Acer TravelMate 737TLV review

Acer has big ambitions for the UK notebook market, and the TravelMate 737TLV is the flagship model that it hopes will help to boost its presence. Together with the NEC Versa LXi (reviewed p128), it's also the most expensive notebook on test, so our expectations were high. It's based around a Mobile Pentium III/700 with 128Mb of RAM, which translated to good 2D performance, but by no means the best. Its score of 1,147 in 3DMark wasn't astounding, especially compared to the Dell Inspiron 5000e G750VT (reviewed p120), but shows that the DirectX performance from the 8Mb ATi Rage Mobility-M1 graphics chipset will allow some gameplay.

A floppy drive and six-speed DVD is built in, and both contribute to the 3.2kg weight and bulky 50mm thickness that makes this laptop one you won't want to carry everywhere. This isn't helped by the fact that Acer hasn't supplied a carry case as standard, which is disappointing at this price. The 15in XGA TFT screen is sharp and bright and, despite this power drain, battery life was reasonable at nearly two hours in our intensive tests. Under normal use this will extend by up to an hour.

The screen is well protected by the magnesium alloy casing, which resists flexing. The rest of the notebook feels solidly built, and the chassis design allows easy access to all the major components, albeit with the aid of a screwdriver. The keyboard is generally pleasant to use, with a firm action and decent amount of travel, but Acer resorts to some unnecessary function-doubling on the cursor keys, which are also smaller than we'd like.

An IBM Travelstar provides 18.1Gb of unformatted storage space and you can also opt for a LS-120 drive when you order if you want some high-capacity removable storage. The built-in 10/100 network adaptor makes connecting to an office network simple. Internet connectivity is enabled by the 56K Lucent Winmodem and there are a plethora of other connectors besides the RJ-11 socket which make the £185 port replicator look unnecessary.

On the multimedia front, an ESS Solo-1 drives the speakers, which are unusually mounted on the rear of the screen. They sound impressive, but point away from the user. Thanks to the ATi graphics and fast processor, DVD playback is also up to scratch, with no noticeable dropped frames.

All in all, the 737TLV is a nice laptop, but its specification isn't enough to justify the price tag, despite the three-year collect-and-return warranty. The Dell Inspiron 5000e is better equipped and costs less.