Product Reviews

Acer's Aspire 7720G came into the Shopper office too late to make it into our big-brand Labs. However, as it's currently on special offer from www.play.com and has an impressive specification we thought it too good not to cover.

The first thing you'll notice is the excellent 17in widescreen display, which is ideal for watching DVDs, or TV by adding a USB tuner. It has a 1,440x900 pixel native resolution, so there's enough space for running more complex applications such as photo-editing suites. Our tests showed that it was capable of a bright clean white, with even backlighting and decent viewing angles. It dealt with our more demanding colour reproduction tests fairly well, too, so is suitable for photo manipulation.

A speaker grille runs across the width of the laptop above the keyboard. The speakers provide clear audio at a surprising volume and are better than those provided with most laptops. A small subwoofer on the underside of the chassis

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produces lower frequencies. The Dolby Home Theater software provided creates a useful pseudo-surround effect using the built-in speakers or a pair of headphones. Alternatively, you can output Dolby Digital surround from the coaxial mini-jack S/PDIF.

The Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor is fast enough to deal with all but the toughest tasks, and 2GB of RAM is plenty for Windows Vista. There's a lot of space for all your files thanks to the huge 250GB hard disk. The Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics chipset isn't quick enough to run the latest games in high-detail settings, but older games should run fine at lower settings. It will also assist with the smooth playback of HD video.

There's a good selection of ports around the edges of the 7720G. Four USB2 ports, FireWire and a memory card reader are provided. There are DVI and VGA outputs as well as a TV output (component and S-video). There is also a connection for an external wireless antenna, plus a dedicated volume control dial.

Unfortunately, the 7720G is very heavy even for a laptop with a 17in display, at 3.6kg. It also has a short battery life of two hours and 17 minutes, so you won't be able to stray far from a power socket. When typing the keyboard flexes, which makes the keys less responsive and can be frustrating when typing long documents.

For multimedia use around the home, this laptop is a great choice. The keyboard and short battery life prevent it receiving an award, but it's still an excellent buy. Alternatively, for £110 more you can get the same model but with a HD-DVD drive and 320GB hard disk.