a highlight, proving crisp and vivid, with more than enough space for daily use. As with so many other modern machines, it is a glossy panel, so you may want to steer clear if you get frustrated by reflections or fingerprints.

The keyboard is another area where this machine resembles its Ferrari-branded sibling, with the flat keys standing proud of the keyboard itself. The keys are surprisingly big for a machine of this size, and it's easy to type for long periods of time without discomfort. They're also well-attached and responsive, and give this machine a quality feel.

Although the overall design is similar to the Aspire Ferrari, the finish of the plastic differs noticeably. Here, you'll find faux-brushed aluminium palm rests - it looks great at a first glance, but feels a little cheap once you look a little harder. The glossy black lid is in-keeping with lots of other recent laptops - it looks decent enough when it's clean, but it's impossible to keep that way, quickly collecting grime, prints and scratches. It's also available in red and blue, which should be a little harder to keep clean.

The specification is another area where the Aspire 1810T betters the current crop of netbooks, and you'll find a CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processor at its heart. Performance is a league apart from Atom-based machines, and also marginally better than the Ferrari's AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core L130 processor.

Although we wouldn't necessarily pick it over the Ferrari for power - it's definitely faster but we didn't find a great deal of difference in daily use - the battery life is leagues ahead. We managed to get over 7 hours from a single charge, offering a full working day's productivity if you turn down brightness settings even further.

Unlike many ultra-portable laptops, there's no optical drive here. You will find a memory card reader and three USB ports though, with two on the right-hand side of the chassis and the third on the left. There's an Ethernet port on the right rear corner, and both VGA and HDMI ports on the left.