Acer Aspire 7551-7422 17.3" Quad Core 2.2GHz 4GB 500GB

This laptop is absolutely amazing! I've actually come to love Acer laptops because they are reliable and affordable. I purchased this Acer Aspire 7551-7422 to upgrade from my Acer Aspire AS7736Z-4088. I also wrote a review on that one as well. This particular model is slightly different but similar in specs to the Acer AS7741G-6426 that has the 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5-480M dual-core processor which makes it more expensive. It also has a 640 GB SATA hard drive (5400 RPM)and this Acer model has 500 GB SATA hard drive with a 2.2GHz Quad Core processor (AMD Phenom II X4 N970).

I purchased this particular model at Walmart for $478.00 which I thought was a great deal. I have this exact model. It's black with a mesh like top so you don't have to worry about all those nasty little finger prints! This computer is blazing fast. It even takes less than 30 seconds to boot up. My previous Acer laptop made a little bit more noise compared to this model. This particular model is fairly quiet. You can barely hear it running. I especially love the bright 17.3 screen. It's absolutely beautiful! There is also a full numeric keypad and the keyboard has plenty of space. The keys are a nice size and have a spring like feel to them when pressed. The touchpad also has the multi-gesture feature where you can pinch and zoom ect. I don't particular like this feature. I bought a new wireless mouse to use with the laptop. I have never really liked the touchpad on a laptop. I prefer to use multi-gestures on my iPad. I also wanted to say that I was a bit surprised by how light the laptop is. I expected it to be much heavier. Acer did a really nice job with the build. It's a beautiful laptop at an affordable price. You are getting a lot for the price. If you are on a budget and don't want to spend the extra $100-$200 on Intel processor, I would definitely go with this option.

The only cons that I've noticed so far was that I only got just over 3 hours in battery life. There is also no Bluetooth which is a little disappointing. I got over it fairly quickly though. I don't use Bluetooth that often on my laptop. I also felt that the speakers were a little weak. If sound quality is very important to you then I would invest in some good quality speakers if you're going to go with this laptop. The sound quality isn't terrible but it could definitely be a lot better. Overall I'm happy with my purchase and feel like I got a lot of bang for my buck! I have included the technical specifications below in order to present them to you a little better.

-AMD Phenom II X4 Quad-Core N970 processor 2.2GHz

-2MB L2 Cache 4GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory (expandable to 8GB) Gives you the power to handle most power hungry applications and tons of multimedia work

-500GB SATA hard drive Store 333,000 photos, 142,000 songs or 263 hours of HD video and more

-8x SuperMulti DVD Double-Layer Drive Watch movies, and read and write CDs and DVDs in multiple formats

-10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet

-802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with the 802.11b/g/n connection built into your PC

-17.3" HD+ widescreen CineCrystal display

-ATI Radeon HD 4250 Graphics with 256MB of dedicated video memory and support for Microsoft DirectX 10.1

Additional Features:

-Built-in 1.3 megapixel HD webcam

-5-in-1 memory card reader

-3 x USB 2.0 ports

-1 x VGA port

1 x headphone/speaker/line-out jack

-1 x microphone-in jack

-1 x RJ-45 Ethernet port

-1 x line-in jack

-1 x HDMI port

-1 x DC-in jack

-6-cell lithium-ion battery, up to 3 hours battery life Software

-Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition

-Microsoft Office Starter 2010: Includes reduced functionality versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with advertising. PowerPoint or Outlook are NOT included.

-McAfee Internet Security Suite Trial

Backup and Restore options built into Windows allows you to create safety copies of your most important personal files, so you're always prepared for the worst

I use the laptop for everything, including my photography, post processing, and office work. It's quick and I haven't had any problems with it at all. The only reason I don't give it five stars is that the battery life is short. I can only work about 2 hours before I have to recharge it. I'm sure that has to do with the fact that it has a big screen and the display eats power. Still, I think they could have done better. I'm going to have to get an accessory battery charger for taking the laptop on photo shoots. I had hoped that wouldn't be necessary. Otherwise, this thing is screaming fast for my purposes. The keyboard is comfortable to use as well.

Buy Acer Aspire 7551-7422 17.3" Quad Core 2.2GHz 4GB 500GB Now

This was the cheapest by far amongst the various options for a Phenom Quad core 2.2 GHz and 17" or bigger screen.

To give an idea: Frys was selling a refurbished laptop with Phenom with dual core for 150 dollars more and WalMart had the same one for around 80 dollars more.

The look and feel was great it looked and felt new. The downside was that the laptop came with a lot key drivers missing starting with the wireless and LAN drivers. though there was a page with the information that buyers might have to download LAN and wireless drivers it could have been more comprehensive. The ACER site has both Broadcom and Atheros as options for the same model and it was not clear as to which one needed to be downloaded.

