With impressive and sturdy build quality, complemented by decent ergonomics and a great keypad, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T justifies the lifestyle looks. However, its lacklustre gaming performance and failure to pass the critical High-Definition video encoding test in PC Mark Vantage benchmarking, leaves a lot to be desired. It still makes a decent buy at Rs. 35,999, if you can overlook its shortcomings.
The Aspire 4820T incorporates special function keys at the top of the keypad, which are marked with light blue colour-coded icons. Also, the multimedia, volume control and brightness control keys are marked in blue. The built-in speakers are located at the top of the keyboard and make use of Dolby Home Theatre system technology. The keypad keys are flat and isolated from each other by a narrow gap, but this is not an isolated keypad. Rather, Acer chooses to call this a floating keypad. Whatever the name and nomenclature might be, this type of keypad provides optimal navigation space to your fingers and enable consistent tactile feedback to register the inputs accurately. Also, the soft touch keys allow you to type without much stress to your fingers. However, the closely spaced arrow keys seemed to be a hindrance for gaming, particularly the racing genre, where accuracy and intuitiveness matters more. The wide and seamless touch-pad is a relief from all the cramped touch-pads we’ve encountered. However, the hard touch-pad mouse buttons are not too easy on your fingers. The touch-pad being overly sensitive and this makes it inaccurate, an annoyance that is especially unsuitable for FPS gaming or cursor-precision oriented tasks. Although, the most interesting feature is the multi-touch gesture based zoom-in and zoom-out in Windows 7.
The Aspire 4820T exhibits minimal flex at the hinges, while closing or opening the lid. The LCD screen is glossy, with the viewing angle best suited to right angles for optimum picture clarity. A little tilt of the display hinge either ways, leads to blurry and out of focus fonts and images. The display supports a native resolution of 1366 x 768.
The Acer Aspire 4820T ships with one of each VGA port, HDMI port, ethernet port, USB port, microphone port and a headphone port on the left side. It also incorporates three USB ports and a tray-loading, multi-speed DVD writer on the right side. There is also a microSD card tray-loading slot, just adjacent to the palm-rest towards the left of the LED indicators and an integrated webcam at the top-centre of the screen bezel.
Read on to know the performance, conclusion, specifications, ratings and contact details in the next page…
Performance
The Acer Aspire 4820T garnered average scores across PC Mark Vantage. In Sisoft Sandra 2010 Pro and 3D Mark 2006 tests. However, the big disappointment was its failure to complete the TV and Movies score test. We attempted three trials and it failed the test on all three occasions. It yielded good results in the CPU and battery-life test with scores of 2548 points and 427 minutes respectively. We witnessed modest performance across real world tests, while the results were very ordinary in the passmark wireless signal strength with a score of 51%. The graphics performance during the Far Cry 2 game benchmarking, was mediocre to say the least with an average of 11.07fps (frames per second). The game resolution was set to a modest 1024 x 768 with medium details, while Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering were turned off. The lack of a dedicated graphics card was very much felt, and this is not suitable for gamers.
Conclusion
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T is a sleek and trendy lifestyle product, that adheres to your basic home and office everyday use. With impressive and sturdy build quality, complemented by sound ergonomics, it justifies the lifestyle tag. However, its lacklustre gaming performance and failure to complete the critical HD video encoding test in PC Mark Vantage benchmarking, leaves a lot to be desired. We could have aspired for more from a carefully designed lifestyle product, if it shipped with a dedicated graphics card and handled the HD encoding tests successfully. In spite of the obvious shortcomings, it still makes a decent buy at Rs. 35,999. However, we feel that if you are an avid gamer, you should give a look at Asus U43JC, which is a decent performer and fits the bill for casual gaming.
