Acer Aspire 5745PG-3882 Review
PrintA very capable multitouch, multimedia machine
The $900 Acer Aspire 5745PG-3882 is an attractive-looking, moderately priced notebook with some nifty multitouch features, a high-quality display, and audio attributes that make it a very capable multimedia system. But with middling 3D graphics performance, it’s not going to make anyone’s top-10 list of portable gaming rigs.
Sporting a 15.6-inch, multitouch-capable, capacitive screen, the 5745PG-3882 is not unlike the iBuypower Armada Touch MT20X we reviewed a few months ago. But while the MT20X includes a useful application that lets you map common mouse and keyboard gaming commands to the screen’s multitouch interface, the 5745PG-3882 lacks any sort of 3D-gaming-specific features for its touch display. It does, however, include some cool multitouch software for more everyday usages, such as apps for watching photos and videos, listening to music, and surfing the web. A couple of touch-enabled casual games are also included, but these titles aren’t exactly the sort of games that make a GPU sweat.
The 5745PG-3882 features Acer’s unique FineTip keyboard design.
The 5745PG-3882’s display is bright and vibrant—a veritable pleasure to watch movies on. Thankfully, the screen doesn’t catch reflections nearly as bad as other glossy displays have a tendency to do; and despite all the touching, the screen never became marred with fingerprints. The display has a native resolution of 1366x768, unlike the full 1080p-capable MT20X (which has a native res of 1920x1080). Audio is equally impressive, thanks to the Dolby Home Theater Virtual Surround Sound speakers. But when the Dolby settings are enabled, the volume noticeably drops—limiting just how loud you can crank the audio.
An Nvidia GeForce GT 330M GPU supplies the graphics power, but this just wasn’t enough to give our zero point’s GTX 260M a run for its money. It was, however, enough to nip closely at the heels of the Mobility Radeon HD 5650–equipped MT20X. This isn’t necessarily saying much, as we weren’t particular impressed with the MT20X’s 3D graphics performance. The 5745PG-3882’s frame rate of 28fps on the three-year-old Call of Duty 4 at 1650x1050 with fairly aggressive settings is playable, but far from the ideal of what mobile gamers aspire to achieve.
On the other hand, when running multithreaded, content-creation apps, such as Adobe Premiere CS3 and ProShow Producer, the 5745PG-3882’s dual-core 2.4GHz Core i5-450M processor was notably speedier than the zero-point’s 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo T9900. For instance, the 5745PG-3882 managed to zip through our MainConcept test more than 20 percent faster than the zero-point. But when single-threaded apps, such as Photoshop CS3, enter the equation, the zero-point squeezes back ahead of the 5745PG-3882 by a small margin. As the MT20X uses a higher-end, quad-core, 1.6GHz Core i7-720QM, it’s no surprise that it handily beats the 5745PG-3882 on all our application tests—especially those that support multithreading.
As for battery life, the 5745PG-3882 lasted two hours and 37 minutes on our demanding DVD playback test, which is much better than what either the zero-point (one hour and 40 minutes) or the MT20X (one hour and 33 minutes) were capable of. This is long enough to watch most of Avatar, but it’s still below-average battery life for notebooks in this class.
And what class is that, you might ask? The most accurate way to classify the 5745PG-3882 is as a mainstream multimedia notebook. As long as serious gaming isn’t on your do-list, the 5745PG-3882 will serve you well with media and nearly any application. This alone presents a great value at less than $900; factor in the multitouch screen and the 5745PG-3882 becomes a compelling option for non-gamers.
Acer Aspire 574PG-3882
Bollywood
Great for movies and audio; strong multithreaded content-creation performance; multitouch display.
Box-office Bomb
Disappointing 3D-gaming performance.
7
BENCHMARKS
| Zero Point | Acer Aspire 5745PG-3882 | |
|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) | 1,320 | 1,128 |
| Photoshop CS3 (sec) | 153 | 158 (-3.2%) |
| ProShow Producer (sec) | 1,524 | 1,373 |
| MainConcept (sec) | 2,695 | 2,240 |
| Far Cry (fps) | 32.7 | 15.3 (-53.1%) |
| Call of Duty 4 (fps) | 58.2 | 28.0 (-51.9%) |
| Battery Life | 100.0 | 157.0 |
Our zero point notebook is an iBuypower M865TU with a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo T9900, 4GB DDR3/1066 RAM, a 500GB Seagate hard drive, a GeForce GTX 260M, and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Far Cry 2 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA; Call of Duty 4 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and anisotropic filtering.