What they did not mention in their FAQ was that both the screen/display drivers, card reader drivers and audio drivers were not the recommended drivers but default ones from Windows. The Acer program for the web cam still does not work though the web cam works in skype and msn. There is also no firewire port.

To be fair, Tech Turn the seller did have a help number to call but they work Monday to Friday and since I received it on Friday evening it was not much use to me.

Once I got all the drivers set up a solid three hours of trial and error and downloading and installing straightforward stuff though no need to be an expert it works well and I am satisfied enough with the price / value of money equation to happily give 4 stars. (it is a solid 17.3" LED screen with a great quad core chip). TechTurn also had amazing delivery I had super saver delivery in 4 days.

Overall looks like a great Amazon purchase fingers crossed it is two weeks old as I write this review.

Read Best Reviews of Acer Aspire 7551-7422 17.3" Quad Core 2.2GHz 4GB 500GB Here

Wouldn't boot, I got a message that said something like "check cable! No boot disk detected. Insert boot disk and press any key"

Please comment if you have a solution. I have emailed seller and will update review ASAP if they provide solution.

Update: 4-21-13 After about a month of back-and-forth emailing, I was finally shipped a new drive. Now it works, but I find it it's not the laptop featured. It's an Acer 7560 and a 1.4 Ghz processor. Confused :(

Have changed to 2 stars because at least I have a functioning laptop.

Want Acer Aspire 7551-7422 17.3" Quad Core 2.2GHz 4GB 500GB Discount?

PRO: AMD's FX Quad Core processor will definitely plow through your basic office tasks without hesitation. After a bit of adjustment, the keyboard works quite well under normal conditions, and the trackpad is better than most I've dealt with.

CON: Graphics is about average for student/home business use, unsuitable for gaming (no L3 cache, only 256 MB max memory, which is shared and set in the BIOS). 5400 RPM HDD is simply inappropriately slow for any use today. Out of the box you will spend hours doing security updates on Windows 7 (typical for anything out of Microsoft the last couple of decades), or you can spend about a half hour installing Ubuntu Linux and not have to deal with that mess, I did both do to the need of a few Linux programs I use regularly. There is no Bluetooth, something that I always thought to be standard on laptops the past few years (it created problems for me with several cameras that required it), but you can purchase the card separately and install it yourself if know how. Battery life is nowhere near half what was promised, from power-on to shutdown I got a maximum of 73 minutes (a lot was wasted in the boot-up process) under Windows 7 Pro, 98 minutes under Ubuntu Studio (Linux), far short of the 180 minutes promised, and this under very strict energy settings.

For business use, I can find no fault with this laptop, other than described above. Unfortunately, I purchased this laptop for entertainment, to keep my mind off the size of the needles being stuck into my spine. The slow hard drive, lack of L3 cache, and minimalist video memory combined to make playing any modern graphics-based games all but completely impossible. Without Bluetooth, I was also forced to work strictly offline with any video I captured, and the Acer could only communicate with my Blackberry via USB or WiFi. rather than the preferred (and to my mind much more secure) Bluetooth.

The only game I was able to get running was Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), a simulator I've been playing with for decades in various incarnations. While FSX works just fine on my old Dell Studio 1737 (Pentium T3400), the Acer FX simply can't handle FSX due to the absence of any L3 cache at all, and the minimalist 256 MB vRAM didn't help matters. Best frame rate under FSX recommended settings was 5 fps, just under 20 fps if I set all the display settings to absolute minimums (not very realistic at that point, more like an old arcade game).

The upside I liked was the ability to upgrade the installed Win 7 Home Premium to the Professional version, something I needed in order to run certain XP based 32 bit programs I still need (no replacements for them yet), a feature that never worked right under Vista. I also installed the Ubuntu Studio version of Linux, which deals with my cameras (when connected via USB) far better than Windows (any version).

And, as usual for Microsoft, right out of the box I spent a long time doing "updates" on their latest software, mostly security issues that hackers were exploiting long before Windows 7 hit the marketplace here in the US.

All in all, however, this Acer cost me half in 2012 what I paid for my old Dell Studio 1737 in early 2009, so I think I got an okay deal on this one. Still, one must wonder what the good folks who built this thing were thinking when the hobbled the graphics so badly by omitting L3 and half the needed memory, especially in today's very graphics intensive computing environment.

This computer is only suitable for basic student/home office functions that do not involve heavy graphics or unusually complex mathematical functions (even some Zynga games on Facebook fail to work well, go figure). Those with such needs, or who are interested in a gaming laptop (which is what I was told I was getting) should consider another laptop and/or manufacturer. Otherwise, not bad for what I paid.

EDIT to add more information...

The laptop gets very hot (220+ F) when room temperature is above 74 and doing anything that is graphics intensive, likely owing to the under-powered graphics built in. The GPU is definitely the source of the heat buildup, and I strongly recommend downloading a utility program to shut the computer down if the heat exceeds 225 F (if you want the laptop to last very long). As most already know, GPU's cannot be replaced on laptops.