The recently released Acer Aspire 5755G (model 2414G75Mnks) multimedia laptop sports a new look and features a good hardware configuration. This laptop‘s features, such as the 2GB graphics card, the Sandy Bridge processor, the USB 3.0 port, and the 750 GB hard disk, do look good on paper.  So let’s see how it fares on the whole.

Design
The 5755G features a black back-lid with the Acer logo displayed on the middle section. The lid has a pattern of wave like lines going across the black background. The back-lid does attract a lot of finger impressions and smudges, and the same holds true for the palm rest, although to a much lesser extent.

The laptop features a full sized acer laptop keyboard with the multi-gesture touchpad located below the keyboard, positioned towards the left end.  A dark bezel borders the 15.6-inch LED backlit screen and the palm rest has a grey finish bordered by black strips on either sides.  The Acer 5755G does weigh 2.6-kg with a six-cell battery, but it has a comparatively slender form. The laptop has a two hinge design of the sort seen in earlier Acer models.

Acer has named this series as part of their “Gorgeous by Nature” line. So other color schemes are offered, namely Amazon Green, Pacific Blue, Desert Brown, Sunset Red and Monsoon Black. The colour schemes available for a model will vary according to the configuration though. For instance, the particular review model we received only comes in black.

The laptop features chiclet type keys, which is a departure from the raised flat acer laptop keyboard style adopted on earlier Acer models. While both sets of keys are comfortable to type on, the chiclet configuration of this laptop makes cleaning the keyboard easier. With the previous keyboard style, users, myself included, who like to munch in front of the laptop while viewing a movie or reading a web page had to be worried about crumbs falling into the acer laptop keyboard and getting trapped there. Users will be glad to hear that this is not an issue anymore, with the new keyboard.

Features
The 5755G provides a not particularly bright 15.6-inch glossy screen that supports a maximum screen resolution of 1366×768 pixels. The viewing angles are decent enough – but given that the screen tilts back to almost 70-80 degrees, finding a suitable viewing angle should not be too much of a hassle. Otherwise, the screen is good for both reading text and viewing images/videos. While the laptop does look good, its build quality is fair – standard stuff when considering mainstream laptops. It’s not like you will be splitting hairs over this, but I noticed that the section above the speakers, positioned parallel to the F9 and nearby keys, seems to sink in when pressed. This might however have been only specific to the particular review model we received.

The power button is located at the top right of the acer laptop keyboard, on top of the speakers, which is aligned across almost the entire horizontal length of the chassis. There’s a 1.3-megapixel (MP) webcam placed at the top of the laptop’s screen bezel.

acer laptop keyboard Usability
The keyboard’s multi-gesture touchpad was generally very responsive, although at times it confused certain gestures – quite often when pinching to zoom out, the gesture was interpreted as a rotate command. I guess that might take some getting used to. Located on the right side of the touch pad is a vertical line that allows for single-finger scrolling, as well as zoom in/out functions).  Also the single strip mouse button works well.

The enter key has a unique design and seems to connect with the backward slash key, giving the impression that the two keys are a single key.

Hardware
Under the hood, the Acer Aspire 5755G has an Intel Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5-2410M processor (2.30 GHz), 4GB DDR3 RAM and a 750GB hard drive. The graphics department is taken care of by the on-board Intel HD3000 and GeForce GT 540M graphics card with 2GB of VRAM. NVIDIA‘s Optimus graphics technology allows the Acer 5755G laptop to switch automatically between the discrete and integrated graphics of the CPU, as and when required.

The laptop has two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, Gigabit Ethernet port, VGA port, HDMI, headphone and microphone jacks, DVD writer and a multi-card reader. It features Wireless-N and Bluetooth 3.0 wireless connectivity.

More details in table form can be seen on this review’s ”Specifications“ page.

Software:
The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium (Service Pack 1). The following software is bundled – Acer Crystal Eye webcam, Acer eRecovery Management, Acer Backup Manager, Acer Game Zone Console, and clear.fi (for easy network sharing between Acer computers). It has 60-day trials of McAfee Internet Security Suite and NTI Media Maker 9, a 30-day trial of Norton Online Backup, and the freeware newsXpresso.

Performance
When the laptop was put to test, it came out with flying colours. In most benchmark tests, the Acer 5755G posted better scores than most mainstream laptops we have reviewed. Managing your day to day multitasking needs should be a very comfortable task for the Acer 5755G – coping with multiple processor and memory intensive tasks shouldn’t be a problem.

In the synthetic benchmark WorldBench 6, it scored 112 – one of the highest scores we have recorded on laptops so far. The laptop’s hard disk recorded an average read speed of 82.5 MB/s, and a PC Mark Vantage score of 6762.

