Acer Inc. http://www.acer.com
Acer knows how to fight a price war when it comes to selling laptops, but its knack for designs hasn't been as memorable as some of its competition's. The only exception is the head-turning Ferrari series, highlighted by a carbon-fiber frame and racing-style red streaks. Now that PC makers are focusing more attention on design, the Ferrari line alone isn't enough to draw in the hipper crowd. But Acer is hoping to change all that with its Gemstone series, otherwise known as the Acer Aspire 5920G ($1,999 list). Aside from the sleeker look, the system integrates an HD DVD-ROM drive and 5.1 Dolby surround sound, and offers a bunch of other entertainment features at a price few can pull off.
The Gemstone design is a far cry from the metallic silver-green models that Acer is used to putting out. Its outer lid, for example, is topped off with a piano-black finish that isn't impervious to fingerprints but can fend off a scratch or two. The technique resembles the in-mold decoration process made popular by recent HP Pavilion models such as the dv9500T, as well as the Gateway T-140X, where a graphical overlay is embedded underneath a plastic finish. The Aspire 5920G lacks the sequence of line patterns found on the HP and Gateway laptops, but its oval-shaped frame, or what Acer calls its "Opalesque contours," is distinctive.
The keyboard reminds me of something out of the movie Tron. A string of LED lights begins above the keyboard, circles the power button, and extends down to the playback control keys on the laptop's right-hand side. The keyboard and the area surrounding it are an eyeful, accented by about 11 media keys. The playback buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, FFWD, RWD) are touch-sensitive, whereas the four application keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard are regular press buttons. (I'm not sure why Acer didn't make all the media keys touch-sensitive.) The keyboard is a bit mushy and isn't as responsive as the one found on the Dell Inspiron 1720. I can also do without the loud clicking that the mouse buttons make.
The Aspire 5920G offers decent home theater viewing once you ditch the bundled HD DVD playback software and get past the resolution. Its CrystalBrite 15.4-inch widescreen is the minimum size you should get for a good HD experience. The 17-inch screens on the HP Pavilion dv9500t and the Sony VAIO VGN-AR590E are ideal for viewing HD content on a laptop. The 5920G comes with a 1,280-by-800 resolution, which is generic but still serves up a 720p experience. A 1,440-by-900 or a 1,680-by-1,050 resolution would have generated a sharper picture and more color detail. But it's one of the few media laptops at its price that come with an HD DVD-ROM. You can play back all the latest HD DVD titles and burn DVDs (both single- and dual-layer) and CDs. The system also comes with an HDMI-Out port in case you want to hook it up to a bigger screen.
Acer includes a comprehensive bundled media software package in the Arcade Deluxe. The DV wizard lets you capture video directly from your camcorder or from the webcam. VideoMagician sorts and organizes all your media content, similar to what Windows Media Center does. The only thing that it doesn't do well is play back HD DVD content. (It isn't clear what manufacturer helped develop the video player.) Scenes from various HD DVD titles were choppy and fell victim to the stuttering effect. A couple of times, the software even crashed during the movie. I think Acer just needs to update the software with a patch. On the bright side, installing a copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD 7.2 Ultra fixes all of these problems. If you want a complete and glitch-free HD experience, though, the HP Pavilion dv9500t is my pick of the crop.
The Aspire 5920G uses Intel's latest Centrino Duo platform, which includes a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, 2GB of RAM, and rides on the 800-MHz front-side bus. These are the same components found on the Sony VAIO VGN-AR590E. Unfortunately, the 5920G could not complete BAPCo's SYSmark 2007 Preview benchmark tests. But on Adobe Photoshop scripts, it finished ahead of the Dell 1720 and HP dv9500t, taking 1 minute 7 seconds. In video encoding tests, it beat out the Sony laptop but fell behind the Dell and HP. Most laptops with built-in HD drives include discrete graphics. The 5920G uses the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT, which is not only great for 3D gaming, but its PureVideo engine is also the world's first video processor that offloads 100 percent of the video-encoding work from the CPU, enabling smoother HD DVD playback (provided you're running the correct playback software, that is).
With all that power running underneath its hood, the 5920G fares pretty well against the competition on battery life. It scored 3 hours 21 minutes on MobileMark 2007 , beating the HP dv9500t by 11 minutes and the Gateway M-150X by over an hour.
It's not often that Acer gets to combine an aesthetically pleasing design with good processing speed and affordable pricing. I'm inclined to say that between its Gemstone and Ferrari series, the Ferrari series is still the better-looking one. But for $1,999, the Acer Aspire 5920G is a formidable media center, complete with an HD DVD-ROM drive and Dolby 5.1 surround sound. You might want to purchase a copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra before leaving the store, though.
Acer Aspire 5920G
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