Acer Aspire 8920G

After teasing our curiosity over the past couple of weeks, Acer has finally revealed its new range of Blu-ray equipped Aspire Gemstone laptops. The UK launch was a pretty understated affair, and perhaps suitably so, with the restrained styling of the Gemstone Blue range contrasting wonderfully with the gaudy modernity of the Soho Hotel. We managed to prise a pre-production Aspire 8920G from Acer's grasp to give it an exclusive first look.

Visually, the new laptops might not mark any radical departures from the norm, but that's no bad thing. And thankfully there's no sign of the Acer Aspire 5920's beige interior making a resurgence either. Instead, Acer has stuck to classic design cues. The black glossy lids shimmer with a subtle glitter effect, and the Acer logo glows attractively in the centre.

Build quality is reasonable too. Both the base and lid exhibit noticeable flex when you really tug at them, but given the Aspire 8920G's proportions, it's none too surprising.

Open up the sizable lid and the eye is immediately drawn to the glowing block of touch-sensitive media playback buttons situated at the keyboard's left-hand edge. Acer has dubbed this the CineDash but, marketing buzzwords aside, it simply saves fiddling with the trackpad or keyboard when you just want to pause a video or quickly adjust the volume.

When we say sizable, we really mean huge, as the 8920G can lay claim to being the first laptop available with an 18.4in display. With all but the most gargantuan of laptops settling for 17in displays - Dell's briefcase-sized XPS M2010 being one obvious exception to the rule - you might wonder why Acer has super-sized this aspect of the 8920G. One thing is for sure: the sheer size and thigh-crushing 4.17kg weight certainly put paid to any crazy ideas you might have about enjoying Blu-ray movies on the daily commute.

The 8920G's large footprint does have its advantages though. There's plenty of room for the CineDash, a full-sized keyboard and a numeric keypad. It's just a shame the keyboard is nothing special. We have no quibbles with the layout, but the keys themselves have a spongy, slightly indistinct action which isn't ideal for long stretches of typing. One of our pet hates, a half-height Enter key, proved to be an aggravation too.

But, this is a laptop with its eye firmly set on home entertainment, not portability or productivity. To this end, Acer hasn't just made the display bigger, it's also adopted a panel with a movie-friendly 16:9 ratio. Traditional PC displays use a 16:10 ratio which, for movies, makes the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen rather obtrusive. Not so the 8920G, which, thanks to a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, is effortlessly capable of displaying 1080p Blu-ray movies in all their high-definition glory.

Well, most of their glory anyway. The 8920G's display is amply bright thanks to dual backlights, and colours are rich and vibrant but, crucially, it lacks fine detail compared to the very best 1080p displays we've seen. Still, for a laptop display it's pretty impressive. Horizontal viewing angles are fantastically wide and, when you're not watching movies, the huge Windows desktop gives plenty of room to work with multiple programs.

The large size of the screen means you can comfortably watch movies at a distance, and by adding a TV tuner (something which is included with more expensive models), it would make a relatively portable Media Center laptop.