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Although the Butterfly has a curvier case with rounded edges and chrome accents, it’s essentially a rebranded variant of Acer’s TravelMate Timeline 8371, which is no surprise since Acer now owns Packard Bell. The Butterfly has a single core 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor. It’s fine for everyday tasks and fared well in our image-editing test, but not as quick as dual-core processors for video encoding or working in several applications simultaneously. It managed an overall score of 30 in our benchmarks. As expected, the integrated Intel graphics chip isn’t up to playing the latest games. A version of the laptop available elsewhere in Europe can switch between the Intel chip and a more powerful dedicated ATI graphics chip, but this is sadly unavailable in Britain. The Butterfly just squeezes into the ultra-portable category, weighing 1.9kg, and it lasted an excellent six hours and 14 minutes in our light-usage battery test. There’s no built-in DVD drive, but Packard Bell supplies a USB model. The 13.3in 1,366×768 screen has a glossy finish. Colours look vivid and the display is nice and bright. Images are noticeably grainy, though, and colour accuracy can suffer unless you’re sitting directly in front of the screen. We’re not usually fans of pivoting touchpad buttons, since they don’t tend to give as much feedback as two separate buttons. The Butterfly’s single button is an exception and feels responsive enough, although its glossy texture means that it’s a little slippery. The keyboard is pretty good, with decent-sized keys. They’re quite springy, however, so this keyboard takes a while to get used to. The 250GB hard disk isn’t bad for the price, and should provide enough storage space for most.
The Butterfly is a good ultra-portable laptop but it just misses out on an award. Acer’s Timeline costs just £77 more and has a more powerful dual-core processor and better battery life, so it’s the better choice unless you need a DVD drive.
