Acer Aspire 5750G review

The Aspire 5750G is built for entertainment, and the 15.6-inch screen is a real highlight. Photos and movies look fantastic, with rich and vibrant colours and sharp contrast levels, and the screen tilts back to near horizontal - a good thing, as the vertical viewing angles are tight. A 1366 x 768-pixel resolution is typical of 15.6-inch displays, and images and text are reasonably sharp.

However, a glossy coating makes the display reflective in bright light, a massive pain when you're trying to work outside, or if you're sat beside a window. The Aspire 5750G is best used indoors, if you actually like to see what you're doing.

The Aspire 5750G also has built-in Dolby Advanced Audio speakers, which reach a surprisingly loud maximum volume. You won't risk bursting your eardrums, but it's better than the usual pitiful effort from laptops. Sound is crisp at all times, although a lack of bass means you'll want an external pair of speakers to get the most from your music and flicks.

If your media collection is huge, you'll be glad to hear there's 640GB of storage crammed into the Aspire 5750G. That's enough space for around a thousand full-length standard def movies, or hundreds of thousands of photos. You also get a 5-in-1 memory card reader, to expand storage space or access your media direct from portable devices.

As with most modern laptops, you have 802.11 wireless N support for hooking up to Wi-Fi networks, and Gigabit Ethernet if you prefer cables. VGA and HDMI connections are available for attaching external monitors, and a sharp integrated webcam proves good for Skype chats, with minimal motion blur and excellent auto focus.

On test
Battery: 313 mins
MobileMark 2007: 256
3Dmark 2003: 19855

Intel's second generation Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, collectively dubbed 'Sandy Bridge', offer the best performance of any chips we've tested. The Aspire 5750G uses a Core i7 2630QM chip running at 2GHz, with 4GB of DDR3 memory.

It was no surprise to see our most intensive design suites running at full pelt, even alongside dozens of other applications. Our MobileMark 2007 score of 256 is typical of Intel's powerful CPUs, although some other Core i7 Sandy Bridge machines such as the MacBook Pro (scoring 307) and Sony's VAIO VPC-SB1V9E (283) gathered higher scores. Still, based on this level of performance, the majority of users won't need to replace the Aspire 5750G for years to come.

Multimedia performance is also excellent, with a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 540M on board for rendering graphics. We ran recent games such as Need For Speed Shift 2 on high detail at an impressive frame rate, and the Aspire 5750G performed perfectly when editing video.

The 3DMark 2003 score of 19855 is impressive given the laptop's price, almost doubling the score of rivals such as the Packard Bell EasyNote TS13 and the Medion Akoya E6221. Graphical performance is comparable to the Dell XPS 17 and Sony VAIO VPCF21Z1E/BI, both of which also feature Nvidia GPUs.

Nvidia's Optimus technology, which automatically deactivates the GeForce card when it's not needed, means an extended battery life for the Acer Aspire 5750G. We worked for over five hours with the laptop unplugged, an excellent effort considering the performance. Only a few Core i7 laptops such as the Dell XPS 17 offer longer battery life.