The Acer Timeline series is all about quality products at reasonable prices. Included are the newest technology and trial versions of various student applications, so this might just end up being a sleek student laptop now that summer is drawing to a close. In this review we have taken a closer look at the interesting things like battery life and overall feel the product from this elegant series radiates.
The product was kindly lent to us by Acer
Specifications
Category
Multimedia - Students - Business
Processor
Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 (1.4GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 800FSB, 5.5W)
Chipset
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
RAM
4 GB DDR3 SODIMM
Storage
320GB SATA Hard Drive
Display
15.6″ HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit Display
Sound card & speakers
Optimized 2nd Generation Dolby Sound Room Audio Enhancement
GPU
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Battery
6-celled Li-ion Battery (5600 mAh)
Optical drive
8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
I/Os
4x USB 2.0 ports
1x HDMI port
1x VGA port
1x RJ45 Ethernet port
1x microphone
1x Line-in jack
1x headphone-out
1x Card reader: 5-in-1 card reader, supports SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, xD
1x 0.3MP Webcam
Connectivity
Built-in 10/100/1000 LAN
Built-in 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
Dimensions
380 (W) x 259 (D) x 24.8/29.7 (H) mm
About 2.4 kg including battery
Support
Support is available via Acer
Warranty
1 year
Operating system
Vista Home Premium
Software included
Acer Empowering Technology software package
Cyberlink PowerDirectory trial version
McAfee Internet Security Suite 2008 – 60 days trial
Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 SP1 Trial – 60 days trial
Price
Starts at around £550.00 including VAT.
Package contents
The package contains a manual that explains all about the product and its capabilities. In addition to that there is a warranty certificate and of course an AC adapter (nice length on the wire, the adapter itself is standard size).
Included
- AC adapter
- Manuals and warranty certificate
Physical aspects
First impression
With a 15.6 inch display and an extra thin lid, this is one sleek laptop. The Timeline series is a composition of elegant features, such as the design. While not terribly original, it works incredibly well on this product and can appeal to most everybody.
This model is not just characterized by the design, though. The Timeline series is a great line of computers in many other ways.
First of all, the products comprising the series sport some great battery lives; all should reach up to 8 hours on standby, and over 5 hours on normal use.
The notebooks are optimized to reduce weight, and are to this end partially made of brushed aluminum, which has the nice side effect of looking great and providing you with that quality feel. An ultra thin design – though not the thinnest to date – makes these notebooks light and stylish.
With the mentality design should be practical as well as aesthetic, Acer has ensured the laptop does not get too hot to sit with. This has been accomplished by what they call “Laminar Wall Jet technology”, which is supposedly better for the environment, the battery life, and the heat. Not bad at all.
The guys at Acer have taken a page from the Mac-folk and made a multitouch touchpad. This allows you to navigate websites with certain gestures, sparing your wrists the strain a mouse can cause. A fine feature.
Combined with some of the newest technologies like HDMI and improved audio in their laptops, Acer create a series which includes a lot of great features at a reasonable price. We will soon see if these features deliver, and if the product is as unique as it sounds. Regardless which conclusion we may reach, it sounds they are moving in the right direction if nothing else.
On to the product – grey and black are the prevailing colours on this laptop. That means it does not draw too much attention, but rather remains humble, which is preferable at times.
A large, blue diode at the front prides the laptop, somewhat against the rest of the design. They could have made it smaller and more discreet if you ask me. Besides that the material is exquisite, brushed aluminium with a smooth look that does not suffer from fingerprints and other smudges. Acer seems to prefer a very stylistic, glossy surface these days, which is also the case here. The Acer logo is printed in silver on the lid but is otherwise fairly discreet, letting the product speak for itself.
The keyboard has a nice size and consists of some glossier keys. There is a strategically placed eject button for the optical drive – always nice to have – but otherwise the keys are very streamlined and minimalistic.
At first glance it seems a very sleek product containing the newest technology, of great size, boasting a long battery life (or so the advertisement goes), and a cooling solution that allows you to sit with it without burning your thighs.
The lid
The lid is very thin; in fact the whole laptop is less than 1 inch thick, an attribute featuring prominently in Acer’s marketing. It is easy to close and while the hinges on this particular model are made of plastic, they seem of decent quality. The lid slides behind the notebook when you open it and on top of it we have the Acer logo as always. The inside of the lid features an integrated microphone and webcam.
The front
Acer put the card reader at the front, and while I am unsure as to whether that is the best location, it is nice to see someone finally using the front for something.
The rear
The lid slides behind the rear when you open it, so nothing of interest here.
The bottom
At the bottom there is little beyond the battery and lids to RAM and such. We leave that alone.