The performance difference between the Intel integrated graphics and NVIDIA GT540M discreet graphics in 3DMark06 was large as expected. We saw it score 3290 points for the Intel HD 3000 and 7558 points while running on the NVIDIA GPU. The 2GB RAM of the GeForce GT 540M sounds good, but that does not result in a performance boost by itself, the GPU’s power is the main factor at play.

Playing games at low to medium settings, would make for comparatively smooth sailing for gamers. When I benchmarked FarCry 2 at 1366×768, DirectX 10 mode, AA 2x, and ‘Ultra High’ settings, I saw an average frame rate of 34.27 fps. Similarly, Metro 2033 at 1366×768, DirectX 11, Very High Quality, AAA, AF 4X, and all settings maxed out registered 8.64 fps. And that, dear readers, is why I’d suggest playing games on this laptop, albeit at a lower resolution and graphics effects, to obtain a playable experience.

Watching both 720p and 1080p HD videos is comfortable. Additionally, playing videos on a full-HD TV by connecting through the laptop’s HDMI port, provides for a smooth playback. The sound output from the built in speakers, with the Dolby Advanced audio disabled, is appropriate for a small room. Once the Dolby audio is activated, you will immediately notice the difference in sound quality, as the loudness, clarity and bass of the audio system improves to quite an extent – making it quite suitable for a mid-sized room. Headphones also work just as well.

Through our testing, the Acer Aspire 5755G did a fair job at keeping itself cool, considering that most mainstream laptops with similar configurations tend to heat up more. However, you do notice that the central left section of the laptop heats up slightly. Moreover, the laptop’s fan was barely audible during operation, which is another positive to take from this laptop.

The laptop’s six-cell battery lasted for 1 hour 25 minutes through one of our battery tests, at high performance mode. Having said that, you should be able to extract around 3 hours out of the laptop’s battery for doing lighter every-day work such as browsing the web and listening to music. But again, given the configuration of this laptop and its intended use indoors, battery life shouldn’t be a major concern.

Upgradability
There are two covers at the base of the laptop that can be opened – one at the top-left section and the other at the bottom. In the Acer 5755 series, the slot at the top-left corner is usually for inserting a 3G SIM card. This slot was hollow in our review unit, as Acer has told us this this option is not offered in in India. After opening the back-cover, we found the hard disk at the left side and memory modules at the right hand side. There are two memory slots, of which one is occupied by the 4 GB memory module already provided by Acer. You can upgrade the memory to a total of 8GB by adding another memory module. A note of caution to users who want to upgrade memory modules and/or hard-disks: to unscrew the lower lid, you will have to tear the Acer Warranty label, and this action will void any warranty that Acer provides.

Bottom Line

The Acer laptop has all the features tailor made for a graphics intensive user. The Acer Aspire 5755G more than provides the performance that its configuration potential suggests, despite the ordinary battery life and build quality. If you are looking for a home entertainment laptop, this is definitely one of the good options you have to check out for in the market.

Announced last month, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is a 14-inch laptop that packs in an Intel Core i5-430M processor and dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics, making it a powerful 14-inch laptop — at least on paper. It also claims to offer eight hours of battery life.

Design
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop’s exterior looks exactly like the Aspire TimelineX 4820T laptop. It has the same unassuming polished screen lid with brushed metal finish and the inside sports a black Acer keyboard deck with a silver gray touchpad and palmrest strip.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop promises a lot of speed and performance given its internal hardware, not to mention gaming as well.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is well built, and although not quite ultraportable, it’s thin and weighs 2.1-kg (with a six-cell battery) and has a form factor that’s easy to carry around compared to other 14-inch laptops — like the Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition and Acer Aspire 4740.

Usability
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop has a 14-inch glossy LED-backlit widescreen display, with a 1366×768 pixel resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio — ideal for watching high-def HD content. The Aspire TimelieX 4820TG’s screen is bright and sharp with good viewing angles (at best) — nice for watching movies or reading text for extended hours. A 1.3MP webcam and microphone on the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop’s top screen bezel come in handy during Skype videochats.

acer laptop keyboard replacement and touchpad on the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop are exactly the same as on the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T laptop. The chiclet-styled keys are well-laid out on the black keyboard deck and are pretty good for typing. The Timeline X 4820TG laptop’s touchpad is nice and wide, offers very good feedback, and is gesture-enabled — something you don’t see on a lot of laptops. The 4820TG’s multi-gesture touchpad executes two-finger scrolling, pinch-to-zoom and rotate functions very well.

