Labs

Features

The 4920's curvy design makes it look friendly rather than businesslike. The 14.1in screen is one of the smallest displays in the group, but it has the same 1,280x800-pixel resolution. Its horizontal viewing angles are fairly narrow, so you need to view it head on to prevent darker colours looking bleached out. The laptop isn't much smaller than those with 15.4in screens, and it's the fattest model on test. However, the fans remain almost silent and the base stays cool even with the processor going at full tilt.

The webcam built into the lid produced far smoother frame rates

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and richer colours than the Eclipse's webcam. We're not convinced by the claims of virtual surround sound from the stereo speakers, but they sounded better than most. Dedicated buttons launch and control Windows Media Player and the bundled Arcade Deluxe software, which imitates Windows Media Center and adds extra features such as video capture. The 4920 has four USB2 ports, a multi-format card reader, an S-video output and a FireWire port, which is ideal for capturing video from MiniDV cameras, although a bigger hard disk would be preferable for video editing.

Performance

With the joint-slowest processor in the group, the 4920 was never going to excel in our benchmarks, but a score of 123 overall in our 2D tests is plenty for office and entertainment software, and even for video and photo editing. With 2GB of RAM it should be able to handle such tasks and run several applications at once. However, the Intel graphics aren't designed for 3D games. Battery life is above average in this group at two hours and 53 minutes.

Verdict

The Aspire 4920 isn't the fastest laptop in the group, but some useful features make it great for home use.