Mobile Buyers' Guide: 14" and Larger Notebooks and DTRs
by Dustin Sklavos on June 30, 2010 12:53 AM ESTBudget Performance Notebook: Acer Aspire 7551G-5821
Individuals looking to get as much performance as they can for as little money as they can spend would do well to check out many of Acre's larger notebooks. Individuals looking to get four authoritative cores worth of performance for little money are likely to find themselves staring down the Acer Aspire AS7551G-5821.
While $899 is on the higher end of the word “budget,” only Toshiba produces a Core i7 quad-core notebook for the same price; every other vendor is offering dual-core or the odd tri-core machines. You can configure Dell and HP machines with similar specifications, but you'll be spending up a bit. The AS7551G-5821 (such catchy names on these Acer notebooks!) sports an AMD Phenom II N930 running four cores at 2 GHz. Acer partners this processor with 4GB of DDR3 and a Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB of DDR3 video memory. The benefit of the meaty 17.3” form factor comes in a screen with a 1600x900 resolution, certainly adequate for doing serious image or video work.
Like the K42 and many other notebooks today, though, this Acer does eschew the FireWire and ExpressCard ports people with older kit (like yours truly) may need. Another downside of going the Acer route is having to use...the Acer keyboard. This is going to come down to a matter of taste, but even though reception of the keyboard is mixed Acer continues to use it on every notebook they produce. Those of you with a sense of history will remember the curved keyboards that were a trademark of Acer notebooks in years past; at some point hopefully their designers will just put a regular keyboard on their notebooks and call it a day. But if you don't have qualms with the keyboard (and you can always check it out at retail), it will be difficult to find anything with this much oomph for a better price.
Budget Performance Runner Up: Toshiba A505-S6035
Odds are good the Intel Core i7-720QM will still beat the pants off the AMD Phenom II N930, so if you're willing to go for a slightly smaller notebook (with reduced screen resolution) for roughly the same price, Toshiba has you covered. We think the Acer is a more attractive notebook, and the Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is more desirable than the last-gen GeForce GT 330M in Toshiba's notebook. Still, if you're looking for as much processor power as you can cram into a budget, the Core i7-720QM is the way to go, and Toshiba's A505 offering includes the FireWire and ExpressCard ports Acer's doesn't.
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hko45 - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
So this has boiled down to Nvidia vs ATI.My decision tree: Need multiple monitors at home site coming off of identical ports. As far as I could tell, Dell's E-Port Plus is the only reasonably priced docking station that does this. This leaves me with Latitude or Precision laptops. Having had PhotoShop complain about insufficient RAM when I tried to stitch together five large NEF images (and knowing that PP will use all the RAM you will give it), the M6500 seemed to be the best choice. While its not clear that PP takes full advantage of multiple cores (now) like Premiere does, a future-proofed i7 quad processor fits in quite nicely. So my choice is the M6500, and it only offers FX Quadro cards. As for PP only using OpenGL, I'm willing to bet that Premiere's use of CUDA will trickle down to other members of the Creative Suite--certainly within the three year time frame I'm using to drive my purchase decisions, if not by CS6.
aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
You forgot to mention that the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG 14" laptop is available in the US right now. It's one of the most anticipated laptops besides the Envy 14. A great mix between performance and battery life.The one out right now has a Core i3 350M, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650, 4GB DDR3, 320GB harddrive, optical drive, etc.
Black brushed aluminium lid, 6-8 hours of battery life, less than 1" thin, weighs 4.65 pounds & it has switchable graphics (HD 5650 + Intel GMA).
All this for just the price of $799.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results....
geek4life!! - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I went to my local Best Buy today to look at the 13.3 inch screen sizes as I was thinking about the Asus U30Jc but that screen is too small for me. I found the 14 inch to be a great balance between size and portability. With that said I look forward to more reviews and hopefully that refresh will arrive for the back to school season.aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
You should look at the Asus UL80JC at Best Buy. It's a 14" laptop and it costs only $699. Core i3 & switchable graphics.aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I meant UL80J. I was confusing the name with the U30JCgeek4life!! - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Thanks I will definitely check it out!!!!!!!!!!!!numberoneoppa - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Can somebody please tell me why 14" thinkpads were not included in this article? They are by far the most iconic 14" laptop.dumpsterj - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
I actually placed an order for an alienware m11x just a couple days ago (interest free for a year) . My asus F3SV has been a great companion for almost 3 or 4 years now but its 8600gs is having a hard time with bad company 2. I decided to replace both my netbook and laptop with one and the m11x seems to fit the bill. Cant wait to get it (07/15)Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Can you guys do some testing of notebook IGP performance with single and dual channel memory configurations? Also, could you shed some light on these 3GB AMD configurations. (Do they run in dual channel mode?)JarredWalton - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
The last AMD laptop we looked at with 3GB (Acer Ferrari One) did not run in dual-channel, but that was a Congo platform. Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose) I don't have any 1GB SO-DIMMs around anymore, and all the laptops pretty much come with 4GB now. It would be interesting to see if the new Danube/Nile platforms with DDR3 are able to do dual-channel even with uneven memory sizes, though. Intel can do that but AMD hasn't allowed it for whatever reason. I don't think the difference will be more than 5~10% but without testing, who knows for sure?