Specifications:
Processor: Intel Core i3-370M 2.4GHz; Memory: 2GB DDR3 RAM (667MHz); Chipset: Intel HM55 Express; Graphics chipset: Intel GMA HD; Hard drive: 500GB; Display: 14-inch LED backlit; Bundled Operating System: Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit; Weight: 2.07Kg.
| Brand | Acer |
| Model | Aspire 4820T |
| Features | |
| Component Specifications | |
| Processor Model No | Intel Core i3 -370M |
| Processor Speed (MHz) | 2400 |
| RAM (MB) | 2048 |
| RAM Type | DDR3 |
| Memory Speed (MHz) | 667 |
| Chipset | Intel HM55 Express |
| Graphics Solution | Intel GMA HD |
| Dedicated Video Memory (Y / N) | N |
| Dedicated Video Memory Size (in MB) | NA |
| Audio Chipset | Realtek High Definition Audio |
| HDD Size (GB) | 500 |
| Optical Drive Type / Speed | DVD Multi-speed |
| Bundled OS | Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit |
| Characteristics | |
| Screen Size (Inches) | 14-inch |
| Type of LCD | LED backlit |
| Screen Resolution (Native) | 1366 x 768 |
| Weight (Kg) | 2.07 |
| No of Ports (USB / FireWire) | 4 / None |
| Connectivity (LAN / Bluetooth / WiFi) | Y/Y/Y |
| Memory Card Reader (Y/N) | Y |
| Type of Memory Cards Supported | SD,MS,MS-Pro |
| Inbuilt Webcam (Y/N) | Y |
| Build (So 10) | |
| Body | 7.5 |
| Keypad | 7 |
| Lid, movables | 6 |
| Ergonomics | |
| Keypad Tactile Feedback (So 10) | 7.5 |
| Key Layout & Usability (So 10) | 7 |
| Shortcut Keys/Switches (So 10) | 6 |
| Biometrics Login (Y/N) | N |
| WiFi On/Off Switch or Button (Y/N) | Y |
| Dedicated Bluetooth On/Off Switch or Button (Y/N) | N |
| Dedicated TouchPad On/Off Switch or Button (Y/N) | Y |
| Performance | |
| Synthetic Scores | |
| PC Mark Vantage | |
| TV & Movies Score | Failed |
| Gaming Score | 2990 |
| Music Score | 4787 |
| Memory Score | 2994 |
| Productivity Score | 4907 |
| Communications Score | 4298 |
| HDD | 3324 |
| Overall Score | 5157 |
| SiSoft Sandra 2010 Pro | |
| CPU Arithmetic (Dhrystone ALU/Whetstone iSSE3) | 35.22GIPS / 24.88GFLOPS |
| CPU Multi-Media (Integer x16 iSSE3/Floating x8 iSSE2) | 63.73MPixel/s / 48.24MPixel/s |
| HDD Index (MB/s) | 78.87 |
| Random Access Time | 6.24ms |
| Memory bandwidth (Integer/floating) | 6.8GB/s / 6.8GB/s |
| 3D Mark 2006 | |
| CPU Score | 2548 |
| Overall Score | 1426 |
| Maxon CineBench R11.5 (CPU Score) | 1.99 |
| Screen Brightness (Spyder3Elite, cd/m^2) | NA |
| Contrast Ratio (Spyder3Elite) | NA |
| Display Mate Tests | |
| Colour Accuracy Test (Avg) (So 10) | NA |
| Battery Life Test (Minutes) | 427 |
| WiFi Signal Strength Test (Zone 1) | High |
| WiFi Signal Strength Test (Zone 2) | Medium |
| Real World Tests | |
| Speaker Quality (So 10) | 5.5 |
| HD Movie Viewing (So 10) | 6 |
| DivX Encode 7.0 (.VOB to .Divx) | NA |
| WinRAR 3.9 (Compression / Decompression) (KB/s) | 1499 |
| File transfer Test (4 GB test file-sequential) (Sec) | 147.95 |
| File transfer Test (4 GB test file-assorted) (Sec) | 202.96 |
| PassMark Wireless Mon 3.0 Signal Strength | 51.00% |
| PassMark Wireless Mon 3.0 bandwidth | 99Mb/s |
| WiFi Sequential transfer test (MBps) | NA |
| WiFi Assorted transfer test (MBps) | NA |
| Doom 3 (fps) (600×480, medium detail) | NA |
| Farcry 2(fps) (1024×768, medium detail) with DirectX 9.0 | 11.07(Avg) |
| Warranty (Years) | 1 year Global warranty |
| Price (Rupees) | Rs. 35,999 |
Ratings:
Features: 6.5
Performance: 5.5
Build Quality: 7
Value for money: 6
Overall: 6
Contact: Acer India Pvt. Ltd.
Phone: 91-11-40568000
E-mail: NA
Website: http://www.acer.com/
Price: Rs. 35,999