Specifications
| Acer Aspire 5745PG-3882 | |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-450M |
| RAM | 4GB DDR3/1066 |
| Chipset | Intel HM55 |
| Drives | 500GB Western Digital WD5000BEVT-22A0RT0 (5,400rpm) |
| Optical | Matsushita DVD-RAM UJ890AS |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GT 330M |
| Connectivity | HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, four USB 2.0, headphone, mic, S/PDIF-out, 5-in-1 media reader, Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet |
| Lap/Carry | 6 lb, 1 oz / 7 lb, 2.6 oz |
More like this
niccy4513
December 31, 2010 at 7:38am
It's small and compact, and is pretty quick. In the item description, it states that the hard drive is 160 GB. When I got the computer, I read the box and it states that the actual formatted capacity is less and may vary depending on preloaded materials and operating environment. When I actually looked at my computer's hard drive, it was 133 GB. I just wanted to share that because I know that some people will use this for pictures, video and music. I am using it almostly exclusively for surfing the internet, emails, and Microsoft Word.See Here: Acer Aspire Laptop
Eoraptor
September 02, 2010 at 1:45pm
Boo Spam! Really needs to be a "report spam" link or something.
Well, I question the complaints about the video capabilities; is anyone looking at a sub-$1000 laptop with a touch interface really looking to play Crysis and Halo at bleeding edge resolutions in the first place? Of course this is not a gaming rig. I'd also have liked a bit of info on how the keyboard and trackpad feed back and feel, and compared to other laptops. Same with the layout of the ports. The thing could have the latest QM processor in it and 8 gigs of ram, but of the keyboard feels like a stack of badly-balanced cardboard dominos and you're constantly breaking off USB sticks cause all the ports point at your gut, it still wouldn't be a worthwhile purchase at this price point.
That said, it sounds like a capable mid-level machine in an other-wise muddled field, (as you comment in trying to class it reveals) and deserving of a 6.5 - 7 because of its decent ram and processor combined with the touch interface. All though frankly, I'd never buy another Acer product myself, I've owned two in the last five years, and between them, one is prone to component failures, and the other is just badly under-powered considering its raw specs. Though they do have great Wifi reception, as good as my mimo USB products.
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Keith E. Whisman
August 27, 2010 at 2:51pm
Although this laptop really looks nice, I just can't agree with the 7 verdict. The reason why I can't agree with it is because I don't think that it rates that high in it's product category. Most laptops with touch screens are convertible laptop that can convert into a tablet. Since this laptop clearly cannot convert into anything more than a closed lit laptop, then I believe the score should be more like a 5 Verdict and that's being more fair to the other manufacturers that build laptops more to the maximumPC standards of being a stand out for being the fastest and most powerful product in your product category. So clearly the ram, cpu, display (resolution wise), and GPU are all lesser parts with much more faster and more powerful parts available to choose from. So you see a 7 Verdict just is too high of a score for this product.
Perhaps if this laptop could convert into a tablet then the score should go up wildly because the hardware specs are a little above average for convertible laptops, but for laptops in general, no, not at all. So just a 5 score is perfect for this. Maybe even a 6 verdict because it has the touchscreen but not higher then that.
Tophar
August 27, 2010 at 10:53am
Why can't you guys include the price in with all the breakdown of the specs? I can quickly and easily scroll down and see what kind of proc or whatnot is in the machine but if I wanna know how much it costs I have to search through, or heaven forbid actually read the review. The cost just seems like a very crucial spec or stat of the product it seems dumb that you wouldn't include it in the quick breakdown of the thing.
Also the text to the "+" box is cut off
MrMick
August 27, 2010 at 2:50pm
We've avoided putting prices in on-line reviews because we they're destined to be inaccurate over time. That's understandable in print, but not so much on the web. We hoped that Pricegrabber would provide an alway-current street price, but as you can see, that database is flawed.
As for the cut-off "+" comments: that was just sloppy editing: The box for that text is a fixed size and I didn't notice that it overflowed.
Tophar
August 27, 2010 at 10:31pm
You did include the price in the review, you just put it in a less convenient place. Isn't the point of these reviews to inform potential buyers, that seems like to much of a key factor to leave out. So I can scroll down to the bottom see, the score, the specs and the price get a pretty good idea of what it is, and if its what I'm looking for, and in my price range, then I'll read the review. Sure, over time the price will be inaccurate, but isn't that what the date on the article is for? a review of this product at that time.
Keith E. Whisman
August 27, 2010 at 2:42pm
The price is quoted in the first paragraph.
At least they did a pretty good job of writing a review with a Score.
The latest issue of CPU magazine has several reviews and on each review they describe how they come up with their score, but only one of the reviews has a score. That really bugs the crap out of me. If your not going to give a review score then why bother printing how you come up with review scores. LOL.. So MaximumPC isn't the only magazine that makes mistakes or does things that are completely illogical.
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