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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
My Laptop
By Will.i.am
This is a great laptop, with lighting fast speed while doing pretty much anything, cool little gadgets like a 3.0 usb port, wi-di, and power off charging which I utilize a lot, very convenience little thing in my opinion. I did my research before finally deciding on this laptop, took me 3 months to finally decide on this particular Acer Timelinex. I enjoy the 14'' LED HD display, 15.4'' is just too big now a days. Movies and videos look great, the speakers are top notch as I am a little sound freak and it sounds great. It can run games like Dead Space 2 on the highest settings with no lag, I upgraded the ram to 8 GB. I'm just gonna keep it simple and sweet, this Acer is lighting fast in pretty all aspects you can find in a computer, the cobalt blue looks and feels great, and it easily transportable and light weight as it weighs less than 4 or 5 pounds. Pretty much it all just boils down to this, you CANNOT find a laptop, especially a 14'' laptop with specs like this one for such a great price. And oh yeah, it has a 9-10 hour battery life.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Bargain powerhouse. Sold my MBP13, added Blu Ray, SSD, 8GB
By JAmazon
This is the successor to the old model, AS4830TG-6450, which is what I actually have, but the only changes made were a tiny bit faster CPU and smaller hard drive (probably due to Japan Tsunami). Not many laptops that are 1" thin with a 14" form factor and cost ~$700 have a Sandy Bridge CPU, dedicated Geforce GT 540M 1GB graphics card, optical drive and real 8-10 hour battery life (NOTE: Battery is non-removable). You also get one USB 3.0 port, an SD card reader, an HDMI and a VGA port.SPEAKERS:Although I don't like that the speakers are on the bottom, they are okay. They have greater clarity and spaciousness than the MacBook Pro 13, but the Mac had slightly better bass and had a much fuller sound. The Dolby control panel has a lot of adjustments and enhancements.SCREEN:The 1366x768 screen is higher in resolution, but a step down from the Mac, as it's not quite as sharp and viewing angles not as forgiving, but it is still LED backlit. Sometimes it's like looking at a film negative. The glossy screen is just as annoying as my Mac's, but no one is making matte screens anymore. You can open the lid with one finger slowly, but near the top, the keyboard starts to lift.KEYBOARD/TOUCHPAD:Like most laptops, you annoyingly need two hands to adjust volume and LCD brightness, one to press the Fn key and another to hit the arrow keys that are way on the other side. I really miss the illuminated keyboard of the Mac, but at this price point, I can't be too hard on the Acer. Unlike the Mac, the Acer will not just wake from sleep when you open the screen, i.e. you'll have to press a key to wake it. One big downside is that I snagged the "E" key and ripped it right off, but luckily it snapped back in.The upside to a Windows-centric keyboard versus Win7 on a Mac is that you get a proper Backspace key, Print Screen, Pg Up/Down, a CTRL key on the right side and I'm glad the left CTRL is on the far bottom left, outside of the Fn key, how it should be. The touchpad, while not as responsive as the Mac's glass trackpad, is probably as good as it gets for a non-mac. The scrolling area on the right side of the touchpad is pretty snappy to use, but two-finger scrolling is not very useful to me as there is a noticeable delay.NETWORKING:The wireless on this is also very good and I am able to connect at 300Mbps at work and it has excellent range, even extending to my garage which my Mac could barely reach. If you can't see the Bluetooth options, you have to press Fn+F3 and turn it on first. I haven't tried the WiDi, but it's nice to know it has it. There is a SIM card slot, but I don't think there's any hardware in there for US models. Of course the LAN port is gigabit capable.PORTS:The USB ports will all charge your phone even while the laptop is sleeping or shutdown, although I noticed that the USB 3.0 port power is interrupted for a second if you close the lid to put it to sleep. The two USB 2.0 ports don't do this. The HDMI 1.4a port supports 7.1 digital audio and 120Hz 3D video via both the Intel HD3000 and the nVidia GT540M. The VGA port is useful if you have to make a presentation with an old projector that only has VGA. The spring loaded SD card slot needed a driver update the driver to recognize my 32GB SDHC card.GAMING:I installed Starcraft 2 and at the native resolution 1366x768, I'm able to set most things to high (40-60fps). With Saint's Row The Third, I could run everything on high at a very smooth 30-40fps, however, the bloom, HDR and other advanced effects were too much for the GT 540M and things would drop to about 15fps. Left 4 Dead on max, liquid smooth. The problem is trying to get games to use the Nvidia card instead of the Intel integrated graphics so you have to force it in the Nvidia control panel. While on batteries, you can run games with the nVidia GT540M but you have to turn off PowerSmart with the "P" button on the right. Then games configured to run with the 540M will do so. Gaming battery life is about 1:45. If frame rates drop dramatically, a quick ALT-TAB sometimes confirms that the CPU has reached 88C and has throttled to 1.1GHz even on a hard desk surface. I've found that if you raise the area under the laptop where intake vent is, you can keep things a little cooler, ~82C and it won't throttle.UPGRADES:I upgraded to a 160GB Intel Solid State Drive (SSD) and 8GB of RAM and the install was incredibly easy. Just remove one screw and slide the cover down (it's easiest to push on the speaker grilles to slide it out). With the SSD, programs open instantaneously and Windows boots in about 15 seconds (after BIOS screen). In addition to the huge improvement in system response and shock-resistance, the SSD makes the laptop dead silent and vibration free as the fan rarely turns on.The Lenovo branded Panasonic UJ-242 9.5mm slim Blu-Ray writer is a perfect drop in replacement for the stock Matshita UJ8A2 and will even accept the original Acer drive's faceplate. Windows recognized it right away as a Matshita BD-RE UJ242. This drive can write dual layer Blu-Ray discs at 2X and practically every other format under the sun and basically completes the feature-set. To replace the drive, simply remove one screw under the laptop that holds the drive in, and it just slides out! You can use a paper clip to eject the drive tray and pull the whole unit out. Then transfer the "L" bracket over. Easy as pie.Lastly, I added a faux carbon fiber Protective Decal Skin skins Sticker for Acer TimelineX AS4830T 14 inch screen case cover AS4830T-Ltop2PS-12 (I posted pics of mine).