Acer Inc. http://www.acer.com
Just when you thought Acer couldn't come up with another beastly laptop, the Aspire 8920G "Gemstone Blue" series emerges to wow high-definition aficionados. The Aspire 9805WKHi—Acer's first effort at a wow! laptop—had a glamorous 20-inch screen but weighed a backbreaking 17 pounds. The Aspire 8920G ($2,600 street) finds the sweet spot by putting an 18.4-inch widescreen on a system that, at 8.8 pounds, weighs as much as some 17-inch models, like the Dell Inspiron 1720, do. Though still bulky, it doesn't seem like a nightmare to lug around. Altogether, the 8920G is a nice, albeit expensive, Blu-ray–equipped media center that delivers 1080p content.
Apart from the Ferrari series, Acer's design tastes have been questionable. The "Gemstone Blue" look sounds fantastic in the press release, but all you're really getting is a dark-blue lid with a glossy treatment. You can just about detect the sparkly material underneath the gloss, which, unfortunately, doesn't hide the smudges and scratches you'll see over time. Hoping that old-school, solid colors will appease consumers is an approach similar to that found in the Gateway M-152XL. Designs like the Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch, the Dell XPS M1530, and the HP Pavilion dv9500t are leaders in the field of attention grabbers.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!
Though the interior could use a little work in terms of aesthetics, the navigational and typing experience worked in its favor. As in the HP Pavilion HDX-9000 (Penryn), the width of the laptop allowed Acer to put in a superb full-size keyboard, a numeric keypad, and a media control pad. The "CineTouch" controls, as Acer calls them, are laid out in a unique manner to the left of the keyboard such that the touch-sensitive playback controls, the volume bar, and multimedia buttons spiral in different directions.
These extremely responsive buttons worked really well with Acer's Arcade Deluxe, a complete multimedia software suite that incorporates Blu-ray software. By contrast, the HP HDX-9000 has a removable media remote that's similar to a TV remote. The palm rest area, touchpad, and mouse buttons are covered with a silver weave–like material made of plastic, which is very comfortable but clashes with the black keyboard.
But even more underwhelming than the design is the feature set. For a monstrous media center like the 8920G, I expected a lot more. Thankfully, it does come with an HDMI port in case you want to connect this laptop to a larger display. The four USB ports, 5-in-1 card reader (MMC, SD, xD, MS, MS Pro), and ExpressCard slot are standard for a media center. However, the lack of a FireWire port and S-Video-out are glaring omissions and rare among comparable systems. The 8920G would have been a good candidate for an integrated ATSC (HD) tuner, like the one on the HP HDX-9000 (Penryn). A 320GB hard drive wouldn't be so average if less expensive systems like the Toshiba Satellite A305-S6845 weren't putting in 400GB drives, and I wouldn't have dinged its storage capacity if the 8920G came with an e-SATA port. The one feature that stands out—and a substantial part of the reason why the system costs so much—is the integrated BD-RE drive (that is, Blu-ray burner). It plays back the latest Blu-ray titles, burns data to (still exorbitant) Blu-ray media blanks, and doubles as a dual-layer DVD burner.
The 8920G's biggest asset is its 18.4-inch widescreen. It's the first laptop ever to launch with such a form factor, which is surprising given that every other screen size has been covered. Among the larger sizes, 17-inch laptops are the most common. I've reviewed the Voodoo Envy u:909 with a 19-inch widescreen, and both the Dell XPS M2010 and the HP Pavilion HDX-9000 (Penryn) have 20-inch widescreens.
In my opinion, the 18.4-inch widescreen is a smart compromise between screen size and system weight—you wouldn't believe how much an extra inch of screen real estate adds to your viewing pleasure. As with HDTVs, the 8920G's aspect ratio is 16:9. Its resolution is 1,920-by-1,080, or precisely 1080p. Acer claims that the color gamut is a full third richer than that of conventional laptops. Although the colors did appear richer when I played a series of Blu-ray movie trailers, 1080p, to me, is 1080p, whether it's a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution or the conventional 1,920-by-1,200 one. While watching Fifth Element on Blu-ray, the image looked absolutely stunning on the 8920G. It was completely free of any artifacts and stuttering, and it worked masterfully with the built-in "CineTouch" controls.
This laptop also comes with the latest Intel "Penryn" injection, the 2.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500—one of the most upper-tier processors currently available. The 8920G sports a whopping 4GB of RAM, though 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate can take advantage of only 3GB. The combination of the processor and memory produced performance scores comparable with those of the Gateway P-171XL FX—a hard-core gaming laptop. The 8920G's SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall score came within 3 percent of the Gateway P-171XL FX's, with its 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X7900 CPU. Two of its other peers—the HP HDX-9000 (Penryn) and the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Penryn)—lagged behind by at least 20 percent on the SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall score. Its video-encoding score topped the competition at 1 minute 3 seconds, while its CineBench R10 score came in second to that of the Gateway, at 5,361.
The 8920G is also equipped with a formidable graphics card. Although gaming scores weren't as impressive as those of the HP HDX and the Gateway, actual game play with industry-leading titles like Crysis and World in Conflict was smooth and lag-free as long as the resolution was kept low. Having an nVidia graphics card also benefits your Blu-ray experience, as its "PureVideo" engine (nVidia's decoding technology) is partly responsible for the smooth and stutter-free playback. Battery life was about the only performance area that didn't fare well, and this was understandable, given the fast components. The 1 hour 45 minutes tallied on MobileMark 2007 tests was sub-par. A bigger battery than the included 71-Wh unit could have pushed battery life into the 2-hour range.
If the Acer Aspire 8920G were playing a Blu-ray title at your local computer retailer, you'd be floored by the unprecedented 18.4-inch screen and amazing color detail. It's unique to the market, and it offers some of the best performance parts money can buy. Given the Aspire 8920G's high price tag, however, Acer could have developed a better feature set and paid more attention to style, because in this day and age, a complete package is an absolute must. But if all you care about is a great cinematic experience and future-proofed performance parts, the Gemstone passes these two areas with flying colors.
Acer Aspire 8920G
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
