Acer Aspire 8930G review

Acer's Aspire 8930G is a big laptop. Measuring 441 x 300 x 44mm, it's a desktop hog and at 3.98kg it isn't the most portable, either.

Portability isn't the Acer's game, though. The 8930G is an entertainment laptop through and through - a point reinforced by its eye-catching looks. The deep blue lid sparkles with a light glitter effect and the central Acer logo is backlit for extra drama.

We weren't quite so enamoured with the keyboard's glossy keys, which proved slippery, but they soon redeemed themselves. Despite a little flex in the keyboard's base, the keys have plenty of travel and a positive action.

The interior is similarly bold, with matte- and gloss-black sections jostling for attention alongside a textured grey wristrest.

Tilt back the Acer's huge lid and your gaze is quickly drawn away from the full-sized keyboard and numeric keypad to rest on the touch-sensitive media playback console on the left-hand side.

And then there's the monstrous screen above. Measuring 18.4in across, the Acer's display is huge. It doesn't squeeze in a Full HD panel like the Samsung, but the 1,680 x 945 resolution makes a good partner to the Blu-ray reader. Colours are accurate and it manages to unearth plenty of detail in HD movies. Plus, should you want to hook it up to an external display, the Acer boasts a full set of VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs.

It isn't just a visual treat, though; the Acer's speakers are capable too. Ample volume goes hand in hand with impressive clarity and generous bass.

Gaming is firmly on the agenda, thanks to the Nvidia GeForce 9600M GS chipset, which bested all the other laptops in our Crysis benchmarks by a considerable margin. And the rest of the specification is just as impressive. The 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 processor is backed by 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 320GB hard drive - a combination worth 0.98 in our benchmarks.

Although this laptop may not be as pretty as the HP Pavilion DV7-1211ea and has only mediocre battery life (lasting for 3hrs 27mins under light use, 1hr 28mins when we pushed it), it makes up for this with a supremely generous specification.

Author: Sasha Muller