acer-aspire-8942g1The Acer Aspire Laptops are known for providing the best configuration for the money spent. New Acer Aspire 8940G is not a laptop with netbookish configuration nor it has the pricing near it. It is a full sized desktop replacement packing a 18.4 inch display, Core i7 processor, a dedicated graphics card and Blu Ray Drive. The price less than $1500 makes it the most affordable Core i7 laptop in the market. But does it have any serious con that can be considered a deal breaker? We have made a review to find the answer.

Design

The Acer Aspire 8940 has nothing new in its design on the outside and has very common look and feel like the acer aspire one laptops. Though it is a big sized 18 inch notebook, it feels like a smaller 15 inch notebook because of its no frill design. But with big size comes big responsibility of making it sturdy enough so that it does not have too much flex under pressure. The notebook serves well under the responsibility and we don’t have any serious complain against its build quality but making the structure takes toll on its weight factor. The weight of over 9 pounds makes it impossible to carry outdoors and you won’t like it moving to and fro either.

Performance

The system comes with a Intel Core i7 720 QM processor running at 1.6 GHz. It has 1333 MHz FSB and 6MB cache memory. Two 2GB DDR3 memory modules add the the nifty speed and performance of the machine. The dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics with 1GB dedicated GDDR3 memory can run all the latest 3D games but don’t expect frame rates like those in gaming desktop computers and you’ll do fine. Overall, the machine is a powerful beast to meet all your needs under one roof.
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Display

The 18.4 inch WUXGA FHD LCD display showing 1920×1080 pixels is the main asset of this notebook. The screen is an all glass style display with a protective layer covering the display. The color reproduction of the display is very good and contrasts are also superb. The brightness levels are also very good to be used in a brightly lit room although there is a problem of glare in bright lighting. Both vertical and horizontal viewing angles are also good enough.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a full sized one with and was comfortable to type on. The backlight feature is a real add on and is very useful to operate the laptop in dark.
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TouchPad

The touchpad of the laptop has very good response and is very large compared to most other laptops available in the market. The buttons are average though, with a very shallow travel.

Touch Control Keys

There are touch sensitive control keys on the left and right side of the laptop. The left side has keys for WiFi, Bluetooth and Acer BackUp Manager. On the right side, there are Media Center Button including Hold, Skip, Play/Pause, Stop and Fast Forward Controls. There is also a switch to enable or disable touch sensitive buttons. The volume control is a metal rotating dial with more precision than the touch sensitive slider.
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Ports

The Acer Aspire 8940G has a SDHC Card Slot in the front, AC Power, LAN, VGA, Display Port, HDMI, eSATA/USB Combo, an USB, FireWire, Audio Jacks and Express Card Slot 54 on the right. The Blu Ray Drive, two more USB and a Kensington Lock is on the right side. There are every port that you can expect from a laptop and the space on its sides are very well utilized for them.

Audio

The laptop has a 5.1 Cinematic Surround Sound System having quality which is hard to find in laptops these days. It has five speakers including a Tuba CineBass Booster for that thump you need in the sound. The audio quality is simply a leap forward for laptops even in its price range.
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Battery Life

The system comes with a 8 cell 4800 mAh Lithium Battery but the Core i7 Processor or the dedicated graphics card is a real sucker of the battery life. The system can run for 4 hours with very low use and screen brightness dimmed down. In normal heavy to moderate usage, expect the system to run for more than two hours which is enough because you are not expected to use it outside your home too often.

Pros

  • Powerful Processor and Graphics
  • Comfortable BackLit Keyboard
  • Huge and responsive Synaptics TouchPad
  • Good Sized display with above average display quality

Cons

  • Too much Heavy

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Conclusion

If you don’t want to move out with your laptop too often and want a performer within your budget that can play the latest games, there aren’t too many laptops that you can find. Acer Aspire 8940G is recommended to you if weight is not a problem to you.