Acer AMD Turion laptop no Intel Centrino killer

THE ACER Aspire 5002LM finally made it to my improvised office and so started the first European Turion review. Before going further, I would like to thank Pui Cheung from CCL Online who provided the INQUIRER with a working retail product unit. They are like hen's teeth or shark's toenails, that's for sure.

We won't linger too much on the AMD Turion as a CPU. GamePC has written an excellent article comparing it to the Pentium M. An image is worth a thousand words, Napoleon said. The CBI (Central Brain Idenfitier) identifies the AMD processor as a 1.6GHz Turion 64 ML30 with a voltage of 1.45v - thanks to the improved Lancaster core as well as the 90nm SOI process technology. After some hours of work, PC Wizard 2005, an excellent system freeware from the guys behind CPU-Z, reported that the processor's temperature had reached 51oc while the hard disk's peaked at 33oc, both well above room temperature.

Apart from the laptop and the usual Windows XP Home and Works 7.0 CD that you will get, you will also find a nice laptop passport for your newly bought laptop as well as a well documented booklet which will show all the details of your laptop. The Acer 5002LM has an odd place in Acer's laptops hierarchy. It is priced below an Aspire 3002LMi which is an entry level Sempron model. While Centrino maintains some kind of focus on thin and light, Acer seems to present the Aspire 5002LM as an affordable high performance laptop. Yes, it is thinner - or rather it has been designed to look thin with the battery being located at the back - and has a slightly longer autonomy as compared with others but it seems that much more emphasis should have be laid on portability. The taiwanese group seems to be somehow extremely shy about the 5002LM, there's not even one mention of this rather revolutionary product anywhere on its UK website, only in its pricelist. More at the end.

First looks, the laptop feels very sturdy and solid and has a grey brushed plastic lid. The hinges would probably have to take heavy knocks to crack. The 5002LM comes with a 15.0-inch XGA screen. It might have been better to offer SXGA or at least a widescreen resolution. Thick bezel surrounding the screen makes the screen look much bigger, almost widescreen. Brightness and image quality is not what you would normally expect from Acer even compared to my old Tecra 8100. I had to set brightness to 100% to make things better. Also forget about using it for presentations or for watching DVDs with more than a couple of friends because of the LCD's narrow angle of vision.The keyboard is laid in such a way that there is no protuding edge that might cause discomfort when typing. A very important aspect often disregarded by laptop manufacturers.

Apart from the usual Windows XP Home and MS Works 7.0, Acer also bundled in the popular NTI CD and DVD maker, Cyberlink power producer, Adobe Acrobat as well as AV Rack which is nothing more than a skin of Media Player. On top of that they plugged in some of their own software like the Acer eManager which is a minimalist control panel while Arcade is an all in one DVD and general media player.

The rest of the laptop configuration is impressive for that price. The laptop BIOS was very much uninteresting. No way of tweaking it to improve performance. One thing I would advise you is to reduce the default amount of memory dedicated to video from 64MB to 32MB. Apart from the 1MB cache Turion processor, it also comes with 512MB of Infineon PC2700 DDR memory (two modules), one Hitachi Travelstar 60GB HDD 4200 RPM HDD. Acer was wise enough to have two partitions but the fact that it still uses FAT32 is something that puzzles me. The motherboard is an Acer Lugano M. It comes with a SIS760GX chipset which integrates the SIS330 graphics adapter - forget about it if you want to play DirectX 9.0, you might have a better chance playing older directX 7.0 or 8.1 games. I had to change run 3DMark 2001 SE at 800x600 in order to get playable results - it managed to score 2268 3DMarks ;-). Also included onboard are three USB 2.0 ports - two at the back and one in front. plus one PCMCIA slot, a modem and LAN. The Acer 5002LM CCL sent me did not have wireless even if it seems that it should have been standard. Check before you buy. Normally you should get 802.11b/g compatibility as well as Acer SignalUP antenna technology. Sound IOs and the two speakers are conveniently placed in front of the keyboard and include a rare line-in and a tiny microphone. No firewire port though or S Video output. Acer also managed to squeeze in a dual format, dual layer DVD writer.

The battery provided is a 65w LiIon (4400mAH at 14.8v) and should last more than a couple of hours. I haven't got any Mobilemark/Batterymark software at hand to do an objective test, so I started watching an Indian movie (Veer Zeera) and shortly after the two hour mark, the Low battery indicator kicked in. At 125min, the laptop hibernated. Attempts at powering it up would fail except if you plug it in the mains. Mind you most indian films last more than three hours. The battery can be charged in around three hours while the manual indicated a battery life of 2h30min which is pretty much indicative since in my case DVD playing uses the DVD drive as well and obviously wordprocessing will probably consume less power. AMD uses dynamic underclocking to save power going from 1600 to 800MHz within seconds. One distracting thing though was that under load, the CPU fan kicks in, first rather slowly and then if the load increases, pretty much noisily. The laptop does get warm but nothing that can burn your knickers or its contents.

The Acer Aspire 5002LM laptop is very good value for money. With a 64bit CPU, 512MB memory, a sizeable 60GB hard disk and a Dual layer DVD writer, there is nothing much going against it. A similarly configured Dell Inspiron 2200 laptop with a Pentium M 725 would costs you a hefty £790.78 inc VAT and delivery. The Acer Aspire 5002 LM as tested cost £582.73 inc. VAT and delivery - most certainly the cheapest price in UK, a £208 difference or 36% difference. Still better, get the Acer Advantage Notebook Warranty Upgrade for £90.25. This will upgrade your starndard one year warranty to three years and will include full accidental damage cover, five day turnaround and no hidden costs.

What should be next. Acer's R&D should design an ultra portable Turion laptop with no internal moving parts based on the 25W Turion MT. Add a 12.1-in Widescreen LCD and keep the rest while trying to push in a more powerful slimmer and lighter battery and sell it with a slim external DVD writer for £700. Something like the Superb Travelmate 3002WTMI which is sold for £1040 and comes with an external firewire DVD writer. Acer is a very innovative company which is giving Dell and the likes a hell of a time. They have started bundling Linux with their laptops and even if it is not publicised, Acer is the number one laptop vendor in Europe with a market share of 18% in 1Q 2005 according to IDC preliminary data.

One or two things before packing up. The ML28, yet another Turion managed to slip in the Acer manual. Some parts are on sale at Memory world but at a premium price of $199. No mention of MT series though. Weird. On close inspection at Fab51.com, one of the better AMD CPU guides out there, one can see that nothing distinguished an AMD Athlon 64 2800+ from a Turion ML32; they seem to be exact copies. FYI, the Mobile Athlon 2800+ costs only $99 and no one seems to care whether it overclocks like hell or not. Only time will tell whether the Turion is the worthy heir to the XP-M family.

The Acer 5002LM is not a laptop that you would buy for its battery life though. This is where probably Acer could improve as it doesn't use the correct components. Also the PCMark 04 of a similarly configured Dell Inspiron 2200 was a full 21% higher than the Acer Aspire 5002LM - but this synthetic benchmark usually favours Intel processors a bit more and the Dell Inspiron 2200 costs much more. Bear in mind that Windows XP 64-bit should give the Turion 64 the edge in a near future once software are fully optimised. For a first try, the Aspire 5002LM gets head turning though not perfect.

Verdict
It is no Centrino killer performance wise or battery wise but a hell of a lot of a deal.

PS: Sorry guys but my digital camera is out until next week, hence no real pics. µ