iBall CompBook Aer 3 review: Good laptop at budget pricing

iBall launched its new CompBook Ae 3 entry-level convertible touchscreen laptop in India for Rs 29,999.

iBall launched its new CompBook Aer 3 entry-level convertible touchscreen laptop in India for Rs 29,999. No iBall laptop is complete without a traditional red-coloured “i” button on the keyboard and CompBook Aer 3 is no different. It runs on Windows 10 Home and supports Dual Band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, headphone jack on the connectivity front. But does it have what it takes to stand out in the true sense? Let’s find out.

iBall CompBook Aer 3 Specifications: 13.3-inch FHD (1,920 x 1,080) IPS touchscreen | Intel Pentium N4200 clocked at 2.5GHz | 2MP camera | 4GB RAM | 64GB storage (expandable up to 128GB) | Windows 10 Home | Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x Type-C, Connectivity: Dual Band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, headphone jack | Dimensions: 321 x 213 x 17mm, Weight: 1.58kg

iBall CompBook price in India: Rs 29,999 for 4GB of RAM

iBall CompBook Aer 3 Design, Display Review

Starting with the design, iBall CompBook Aer 3 has a gold-coloured metal body with a contrasting black keyboard and touchpad.

Starting with the design, iBall CompBook Aer 3 has a gold-coloured metal body with a contrasting black keyboard and touchpad. It’s slimmer at 17mm and heavier than expected at over 1 and a half kilograms. The keyboard is not backlit and letters printed over it don’t highlight much as well, and using it in dark environments is a headache.

It’s a compact-sized laptop with smaller keyboard, touchpad and overall form factor. I primarily use a Dell laptop that has a bigger screen, which is why switching to iBall CompBook Aer 3 wasn’t a pleasant experience for me. But need not worry since you’ll eventually get used to it.

Did I also mention that it’s a convertible laptop which can flip 360-degree to impersonate big-sized tablets? There’s a touchscreen included as well. Although it’s not bad for the price, it doesn’t have a detachable keyboard, which is a key highlight of any flagship convertible. But since it’s an entry-level convertible, lack of detachability is not at all surprising to be honest.

Moving on to the display, iBall CompBook Aer 3 has 1,920 x 1,080 pixels stretched across a 13.3-inch touchscreen IPS LCD panel. It has a reflective surface, which kills the show since you can’t use it effectively while sitting right under a bulb or a tube light. But I enjoyed the touchscreen experience on this laptop. It registered the input well and it did not disappoint, which I find pretty commendable.

iBall CompBook Aer 3 Performance Review

iBall CompBook Aer 3 has 1,920 x 1,080 pixels stretched across a 13.3-inch touchscreen IPS LCD panel.

iball CompBook Aer 3 packs 4GB of RAM under the hood, which I found inadequate when it comes to handling performance. Google Chrome would often crash on me with multiple tabs opened at the same time, and it’d take too long to load web pages especially with YouTube. Thankfully, waking it up from sleep mode wasn’t slow. Furthermore, it’s powered by an Intel Pentium N4200 CPU which is mostly found on the entry-level laptops, but that’s what this is claiming to be.

I had a problem with touchpad. More often than not, it ended up zooming in and out on web pages while I was trying to scroll up and down using two fingers simultaneously, which could be a little frustrating. Fingerprint scanner on the other hand performed exceptionally well and I don’t remember a single instance when it stopped working for me or ran into any weird issues. iBall CompBook Aer 3 comes pre-installed with MS office suite.

Touchscreen worked well for me, but it could have been brighter especially since it carries such a reflective panel. As I said before, flipping it 360-degree would transform into a tablet mode. I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I’d have with a detachable screen. The reason being, when you flip it around, you end up holding the keyboard in your palms, which I find to be a little distracting.

iBall CompBook Aer 3 Battery, Keyboard Review

iBall CompBook Aer 3 takes up to 4 hours to charge completely. Most of my usage was limited to casual web browsing with screen’s brightness level set at 75% all the time. If you keep the brightness low, battery would drain much slower. More often than not I used it mostly to type out articles. This review has also been written on the same laptop. Using Google Chrome would consume more juice which ended up offering close to 8 hours backup. Again this is nothing exceptional and more in line with the average battery life on such laptops/convertibles. Travel distance on the keyboard is cluttered especially if you are not used to such a compact-sized keyboards. I made few errors while typing initially, but once I got used to it, I could type much faster.

iBall CompBook Aer 3 Verdict

iBall CompBook Aer 3 is decent enough under Rs 30,000 for those who don’t want to spend much on a 360-degree convertible touchscreen laptop. It comes with a full-sized keyboard, which I found myself enjoying a lot once I got used to it. It comes with a Full HD touchscreen display which despite being less bright and more reflective, performs really well at the end.

A 4GB RAM and an entry Intel CPU gave often ran into some minor hiccups, but mostly ended up running just fine, if your usage is not heavy like gaming or running multiple tabs on Chrome. I’d recommend iBall CompBook Aer 3 only if all you are looking for in a laptop is a touchscreen and a fingerprint scanner under Rs 30,000.