The Acer Aspire 5750G- Acer's new budget laptop

Full Review

The Acer Aspire 5750G (AS5750G-2414G50Mnkk) is a 15.6-inch laptop designed for home use and it represents good value for money. It runs a Second Generation Intel Core i5 CPU and a discrete graphics adapter, and it has a design that mostly looks good and feels comfortable to use. Its keys and touchpad could be a little better, and we're not fans of the glossy screen and bezel, but apart from those little quibbles we enjoyed using it.

Design-The Aspire 5750G weighs around 2.5kg and it feels noticeably lighter than many other 15.6in units that we've tested this year. Its build quality is fair, although there is plenty of flex in its lid and in the palmrest when force is applied. The keyboard bounces a little, but it doesn't make typing difficult. In fact, the full-sized keys have good travel. We like the inclusion of a regulation number pad and the arrow keys are easy to distinguish by feel. What we don't like is the smoothness of the flat keys. They don't have much texture, which sometimes caused our fingers to slip onto adjoining keys and create typos; but we got used to it after a while (the keyboard, that is, not the typos).

 

The touchpad is 87x45mm and it feels smooth, but its responsiveness was sometimes poor. It wasn't great at recognising gestures and many times we had to repeat a scrolling or flicking gesture before it was performed correctly. A vertical line is moulded on the right side of the pad to aid single-finger scrolling and this worked fine in our tests.  


Hardware-On the inside, the Aspire contains a Second Generation Intel Core i5-2410M CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive (5400rpm) and an NVIDIA GeForce 520M graphics adapter. This configuration performed well in our tests, recording a time of 44sec in Blender 3D and 52sec in iTunes. It converted a DVD file to an Xvid file in 52min, which is a good result. Its 3DMark06 score of 5323 is adequate.  

Around its edges, the Aspire 5750G houses a standard set of features for a modern 15.6-inch laptop: a DVD burner, an SD card slot, three USB ports (one is a USB 3.0 port), Gigabit Ethernet (a Broadcom NetLink adapter), HDMI, VGA, and headphone and microphone ports. It also has a webcam and 802.11n Wi-Fi (an Atheros AR5B97 adapter), but it lacks Bluetooth. Its Wi-Fi adapter wasn't great in our tests, and only managed to connect to our 802.11n-based wireless networks at 54Mbps.

 

Performance-The Aspire 5750G runs NVIDIA's Optimus graphics technology, which allows it to switch automatically between the discrete GeForce 520M adapter or the built-in Intel HD 3000 graphics of the CPU — and it worked properly for once! The performance difference between the Intel and NVIDIA adapters in 3DMark06 is just over 50 percent (3436 for the Intel adapter and 5323 for the NVIDIA) and it supplies a little extra kick for gaming. However, you shouldn't buy this laptop thinking you are getting a gaming machine, unless you are content playing at low resolution and detail levels. It won't be able to run 3D shooters smoothly, even at low detail levels, but it will be fine for games such as WoW, Dirt2 (or Dirt3) and StarCraft2.

While the advantage of the discrete graphics card over the CPU graphics isn't great, it does provide versatility. You can run the slightly more powerful graphics while using the notebook at home near a power outlet and you can run the inbuilt graphics while using the laptop on the road. In our battery rundown test, in which we disable power management, enable Wi-Fi, maximise brightness and loop an Xvid-encoded video, it lasted 3hr 35min, which is a little above the average for a 15.6in laptop with a Core i5 CPU.

Basically, what you get in the Aspire 5750G is a nicely designed laptop with good performance and battery life that won't cost you too much money. We just wish the performance between the integrated and discrete graphics cards was greater, that its screen wasn't so glossy, that its touchpad was more responsive and that its keys had a little more texture.

Bottom Line

With its price tag and a 2nd Gen Core i5 CPU, the Aspire 5750G represents good value for money. It does have some drawbacks, such as a glossy screen and it could use a better keyboard and touchpad, but overall it's a nice laptop that would suit home users and students.

You can purchase the Acer Aspire 5750G right away through our 100% safe Amazon and Flipkart portals.

                                                            

Posted in: Laptops, Reviews