The right side
The left side
Overview
There is plenty of connectivity here; the average family and youth will probably appreciate the SD card reader for their camera, the geekier individual will appreciate the HDMI output to connect his PC to TV with audio, and finally a VGA output for e.g. projectors. Lovely with the whole package!
Diodes
The diodes are mostly – the one at the front being the exception, shining with either an orange or blue light depending on the power status – fairly discreet and have different colours. There is a diode for the power button, along with all the other standard diodes.
Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard is sizeable with glossy keys which are pretty silent and very smooth when pressed. There is also a numpad, perfect for those who work with numbers. Thumbs up to Acer for including this.
The only other thing I could wish for is some backlighting in order to use the keyboard in the dark as well.
The touchpad is asymmetrically located at the left, indicating Acer expects you to control it with your left hand. In my opinion it should have been placed in the middle, as many people prefer to control the touchpad with their right hand.
The mouse buttons have been merged into one larger button. It happens to work really well on this model since they made a sort of barrier in the middle that you cannot press. Thus the buttons are still separated, albeit invisibly.
Display
The display has just the right size for a mobile notebook; neither too large and unwieldy, nor too small and annoying. It is razor sharp with good backlighting that has various levels so you can adjust it to the how light is it around you. It does not suffer from glare too much either, making it a really good display in many ways.
It will undoubtedly be good for watching movies, both because of the format but also the size, perfect for a plane or train ride. The display has the 16:9 aspect ratio which is perfect for movies, and it sports HD (High-Definition) as well.
As a new part of our reviews we now test displays for pixel errors and faults in the backlighting, using a program called MonitorTest. It works by, for example, blackening the entire display which will expose pixel errors, i.e. areas that do not change colour. This will also allow you to see if the backlighting is uneven.
I found no errors in the form of dead pixels after a thorough examination. In my opinion is has a very nice and even backlighting, which makes it a pleasure to look at. No errors on this model.
Sound and speakers
This computer has a couple of really good speakers, certainly good enough for playing music. That will eat up some battery life, of course, but some music is always nice, especially when you work outside.
It plays both treble and bass really well, but is probably more suited for music than movies. I think it may have some trouble with sinister soundtracks and the like, as opposed to more standard, balanced sound. In any case we are not exactly dealing with a stereo system, but it definitely handles audio much better than the average notebook.
Noise, heat and power consumption
The computer is pretty silent even at full load, except for a faint buzzing. It is nowhere near loud enough to be annoying though.
When it comes to heat, everything is perfect as Acer advertised. The notebook is fairly cool at the bottom, even after longer use. The small plastic duds also enable it to stand firm on a bumpy train ride or the like.
It should be fairly good at saving power with plenty of functions to that effect, so a long battery life is pretty much guaranteed, something I am looking forward to experience.
Benchmark
All benchmarks are run at highest performance settings on the laptops. All other settings were left unchanged.
Windows Vista Experience Index
I had actually expected this computer to do better – the rating is not bad as such, but I thought it would have hit at least 4.
I have decided to compare it with the Novabook Proton, a slightly pricier laptop but with some better hardware in certain aspects. However Acer have made sure the notebook will not become obsolete to soon, thanks to the addition of for example HDMI. The Novabook Proton costs about £100 more than the Acer, so let us see what that gets you.
The Novabook Proton had the following specification - læs testen her
Specifications
Category
Students, Light gaming
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 – 2.1 GHz – 800 MHz – 2 MB Cache
Chipset
Intel Express PM965 Mobile
RAM
2 x 1024MB = 2048 MB DDR2 – 667 MHz
GPU
nVidia GeForce 8400 G Mobile – 256 MB (dedicated) + 768 MB (shared) = 1024 MB
Storage
250 GB – SATAII – 5400 RPM hard drive
Display
13.3” – WXGA – 1280 x 800 Pixels
Sound card
Realtek High Definition Audio
Optical drive
Dual Layer DVD Burner
Battery
6 Celled Battery – 5200 mAh – 11.1 V
Connectivity
Intel Wireless Wifi Link 4965 AGN (300 Megabit)
Marvell Yukon 88E8056 (1000 Megabit)
BlueTooth Modem
56K Modem
I/Os
3 x USB 2.0
1 x E-Sata
1 x FireWire
1 x RJ11 (Modem)
1 x RJ45 (LAN)
2 x 3.5 mm Jack (audio)
1 x Card reader
1 x Expansionary port
1 x VGA
1 x Power
1 x Kensington lock slot
Operating system
Windows Vista Home Premium
Price
About £650.00.
Boot times and out of standby:
Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.
The Novabook starts up very fast on AC, but otherwise the two are even. Slightly over one minute is fair enough for a laptop, so I do not think the Acer loses any points here.