Hardware Specs & Features
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop is available in two configurations. The unit we tested comes with an Intel Core i5-430M 2.26-GHz processor with Intel Turbo Boost (max clock speed of 2.53-GHz under load) and Hyper Threading support. It also has 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB (5400rpm) hard drive, Intel GMA HD and ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics (1GB) — the most potent hardware combination we’ve seen on a mainstream laptop below Rs. 50,000. The laptop supports switchable graphics — Intel GMA HD for maximum battery life and ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics for maximum performance.

The other Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG offering has the exact same specs and features as the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T laptop — with ATI Radeon HD 5470 graphics (512MB). If anything, the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG could’ve come with a faster-spinning 7200rpm drive, but this is just nitpicking.

Connectivity options on the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG include four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and VGA for video, two audio jacks — microphone and headphone/SPDIF — Gigabit Ethernet and a card reader. The Aspire Timeline X 4820TG supports both wireless Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR connectivity. The laptop has a tray-loading 8x DVD writer on its right edge, it’s eject button placed between the acer laptop keyboard and hinge.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, and promises a lot of speed and performance given its internal hardware.

Performance
If there’s one thing the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG excels at is its performance. Its WorldBench 6 score over 100 is a sign of a very good, powerful laptop — similarly, a PC Mark Vantage score of 5636, Cinebench score of 7888, and a PC Mark 05 score of 7254 are all very good for a laptop of its class — better even than the Dell Inspiron 14R. Both memory-intensive and processor-intensive tasks will execute smoothly on the Acer Aspire Timeline X 4820TG laptop, and you can multitask with ease.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop’s dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics is pretty good for gaming — it got a 3D Mark 06 score of 7545. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 at 1366×768, 4xAA, with everything else maxed out, ran smoothly. Far Cry 2 — Ultra High settings, 4xAA, 1366×768 res — clocked an average of 27.8 fps. Although the laptop heated up a bit, the gaming experience on the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is certainly a lot better than the ATI Radeon HD 5470 graphics equipped laptops in our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops list. Its heat shouldn’t be a problem if you keep the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG on a desk while gaming.

Watching both 720p and 1080p HD videos on the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T laptop went well. The laptop’s 14-inch screen displayed nice cinematic visuals, while the accompanying onboard audio from speakers placed above the acer laptop keyboard was good. For a 14-inch thin laptop, the Acer Aspire Timeline X 4820TG stakes a serious claim for a home entertainment laptop.

Battery Life
Acer claims the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop to last 8 hours on a single battery charge — not since the CULV-based Aspire Timeline 4810T laptop has any mainstream 14-inch laptop gone past that mark. The Intel Core i3-based Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG managed just under 7 hours, and it’s no surprise the Intel Core i5-equipped Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop doesn’t reach anywhere close to that mark.

On Intel GMA HD graphics mode, the laptop’s battery lasted 1 hour 38 minutes in our synthetic tests — at full-screen brightness and high performance preset. While browsing the Web over Wi-Fi at 50-percent screen brightness and optical drive disabled through Acer PowerSmart tool, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop lasted 3 hours 48 minutes on a single battery charge. Not even close to Acer’s claim of 8 hours, but still better than any other laptop in our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops list.

Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG laptop sells for a price of Rs. 48,999 with one year international warranty. It is not only thin compared to other 14-inch laptops — like the Dell Studio 14, Dell Inspiron 14R and MSI CX420 — but packs in quite a punch with its high performance and bundles a graphics processor that allows for a decent gaming experience on a laptop.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG also offers pretty good battery life — better than any other laptop in our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops list. But nowhere close to its claimed 8 hours — for that buy the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T. If you desire a powerful all-purpose laptop for home, one that is good for gaming, and easy to carry around, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is the one to buy.

The Acer Aspire 5742 is a 15-inch budget laptop for users interested in a basic laptop for home use around Rs. 30,000. The Acer Aspire 5742 breaks the monotone of dull-looking Acer Aspire laptops of the past and brings in a colorful new look and design. Let’s look at what the Aspire 5742 laptop offers for home users.

Looks and Design
The first thing you notice about the Acer Aspire 5742 is its surprisingly good-looking exterior. We were all bored to death with Acer’s Aspire range of laptops sporting a blue-on-gray color scheme — Acer Aspire 5740G, Aspire 4740, Aspire 5740 and Aspire 5542G, for example.

If there’s one gripe we had of past Acer Aspire laptops it had to do with the respective laptops’ boring looks. So it’s a welcome change to see the Acer Aspire 5742 draped in a bright red exterior on it screen lid, palmrest and touchpad.

