Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979: Budget Priced but Great Gaming
by Dustin Sklavos on April 2, 2010 7:39 PM ESTAcer advertises the six-cell, 46Wh battery included with the Aspire 5740 as being able to produce roughly three hours of running time on the battery and in our experience, if you did absolutely nothing but leave the machine idle, you could achieve it. Very light office loads (i.e. typing in Word) should also manage close to three hours. We tested the battery with the computer's power profile set to “Power Saver” in Windows 7 and the screen brightness measured as close to 100nits as we could get it. In the case of the 5740G, a brightness setting of 40% (three steps up from minimum or six steps down from maximum) gave us 110nits, but the next step down dropped us to 80nits so we stuck with the 40% setting.
AMD may have tuned the Mobility Radeon HD 5650 to sip power at idle, but it's still consuming power. Coupling it with one of the lowest-rated batteries we've had in a review unit results in battery life that may not be along the lines of the glorified UPS systems found in big desktop replacement gaming notebooks but still isn't winning any prizes. Only our (outdated) test machines with AMD processors produce consistently lower battery life results, and even then they're still in the same ballpark as the Aspire 5740. The 46Wh battery just can't keep up, and battery life under any kind of use cuts at least a half hour to a full hour off the unit's running time.
Of course, the GPU isn't the only culprit in these tests. NVIDIA's Optimus Technology allows dynamic switching between discrete and integrated graphics, and the N61Jv comes with a similar 6-cell 48Wh battery, as does the Dell Inspiron 1564. The N61Jv is a best-case result for current i5 processors, and it delivers 20% to 40% more battery life (average around 30%) than the 5740G. With an older and slower HD 4330, the Inspiron 15 also beats the 5740G, but only by 10%~30% (average ~20%). If you're looking for good battery life, short of stuffing a huge 94Wh battery into a laptop (i.e. the ThinkPad T410 results) we need a less power-hungry CPU. We have yet to test any Arrandale CULV processors, but it looks like that's what we'll really need to keep Core i5/i7 CPUs out of the red zone for battery life.
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Fastidious - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
You'd think they'd put a bigger battery in it at least. I never understand laptops that have shitty battery life since the whole point of them is to be mobile. Two hours is terrible for a new laptop.Alurian - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Agreed. What point is there in having a lighter laptop to carry around if it doesn't have the battery life for you to actually use it?Miggleness - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
That's where customers needs to balance things out. There's not gaming laptop under a grand that has decent battery life. Being mobile can mean you can easily lug the laptop anywhere, just be sure to plug it in. Can be a convenience to quite a number of people I know who game.vol7ron - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Mobile devices don't always mean being able to use it at the beach, or use it on a train, w/o needing to plug it in. Instead, what's it's come to mean is that you have the luxury of TAKING IT PLACES with the opportunity of plugging it in; whereas lugging a desktop (and monitor) around with you is more of an inconvenience.I do agree that battery life should be better, since it seems like it takes 2 hours to wade through spam and check mail, but that is why they make multiple batteries of various capacities. There are also different uses for laptops; gaming is one of the most power hungry things you can do on a laptop, if you're using a kickass video card with a decent performing screen and expect high quality response, then you're going to need more juice. Such a laptop would be expected to be plugged in. Having such a system in a laptop case enables you to play at school, or on vacation, as well as at home.
Hrel - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Seriously, I WANT to give them more money for a 1600x900 screen. And preferably a 7200rpm hard drive and a higher capacity battery wouldn't hurt but it's not really necessary.chrnochime - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Well Considering that envy 15 is known to be hot as heck and with equally low battery life(the former being much more unavoidable), I think users would prefer either going with optimus or cooler (pun intended) designs.chicagotechjunkie - Monday, April 5, 2010 - link
The gen 1 envy had some heat issues, but the newest generation doesn't get very hot at all. after a full suite of benchmarks, the GPU never broke 72C (that's with an overclock). The palm rest and underside got a little warm, but nothing that was abnormal imo.blackshard - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Why there are no AMD laptops in comparison? I mean, the only one is the gateway NV-52 with the old Athlon QL-64 and integrated graphics. Why there are no Turion II, for example? It would be nice to know the difference with higher priced notebooks.jasperjones - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Anandtech delivers the best laptop reviews imo.However, I am getting more and more disappointed that virtually every laptop reviewed here features dedicated graphics. Why limit yourself to serving laptop gamers and people needing mobile business graphics cards? I can't be the only reader that prefers integrated graphics on a laptop (I assume there might be fewer readers that prefer integrated graphics on a desktop).
mtoma - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Hello!There is something that really bothers me about Anandtech (otherwise my favorite tech site): why on Earth the laptop reviews ignore the long term reliability of the products? I am the co-owner of a computer repair-shop in Romania (in Europe, if you don't know where that country is).
And I can tell you first hand that 95% from all the laptops we repair are ACER!!!!! The motherboard often fails, there are serious flaws in the assembly quality, and in the medium and long run, these laptops suck!!!
When asked, the customers say that these laptops are cheap (they are the cheapest on the market, really) and they are confident on the reliability of a new product (which is, of course, a bad assumption). Here in Romania we have only one year warranty on the ACER machines, and of course, this tells us a lot about the quality of ACER laptops.
I believe, and I strongly suggest, that this respected site (and others who sell/buy those products) should care more about the medium and long term reliability of any tech product, because, often, the cheapest product is usually the worst buy decision. And, the cheapest laptop with a particular technical specification, has really NOT the best bang for the buck!
Suggestion: this site is very carreful about the realiability of the SSD drives, and in this regard his laptop reviews must be more aware.