Battery life:
Idle times are measured at the lowest power profile on the tested models while Classic times are tested at the highest performance profile. Both are tested with BatteryEater 2005 to find the maximum battery life at the given settings.
Here we have one of Acer’s current specialties. As promised, this product and the Timeline series in general have very good battery lives, making them optimal student and travelling computers. Some will prioritize battery life, others will not, just like with cell phones. I personally think it is great with a longer battery life. Impressive.
The processor:
SuperPi
Super Pi calculates the number Pi with 1 million decimals. The result is a time in seconds, meaning that the lower the number, the better. This can be used for direct comparison with other laptops that have run the same test.
The faster, 2.1GHz processor in the Novabook is quite noticeable here. The Timeline only has a 1.4GHz processor, which keeps price down and saves more power, but that was what Acer was aiming for in any case.
SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic
SiSoft Sandra’s Whetstone and Drystone benchmark tests the processor’s ability to do pure number crunching, which occurs during gaming or different forms of picture editing. The measure is in Mflops (Millions Floating Point Operations Per Second) – the higher, the better.
Just like in the test above, the Acer is far behind. I am surprised the difference is so large.
SiSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia
The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra is calculated on a 2D figure. The output (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, i.e. the bigger the better.
Same as above. If this continues for the other components, one seriously has to contemplate whether the extra £100.00 is worth the faster hardware.
RAM - SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:
Sisoft Sandra’s Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.
I am perplexed as to why part of the DDR3 RAM performs worse than the older DDR2. Keep in mind the test does not capture all of the 4GB of RAM, so one has to assume the Acer will perform better than the Novabook, having both newer RAM and more of it. As such, this particular benchmark is not a very good indicator of actual performance.
Hard drive performance - SiSoft Sandra Harddisk Read:
Sisoft Sandra’s hard drive test module is used to measure the performance of the hard drive. Sisoft Sandra runs a number of tests on the surface of the hard drive and calculates the average reading speed.
The hard drives are very even here, though both reach a fine reading speed. It is nice to see both notebook makers putting in a proper hard drive for once.
GPU performance - 3Dmark
The 3Dmark tests show the performance in DirectX 9, and paint a picture of the performance in newer games and applications. No tests have been run in DirectX 10.1 (which both cards support).
Here you can clearly see Novabook’s laptop is a light gamer with its dedicated 8400 GPU, as opposed to the Acer with its onboard chip. While it performs as expected, it is hardly impressive and is not capable of great graphical performance.
Overall performance
The PCMark 05 results can be compared directly with other laptops that have run the same PCMark version. The program produces a score from a test that includes the performance of the processor, RAM, hard drive, GPU, etc.
As the results above have indicated, the Acer does not score many points here. You clearly get much better hardware in Novabook’s laptop, although it invariably caters to a different segment of the market. More on that in the conclusion.
OpenOffice test
Since we have tested several laptops which are so well-suited for student use, I have decided to run some tests in OpenOffice (freeware which has the same functions as Microsoft’s Office bundle).
Here are some load times to give you a bit of insight into how quickly the computer loads a standard application like OpenOffice. Most can compare it with the PCs they normally work on.
Time to start up: 7 seconds
Load of browser (IE): 3 seconds
Conclusion
Acer have given us a quality product in several ways.
A powersaving laptop that lasts for a long time scores several points when it comes to battery life and mobility. It is thin and very handsome, definitely a fine design and a presentable computer. With a large keyboard that also has numpad, it is ideal for those who work with numbers. That also saves you the trouble of getting an external numpad if you are desperate for one.
The display is razor sharp and hardly suffers from glare. It has just the right aspect ratio for movies and goes well with the aural aspect. It plays audio surprisingly well for a laptop, certainly good enough for listening to music.
You can easily sit with it in your lap; in addition to the fairly low weight when compared to the size, it does not get too hot either, something your thighs will appreciate. That they managed to fit in an HDMI port so you can hook it up to your TV is fantastic as well.
So what exactly is the catch? There really is not any, so if you are an average user, student or businessman who likes quality and design, a long battery life and mobility, you should seriously consider procuring this model. If you like to indulge a bit in newer games or need your computer for more demanding tasks, the hardware will not keep up though.
This is an unbelievably nice computer for the business or student segments. Thankfully the only cheap thing about it is the price, for it really is a quality product that can handle most tasks. You really get a lot for your money, most important of all a very solid product with an incredible battery life. However, it will not suit more demanding users who require more performance of their equipment.
Pros
- Display
- Quality/design
- Heat
- Audio
- Battery
- HDMI
- Numpad
- Thin
Cons
- Large blue diode
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in Hardware & Accessories by MaryTenderLOS, 01-12-11 09:20