Acer 4820TG review

The Acer Aspire 4820TG is a well-speced and fairly light notebook and is a tempting proposal for those who like to travel a lot with their notebook and do not want to compromise on the performance too much.

Lid:
The lid is black brushed aluminum and looks very classy. The lid can be tilted back 170 degrees (very useful in lectures). However, the lid is a finger print magnet and can be flexed under pressure due to its thinness.

Display:
The screen is bright and the colors are vibrant. However, the screen is very glossy and is difficult to use in direct sunlight. Furthermore, viewing angles are poor and only 2 people can watch a movie side by side before the blacks become washed out (dark gray). In order for colors to display correctly, the screen must be tilted horizontally at the perfect angle.

Keyboard:
Acer chose to use a floating, chiclet-style keyboard for the TimelineX series and it takes about a week to adapt to it. The keyboard has been improved from previous Timeline series and has a texture feeling to it. Nevertheless, the keyboard has some flex, but not to the point that it would become bothersome typing an essay. Furthermore, the keyboard is prone to dust and debris collecting underneath the keyboard.

Touch Pad:
The touch pad is a huge improvement from previous Acer touch pads. The touch pad is large and very responsive. The single touch pad button is comfortable to use and doesn’t require a large amount of pressure to press. Multi-touch gestures works well and scrolling is flawless while surfing the Internet.

Processor:
The Intel Core i3-350M is responsive during normal usage, but throttles when temperatures reaches 86 Celsius. This has only occurred in intensive torture tests and benchmarks.

Video Card:
The ATI Mobility HD 5650 is a very efficient video card and can run most current games on medium or high settings using the native resolution (1366×768) on this laptop. Graphics is switchable between the ATI HD 5650 and the Intel GMA HD graphics (inside the Core i3). This is done automatically when you are plugged in or on battery (the screen will turn black for a few seconds during graphics switching).

On default, the ATI HD 5650 is used when you are plugged in.
On default, the Intel GMA HD is used when you are on battery.
Connectivity:
Left Side: VGA, HDMI, Gigabit LAN, 1x USB 2.0, Microphone Input, Audio Output
Right Side: DVD Super Multi DL drive, 3x USB 2.0
Front Side: 5-in-1 card reader

Portability/Battery Life:
The dimensions of the laptop are (13.46” x 9.64” x 0.94”–1.13”) and the laptop weighs only 4.65 Pounds. This is portable enough to carry around campus or to a local Starbucks. The battery life is around 5-6 hours under normal usage with default power savings enabled (30% screen brightness), Wi-Fi enabled, and using the Intel GMA HD. However, watching a HD 720p movie under similar conditions (with Wi-Fi disabled) drains the battery life to around 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Gaming Heat/Noise:
Under intensive gaming, the CPU will reach temperatures of 76+ Celsius and the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 will reach temperatures of 75+ Celsius. Also, the left palm rest will heat up during gaming. Furthermore, the fan will constantly spin under intensive usage, but will be near silent under normal usage.

Max. temp on GPU says 72 C that’s because I played a game before I ran Prime 95. Anyhow GPU still get upto 65 C because cooling is shared between GPU and CPU.

Obviously the temperature really depends on the ambient temperature but so far max CPU temp has been 79-82 C and GPU 81 C after running BC2 and DiRT 2 for a few hours. I ran another Prime 95 torture test for 1 hour at work and temperature is very similar to what you see above.

ETA – Addendum for Momentus XT HDD

I cloned the 320 GB 5400 rpm HDD that came with it to both Momentus XT 500 GB and a regular 320 GB 7200 rpm HDD. I’ve been using the Momentus XT over the weekend, and it felt like I’m using a fast desktop. Applications open pretty quickly, and overall it feels solid.

I didn’t realize how quick it was until I dropped 7200 rpm HDD in my 4820TG. My god it was SO slow (still a bit faster than stock 5400pm). Everything from boot up to opening up web browser and playing games, it was so slow.

Now I can’t really back up my claims with synthetic bench because you only see 10~15 MB/s sequential throughput improvement but it just feels so much faster. According to HD Tach random access times have been anywhere between 0.4-0.7 ms which is phenomenal for spindle HDD.

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