------------------------------PROS:- Fast Sandy Bridge CPU- Dedicated GT 540M GPU, 1GB DDR3- Insane 10 hour battery life, not sure how to force nVidia chip to engage while on battery to test gaming life.- Great wireless support- Compact, InexpensiveCONS:- No backlit keyboard- One of my keys popped off when I snagged it somehow, not cool- Screen could be of higher quality/resolution/viewing angles- Speakers could have fuller sound and location is not the best- Overall fit and finish is not the greatestWindows Experience Index:CPU: 7.0 <-- the i5-2450 will probably be higher than my i5-2430RAM: 7.4Graphics(Aero): 5.7 <-- Updated nVidia driver upped this from 4.4Gaming Graphics: 6.7Primary Hard Disk: 7.7 <-- SSD wooIdle CPU Temp: 44CIdle GPU Temp: 38CMax Load CPU Temp: 88C <-- can run really hot on SC2 and throttle down to 1.1GHz occasionally, not often.Max Load GPU Temp: 72C
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
So far so good - But need more time to rate better - EDIT: Had more time.
By Wardorican
2013 EDIT: I've had it for over a year now and have not had a problem yet. No Hard drive crash like others have had. I use it every day.EDIT: New stuff at bottom...I purchased this laptop a few days ago and received it on Saturday, so being that today is Tuesday, I haven't had a lot of time to do a thorough review.I ran 3DMark 11 and 7. It didn't seem to run well on 3D Mark 11, but I confess, I didn't really look to see if that one was appropriate. I think it got around a 2300 on 3DMark7. Also, not sure how well the graphics switching is working, since I haven't been able to mess with the setting. I know you can set it to always be on.I haven't installed any of my PC games on it yet, so I'll test more of that later. Also, I've only streamed a little content, but have had no issues. Based on how this thing is spec'ed out, I don't for see any issues with HD streaming or processor heavy tasks, since this is by far the strong suit of this computer. Windows experience gives it a 7 for processor.Installing software has been incredibly fast due to the i5 processor. I will eventually upgrade to 8GB of memory, but the 4GB is doing just fine for now.Two big things I noticed and I'm glad I read some reviews on the Timeline X series are:1. The construction of the case is very solid. I love the feel of it. The bottom plastic is hard and thick enough to not flex and the metal just feels good. You will get fingerprints on the lid (lens cleaner works like a charm on the case), but no big deal.2. I was streaming Youtube videos in bed with it and it never got warm on my lap. My old Gateway 6860-FX had major over heating issues (the reason why I had to get a new laptop, it died!!), and this one barely gets warm. I only noticed it got a bit warm when running 3DMark11, but I use a cooling fan station, so it's usually not an issue. I was worried a small case would have over-heating issues, but Acer seems to have come up with a good design.It's not a secret the battery life is phenomenal. I haven't taken it off the powercord for long enough to really test it, but I've run it for over an hour on battery and the battery meter barely moved. My old Gateway would be over half dead by then.Some people don't like the Chiclet keyboard, but I like it a lot so far. It has a great feel to it. And when I don't feel like using it, I use a wireless keyboard at home. I like having a numberpad, and this laptop doesn't have one, so I need to use my wireless keyboard. The shift button on the left side is a bit smaller, but no so small that it's an issue with me typing.If I were to give it a knock, I'd say that I prefer the CD player and Power cord to be on the left side, instead of the right, because it interferes with where I would use my wireless mouse of if I had a pad of paper (right handed). I just like the right side pretty clear.I don't have any new games to test it on, but I will probably put The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II in first to do a test with the game set to max graphics settings. I hope to update this in a week or so.UPDATE:Ok, now that it has been a couple weeks I can add a bit more. I have run The Sims 3 and the Battle for Middle Earth II with no problems. I didn't even set up anything special. I'm pretty sure those games would run on the Intel Graphics well enough.Then I tried to run Mass Effect 2 and the demo for 3 and had some issues.. i.e. ME2 would crash every time I went into menu. However, I think I have them figured out. Basically I was having issues with the switchable graphics NOT switching. It was a big headache. I think it has to do with being on Battery power. When I'm plugged in, it seems to work. When a software scans my system it doesn't reliably recognize my GeForce 540m. I think that's also why 3DMark11 has issues, because the Sandy Bridge CPU is DirectX10, while the 540m is DirectX11.So, I messed around with the global settings to ensure that EVERYTHING is run on the 540m, and downloaded that new driver from Nvidia. Since then, I have been running ME2 with no issues at all. I want to try max settings to see how well it runs. I just finished the demo for ME3 and it ran smoothly.What I don't know is if I put it on Battery if I can run those games or not. However, when I'm gaming I'm usually plugged in. I just hope I got through all the kinks with the switchable graphics. So, I'm sticking with 4 stars.Oh, and the laptop gets a little hot when gaming, but I use a cooling station with a big fan to mitigate that. Otherwise, when just doing normal stuff, it runs really cool.
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Weak contender
Nightmare
