The Acer Guy

Sure Olympic has passed, this was a model purchased after the Olympics was finished, so what? this is just another normal Aspire Timeline 4810T with aluminum lid and a brushed finish.

Exterior:

The screen is a high glossed screen just like any other laptop display, however, it is ultra bright with the new LED back lighting. It is not comparable to how phenomenal the brightness it can produce with my old tank 5920G. With the LED back lighting, it will lit up instant to full brightness with lower power consumption to traditional fluorescent back lighting which was inefficient and gets pretty warm at the location where the lamp is. It boasts 1366×768, which means it can show that pretty Windows 7 boot logo!

On the front, there is the multi-card reader for conveniences, this image also compares the machine to my beefy 5920G. In the center, there is an amber light that indicated the charging status, amber means charging, blue means 100% full.

on to the left side(from left to right order), there is a USB 2.0 port, the ventilation exhaust, VGA 15pin, HDMI (THAT’S RIGHT!), another USB 2.0 (beats macbook air’s number of USB already eh?), Pink microphone jack (3.5mm), black headphone jack (3.5mm)

to the right side(left to right), we have the DVD ROM(which is opened only by pressing the button by the speaker so you don’t accidentally pop it open every now and then), USB 2.0(woh! wait another one! YES!), RJ45 Ethernet port, AC power jack, and the Kensington lock port. Sorry no dial up!

Bottom of the laptop, black meshed surface, pretty standard from all Acer laptops. Note, the bottom does not get hot at all! (didn’t try it on a bed though).

Inside!

Here is the power button on the left corner of the keyboard, right to the right is the left speaker.

The touchpad is nice and big with a nice simple touchpad toggling button on the top left to the touchpad itself with a light indicator of on or off. the location of the touchpad being in the center but aligned to the left of the space bar like most of the laptops makes this easier for either left or right handed mouse users (for reference, check Aspire 5920G’s touchpad, it is aligned to the left of the space bar but centered)

Here we have a couple of light indicators, some of them are actually touch buttons. From the left, we have the wifi (tapping it will toggle the wifi, when it is lit, means it is on), the Acer backup button(only works if you have the eRecovery setup properly), then we have the interesting power saving button(I will talk more about later), the harddrive icon (surprising, the icon does not lit up but the LED next to it), the left speakers and the DVD-ROM eject button.

Comparing to the 5534 I have reviewed before, the media keys are not on the function keys on the top, they are designed like the 5920 series which I find much easier to reach to.

Facts about the laptop:

The power saving button never showed any difference according to the Windows battery time left calculation, it merely deems the brightness slightly and change some of the windows power settings. a green light does light up when you tap it, and tapping it again reverts to the previous power settings.

When opening browsers, this happens fairly fast, even though this was a lower end model, I don’t see anything that would affect the overall speed as this is only for office and on the go use

The laptop is ultra light, thin and easy to carry, recommended to all business and students who carries a laptop everyday and all day long.

My rating for this product: 8.5/10

Pros:
• Light, thin!
• Awesome battery life, too long for me to benchmark it, that is how long! (other sources benched it to be around 9 hours with light web surfing)
• Great screen brightness
• Keyboard function keys for the media keys
• 3 USB ports vs 1 for macbook air! (sounds like a personal jab, that… – MW)
• HDMI out, connect to your HDTV to watch DVD’s or Bluray disks (if you upgrade to Bluray drive, it will be able to play it)

Cons:
• Intel 4500MHD for graphics, not good for gaming, but what do you expect? otherwise, get the hybrid version with ATi HD4330
• Resolution at 1366×768 is really unpopular, slightly lower at 1280×720 is more understandable or push it up to 1680×1050 at least.
• the battery bumps out of the bottom of the laptop
• low powered speakers (Aspire 5920 is still superior in all laptop speakers that I have seen, even better than macbook pros)

Manufacture: Acer
Pictures: Morris