Acer Aspire 5745DG review

Product Acer Aspire 5745DG 374G32Mn 3D Laptop
Website http://www.acer.co.uk/
System Specifications Intel Core i3-370M 2.4GHz CPU with 3MB L3 cache, 4GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia Geforce GT425M GPU with 1.5GB VRAM, 320GB hard disk, DVD combo drive, 15.6-inch 1366x768 120Hz LED backlit display, Ethernet, WiFi, multi-card reader, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Price £899 including VAT

TAIWANESE PC MAKER Acer has been doing the 3D thing since launching its own technology on one of the first stereoscopic laptops at market.

The INQUIRER reported in September that it didn't sell too well, so Acer jumped ship, going over to Nvidia and bundling active shutter polarised glasses with the IR receiver built into the laptops.

Acer's Aspire 5745DG (or the 5745DG 374G32Mn, to be precise) is one the first laptops from this partnership, coming with Nvidia's 120Hz stamp of approval and those wallet aching £100 active shutter glasses.

Acer calls it a mid-range 3D multimedia entertainment centre. This means Acer gave itself a difficult job making sure this review model had enough power to cope with data intensive 3D playback while keeping the cost below £1,000. The model was well enough balanced to deliver a decent 3D experience because Acer has made cuts to offset the higher costs without impacting too much on 3D playback. The 320GB hard drive and Intel Core i3-370M 2.4GHz CPU are cheaper but they mean Acer could afford to bundle in a good 15.6-inch display. It also has 4GB of memory, the lowest possible option for 3D, and graphics from Nvidia's mid-range GT425M GPU card with 1.5GB of video RAM. The GPU and CPU provide just enough power to cope with current generation 3D gaming, but you have to be willing to forgo gamer's pride and lower settings to get anywhere near 30fps.

Acer has also forgone a move into full HD multimedia entertainment to keep the 3D playback financially viable and to make sure it can cope with the frame rate halving that 3D requires. There is an HDMI out port, however, so you can hook it up to an external 1080p display. Multimedia enthusiasts will probably look elsewhere if they're paying over £800 for a supposed multi-media laptop with relatively average specifications and no full HD graphics or Blu-ray drive. However, as a model for 3D enthusiasts on a budget it is a good enough buy.

Our review model came with a nice glossy black lid, which was a magnet for our fingerprints. Given the nice design it was a sacrifice we didn't mind and the lid is offset by a brushed aluminium surround and touchpad. The aluminium is an effect only so there's no metal on the chassis but the plastic is quite durable. Shame there's no catch to stop it from opening, which could be a problem if you intend to carry it around with you. There's also no hardware eject button on the DVD writer. Not exactly earth shattering stuff but it meant we had to right click with the mouse on the DVD drive icon to open it.

The Aspire 5745DG still feels solid and has a responsive keyboard. There's not a lot of space between the flat keys but the bounce on the keys is well-judged and we didn't have any problems accidentally hitting neighbouring keys. Acer has even added a numeric keypad on the right and has over-sized the important keys to keep beancounters happy. The only things that we didn't like were the four-way navigation keys that are difficult to, well, navigate. Acer has spaced them underneath big SHFT and CTRL keys on the left with nothing underneath. This makes it difficult to hit other keys but they still take a while to get up to speed. At least the touchpad is equally responsive.

3D only works on the native resolution of any display output so choosing the right resolutions to match the screen size is important. Of course it would be great if Acer had bundled an HD 1080p panel on this model for full HD 3D gaming and movies, but you have to be realistic about cost and performance. If it had, there'd simply be no way the Aspire 5745DG would be able to keep up with the data intensive task of running 3D at HD 1080p resolution. The CPU, graphics and memory would have to be upgraded and that would take the machine over £1,000, which is right out of Acer's affordable mid-range price bracket for this model.

Keeping the display at 1366x768 resolution means Acer can give the Aspire 5745DG 3D playback without too much cost to appeal to those on a budget. But Acer is savvy here and invested in a decent 15.6-inch screen that we thought did a good job. Obviously the screen has to adhere to Nvidia's 3D Vision criteria for smooth active shutter 3D playback, so it has the required 120Hz refresh rate. But Acer has also factored in a pretty fast 8ms response rate and higher brightness at 220-nit to compensate for the darkened screen when you are in a stereoscopic environment.

The screen has a nice vibrant sheen and a wide colour range that picks up darker 3D palette playback perfectly well. We found it not too bright or glossy for use in brightly lit rooms so it could double up as a daytime workplace and night time entertainment model without any problems. We were also impressed with the wider viewing angle 3D playback. Nvidia would be in part to thank because its 3D technology is a factor but the display also held up as well in 3D as in 2D. It is still a solitary pleasure though, especially given the cost of those glasses.

We wanted the best optimal 3D viewing experience to test performance so we got titles that were listed as Nvidia 3D Vision ready. While there are thousands of titles that can be retro-engineered to view stereoscopically, only nine make Nvidia's top list. We previously road tested Batman Arkham Asylum on Zalman's passive shutter ZM-M240W 3D LCD display so we used that again here. Batman offers some of the better 3D experiences we've seen and if an Xbox 360 can play it, surely a mid-range gaming laptop can.

Setting up 3D was simple. Acer already had Nvidia's stereoscopic driver pre-loaded. All we had to do was plug the not very fetching glasses into the USB port and the software did the rest. We did have to enable 3D playback in Nvidia's control panel, but that was it.

Batman Arkham Asylum choked with anti-aliasing turned on, even at 1366x768. We only got 11fps with 2xAA and the GT425M GPU virtually gave up. Toggling 3D on with CTRL-T literally halves the frame rate as, effectively, you are running two games simultaneously, albeit at slightly different angles. We tried turning off V-synch and lowering effects details and dynamic shadows settings. Only then did we get just over the gamer's magic 30fps mark at 30.8fps. Here playability was excellent with everything we expected from Batman Arkham Asylum in 3D. We fell for every cliché in the book, wowing at the sense of depth and pop up.

The only thing that didn't impress about this Acer Aspire was the 2D to 3D conversion for movies. We added a couple of 2D films, which the software converted on the fly. The results were negligible with only the odd shot showing off the additional dimension.

Battery life was good and the Aspire 5745DG didn't conk out half way through a three hour movie. The battery is an external lithium model with nine cells so it was never going to be slack. We also tested the Aspire 5745DG in full performance mode using Battery Eater Pro. That test is designed to chew through batteries as quickly as possible, so the 3 hours and 9 minutes this review model achieved was good. That went up to 7 hours and 11 minutes when we retested using power saving mode.

In Short
As an all-rounder multi-media laptop the Aspire 5745DG is a mixed bag. You can get a non-3D model with better features and specifications for less cash, but this is a good mid-range model for 3D playback. µ

The Good
3D playback on mid-range specifications, quality display, good battery life, keyboard, well-designed.

The Bad
2D to 3D conversion not great, quality settings in games need to be scaled down for smooth 3D, fiddly navigation keys.

The Ugly
It's the best on offer at present, but Nvidia's technology might only be a stop-gap until we have a glassesless 3D entertainment world.

Bartender's Score
7/10