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The Acer Aspire 3935 comes in a prominent, dark brown colour and seems to be a handsome business machine you can show off with pride. The computer offers an Intel P7450 processor at 2.13 GHz, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 160GB HDD and a 13.3 inch LED-backlit display.

http://acer.com/

Specifications

Category
Students and businessmen

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 – 2.13 GHz – 3 MB L2 cache

Chipset
Intel GM45 (Cantiga-GM) + ICH9M
        
RAM
2x 2048 MB Elpida PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM

GPU
Intel GMA 4500M HD Onboard – 64 MB

HDD
160 GB Serial-ATA HDD – 5400 RPM

Display
13.3 inch 16:9 TFT LED backlit display – WXGA resolution (1366 x 768px)

Sound card
Intel 82801IB ICH9 – High Definition Audio

Optical Drive
8x DVD+/-RW drive

Battery
Panasonic AS09B46 Lithium Ion battery - 4 cells

Connectivity
Broadcom Netlink™ Gigabit Ethernet LAN – 1000 Mbps
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 AGN – 300 Mbps

Inputs/outputs
3x USB 2.0
1x VGA output
1x Audio jack-in
1x Audio jack-out
1x Card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO and xD support)
1x RJ45 LAN
1x DC-in (charger)

Operating system
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (build 6001)

Price
About £850.00

Package contents



- Charger with two connectors (with and without surge protector)
- 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007
- Warranty certificates

Along with the computer you get a charger with two cables, with and without surge protector, as well as a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007. No manuals or reinstallation CD’s were included, which would have been nice in case you wanted to format

Build & Design

First impression













The notebook’s chassis is cast in a faded, dark brown colour and black, made in plastic and aluminium. The computer is about 2.5 centimeters tall when the lid is closed, and 2 centimeters when the lid is open. The notebook is generally rather dark and reflects little light except for the display which, unfortunately, reflects everything if there is any light. The edges are nice and smooth, and the computer clamps up nicely when the lid is closed. There is a textured pattern around the keyboard, providing a bit of friction so your hands won’t glide around while you’re typing. Except for this area and the keyboard itself, the computer is very susceptible to fingerprints that are easily spotted on the lid and display when you open up the computer.
 
Overall, the computer comes across as a very handsome business machine as the faded colours along with the rather special brown give it a professional look. The prominent keyboard – which we will return to later – only adds to this impression.

The lid



The lid is cast in the faded, dark brown colour, with Acer’s logo printed in the middle. In one corner you can just spot the words “Signal Up”, presumably alluding to the wireless network units. The lid is, sadly, highly susceptible to fingerprints which can be easily seen after opening up the computer.

The front



The computer clamps up nicely, and there are no sharp edges. At the left you can see some diodes and the card reader, but more on those later.

The rear



At the rear you can see the battery.

The bottom



At the left of the picture you can see a smaller lid, under which the wireless network adapter is located. The larger lid hides the HDD and RAM modules. The battery can be seen at the top.

The right side




Left



Inputs/outputs



Hinges



The hinges appear to be made of black plastic. The display is secured tightly, but you should probably be careful about tipping it over as it weighs a lot compared to the rest of the computer and might break the hinges.

Buttons/Diodes



The diodes are placed at the left of the front and remain visible when the lid is closed. The first diode indicates the HDD activity, the second whether the computer is on or off, and the third the battery status. The first two diodes are blue while the third is orange. You can see the card reader right next to them.





Above the keyboard there’s a touch panel where the buttons in the first picture are used to control the volume. The other three buttons on the second picture are used to activate WiFi, Bluetooth, and finally as a shortcut to Acer Backup Manager which, as the name indicates, is a program used to make backups.

Keyboard and Touchpad



The keyboard is stands out by having several millimeters of space between the keys, resulting in a simple yet cool look. The keyboard does not bend and the size is quite nice. If you look closely you’ll see a sort of glitter in the keyboard only visible when lit. It may seem like rough surface, but it’s actually quite even.



The touchpad reacts swiftly, but the mouse buttons can get annoying after a while as you have to go all the way out to the sides to press the buttons, which is very impractical. There is a smaller button to deactivate the touchpad at the upper right corner. It works well enough all in all.

Noise & Heat

The computer doesn’t make a lot of noise when idle, but the fan might go at it now and again, something you’ll definitely notice. When put under pressure, the computer doesn’t really make that much more noise than it does in idle. The heat is not particularly noticeable on the keyboard either, but it does get a little hot at the bottom. It’s nothing extreme or out of the ordinary though.

The display











The display is a 13.3 inch TFT LED-backlit type with CineCrystal technology. The display has an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768, WXGA. There are 10 levels of brightness which can be adjusted via the FN key and the arrow keys. The display suffers heavily from glare – particularly in daylight – but it really reflects any kind of light. However, the display itself is very crisp and gives a beautiful picture in the dark. The lighting is homogenous, meaning it is evenly distributed across the entire display.

Speakers
While the sound is of Dolby Home Theater technology, audio is not one of this computer’s strong suits; it’s neither loud, nor of good quality. Cranking up the volume makes the sound mechanical and screechy, which is rather annoying. Additionally it has trouble playing lower frequencies. In general the sound is very unnatural and unkind to sharper instruments.