The Acer Aspire 5742’s exterior is non-glossy — opposite to Acer Aspire laptops of the past — so it attracts no fingerprints. What’s more, the Aspire 5742 laptop’s screen lid has a nice mesh pattern which looks and feels good — it’s similar to the Compaq Presario CQ42 and HP G42 laptop.

The Aspire 5742 laptop is decently built for its price and weighs 2.25-kg with a standard 6-cell battery — which is very good for a 15-inch budget home laptop. It’s lighter than some of the other 15-inch laptops we’ve reviewed like the Dell Inspiron 15R, Dell Inspiron M501R and Lenovo IdeaPad Y560.

Usability: Screen, Keyboard, Touchpad
The Acer Aspire 5742 comes with a 15.6-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with a 1366×768 pixel resolution. Nothing different from most 15-inch laptops sold in the market currently. The Aspire 5742’s display is pretty good for reading text or watching movies, although it isn’t very good for outdoor use. Overall, the laptop’s screen has good viewing angles, by laptop standards. The Acer Aspire 5742 laptop’s included webcam is good for videochats over the Web.

The Aspire 5742 laptop’s keyboard is like the new Acer Aspire Timeline X 4820TG and Aspire 5745G laptop’s keyboard, sporting isolated, chiclet-styled keys that are nice to type on. The Aspire 5742’s keyboard also has a dedicated number pad on the right which is good. The Aspire 5742’s laptop dips ever so slightly while typing but overall works just fine.

The Aspire 5742 laptop’s palmrest has a finely textured surface which is nice and responsive while moving the cursor around with your finger. If anything, the touchpad could’ve been a bit larger, but it is of average size. The Aspire 5742’s singe-strip mouse button takes a while getting used to, but one can definitely work with it.

The Acer Aspire 5742 comes with the innards of any budget home laptop, there’s nothing new to speak of here. The Aspire 5742 laptop has a 2.4-GHz Intel Core i3-370M processor, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and onboard Intel HD graphics. The Acer Aspire 5742 laptop has sufficient RAM and better storage space than the Lenovo IdeaPad Z460 and Compaq Presario CQ42 laptop. For a basic 15-inch home laptop, the Acer Aspire 5742 comes with adequate basic hardware.

In terms of features and connectivity port, the Acer Aspire 5742 laptop comes with three USB ports, VGA, HDMI, Gigabit ethernet, and multicard reader. There is no eSATA port or an ExpressCard slot, but you can’t expect every mainstream laptop feature in a budget laptop. For wireless connectivity, the Aspire 5742 laptop has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1. The laptop comes with an optical drive, one year’s warranty, but no Windows operating system — part of the reason why it sells for such a low price.

Performance
The Acer Aspire 5742 performs very well for a laptop selling at Rs. 30,000. We installed Windows 7 Ultimate version to benchmark the laptop, and it got a WorldBench 6 score of 95 — pretty good for a laptop of its class. Watching movies, working on productivity suite, browsing the Web, etc., won’t be a problem on the Acer Aspire 5742 laptop. Gaming, obviously, isn’t an option on the Aspire 5742 budget home laptop — nor on any other budget laptop featured in our Top 5 Budget Laptops list.

The Acer Aspire 5742 laptop’s audio-video performance is also good for a budget laptop, nothing great though. Watching movies is comfortable on the glossy widescreen display, and accompanying audio is ably pumped out on two speakers situated underneath the black strip above the Acer laptop’s keyboard replacement deck.

As far as battery life goes, the Aspire 5742 laptop. In our battery tests, conducted at high performance mode and full-screen brightness, the Aspire 5742 laptop managed to last 1 hour 22 minutes, which is better than any other budget laptop listed in our Top 5 Budget Laptops list. Easily expect over 3 hours of browsing the Web over Wi-Fi on a conservative battery plan, which is nice for the Aspire 5742.

Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire 5742 currently sells at a price of Rs. 30,605 — EUP is even lesser, around Rs. 28,000. For that price you get a basic 15-inch laptop that offers nice performance, has sufficient features, and very good battery life. Importantly, the Acer Aspire 5742 is a pivotal moment in Acer’s Aspire laptop range — it’s better looking than past Acer laptops. Its only drawback is it doesn’t come with a Windows OS.

Out of our Top 5 Budget Laptops, for slightly more price, the Acer Aspire 5742 is currently a better bet than the Compaq Presario CQ42 and Lenovo IdeaPad Z460 laptop. A very good value for money laptop, if you want to dump your old laptop and buy a newer machine at Rs. 30,000, consider the Acer Aspire 5742.