Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4830TG-6808 14-inch Laptop (Cobalt Blue)

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.

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).

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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, Inexpensive

CONS:

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 greatest

Windows Experience Index:

CPU: 7.0

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