Special Features

Fingerprint reader



The fingerprint reader comes with Acer Bio Protection, which works really well for logging onto Windows and identification at various places such as the internet. In addition to that the software allows you to program specific functions to certain gestures. This means the computer can carry out an action such as shutting down if you use your middle rather than index finger, a very handy feature. The software is quite user-friendly and will definitely add to long term efficiency. The fingerprint reader itself is located between the two mouse buttons.

Webcam





The webcam comes with Acer Crystal Eye Webcam software, making it easy to take pictures. The cam is at 1.3 megapixels and can take pictures in a maximum resolution of 640 x 480. The quality is not particularly good for photos, but it works well enough for video conferences over MSN Messenger and the like.

Benchmark







Comparison
The computer is pitted against the Toshiba Tecra M10-10H, which is also made for businessmen and the like. In terms of hardware, the Tecra offers:

Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 – 2.26 GHz
Intel GM45 chipset
2048 Mb DDR2 800 MHz
Intel® Mobile GMA 4500M HD onboard
160 GB HDD
Windows Vista Business Edition

The Toshiba Tecra costs about £700 and you can read our review of it here: http://www.laptop-review.eu/Reviews/Laptops/toshiba-tecra-m10-10h-an-attractive-business-laptop.html

In the various benchmarks, the Acer Aspire 3935 uses Windows Vista’s ”High performance” power profile when on AC and ”Power saver” when on battery.

Boot and out of standby times





Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.

The Aspire 3935 powers up in about 45 seconds with the Toshiba falling just 2 seconds short at 47.  A decent result; anything around 45 seconds is acceptable. The computer also gets out of standby very quickly, whereas the Tecra takes 5 seconds.
.
Battery life



 Battery-eater Pro 2,70 is used to measure the longevity of the batteries.

Idle test settings: Fixed clock frequency at 2130 MHz, brightness 10/10, HDD standby after 10 minutes, and WiFi and Bluetooth activated.
Classic test settings: Varying clock frequency between 2130 MHz and 1600 MHz, brightness at 10/10, HDD standby after 10 minutes, and WiFi and Bluetooth activated.

As shown by the graph the computer lasts for 1 hour and 26 minutes at high performance, which isn’t much. At idle it lasts up to 5 hours and 32 minutes, which is quite a large difference. The Tecra thus wins at classic test settings while the Aspire 3935 takes the cake in idle. Battery life clearly depends largely on what kind of programs you run…the more demanding, the lower the battery life.

Processor

wPrime



wPrime calculates the number Pi with 1 million decimals.

The Toshiba Tecra was sadly not tested in wPrime, but the result is nevertheless quite alright.

Sisoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic





SiSoft Sandras 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.

As there have been some problems with the difference between SiSoft Sandra 2008 and 2009 the results might not be correct. However considering that the Acer Aspire 3935 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 – 2.13 GHz – 3 MB L2 cache processor against an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 – 2.26 GHz in the Toshiba Tecra, the latter should score more points in this benchmark.

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.

Unfortunately, there are no benchmark results for the Toshiba Tecra here either.
 

RAM – Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth




Sisoft Sandras Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.

Here we can see the Toshiba Tecra has slightly faster RAM, which is probably because the DDR3 technology the Acer aspire 3935 uses is not yet as effective as DDR2.

HDD





The hard drive in the Acer Aspire 3935 runs at 5400 RPM, making it rather slow.

GPU – 3DMark





The 3Dmark tests show the performance in DirectX 9, and paint a picture of the performance in newer games and applications. 3DMark 2005 and 2006 are based on DirectX 9 and show the performance under contemporary games and 3D applications.

As the computer is not really aimed at gamers, the Acer Aspire 3935 does not perform particularly well when it comes to graphics. It should not have much trouble running less demanding 3D games though.

Overall performance



The two computers are quite even when it comes to performance, but the Acer 3935 takes the lead with a few more points.

Gaming
The Acer Aspire 3935 is, as mentioned above, not aimed at the gaming segment, but it can still run some older games with its Intel GMA 4500MHD onboard GPU.

Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour



C&C Zero Hour is a slightly dated RTS game in which you have to assemble an army and go to war.

The game runs with an average FPS of 30-50, depending on the amount of units and buildings you have, at highest graphical settings with maximum resolution. That should be enough for most, but you can always lower graphical details a bit in order to make the game run more smoothly.

The computer is probably capable of running games like World of Warcraft and other games with the same sort of hardware requirements.

Conclusion
The Acer Aspire 3935 is a good computer which is particularly well-suited for business users and students. Among other things it offers a slightly different design in the form of a good-looking faded, dark brown colour along with a prominent keyboard, an indication of both class and style. The computer is easy to use thanks to the hardware and the user-friendly software, but there are some weak links.
The glare-type display makes it difficult to use outside at best, and the computer is very susceptible to fingerprints, particularly on the lid and display. That just doesn’t look good. However, if you look away from these more negative aspects the computer seems quite optimal and will probably catch quite a lot of attention with its modern look. All in all a good computer – particularly at the price – with a few negative aspects you can overcome. Still, you might want to look at alternatives, especially if you have strong preferences when it comes to performance versus price.

Pros:
Handsome design
Good keyboard
Good, user-friendly software from Acer
Decent battery life

Cons:
Annoying glare-type display
Touchpad buttons
Too few accessories
Pathetic sound

Battery: 4 / 5Graphics: 2 / 5Construction: 3 / 5Mobility: 3,5 / 5Software: 3,0 / 5Overall: 3,0 / 5