subject: Acer Timeline 14" 4810t Notebook Reviews [print this page] With so many different factors to consider when purchasing a laptop, finding the right one can be a daunting task. Portability and battery life are the current trends, along with value of course, which has brought about the recent surge of netbooks. However as I"ve said before -- and I still stand by the statement -- netbooks are great for simple tasks, but lack the power to be more than a supplement to a real notebook or desktop system.
Acer has unveiled a line of its own thin notebooks that have great battery life and a wealth of other features. Today we will be looking at the Acer Timeline 4810T notebook, a 14-inch ultra-portable that aims to bridge the gap between underpowered netbooks and bulky notebooks, while retaining the battery longevity found in the latest generation of netbooks. The Timeline has an incredible claimed battery life of over eight hours.
We"ve had Acer"s Aspire Timeline 4810T for over a week now, and have had a proper opportunity to get to grips with it. One of its most impressive features is the portability on offer, with skinny dimensions that help it to slip easily into bags.
The 14-inch screen is ideally suited to movie playback, mainly because of the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, but also because of the crisp image quality and faithful colour reproduction. The glossy Super-TFT coating can prove problematic in the brightest of conditions, however.
Graphics are handled by an integrated Intel GMA 4500M GPU, providing moderate power for tasks such as photo editing or web browsing. You"ll be able to carry out light video editing, but look elsewhere if you need to carry out more demanding graphics tasks.
In a bid to position the brand at the desirable end of the laptop market, you"ll find aluminium used in the construction "" such as the lid "" and a thin, commuter-friendly chassis. From the outside, it"s a smart and quality laptop, although the grey plastics used inside are slightly more conservative.
The keyboard features an unusual layout, with flat keys raised high above the main board. It feels incredibly well made, with no sign of flex or unwanted movement, but it's not at all practical. The completely flat typing surface means it's difficult to distinguish between the keys when touch-typing, so mistakes are a common occurrence even for experienced typists.
But if the 4810T looks a little drab, or we're unconvinced by the keyboard, we're willing to forgive it for one reason. In our light use battery test, it ran for a staggering 8hrs 52mins - the equivalent of a full working day with a short commute on top. Even our intensive test, which pushes a system as hard as possible, ran for nearly three and a quarter hours before the ACER Aspire Timeline 4810T Battery was exhausted. This kind of battery life is ordinarily the preserve of ultraportables, and is extremely impressive on a laptop which is comfortable to use all day. It even beats Acer's claimed eight-hour mark by nearly an hour.
Due to the thin chassis "" which measures 31mm at its thickest point "" Acer has opted to use Intel"s SU9400 low voltage Core 2 Duo processor in order to keep things cool. It runs at 1.4GHz, but with 3072MB of DDR3 memory in place we found performance was surprisingly lively, with little lag during day to day use. The low powered components have the biggest affect when it comes to power consumption, however, where we saw a battery life of an amazing 484 minutes - making this one of the most practical and portable laptops you can buy.
The 14-inch screen of the notebook is definitely geared more towards multimedia use than general productivity with its glossy finish. I have said it before; I am not a big fan of highly glossy screens because of the glare you have to deal with. You are in for some grief if you try and use the notebook outdoors. The screen works well, though, and has good color reproduction and no major issues with smearing or tearing when watching video online.
One of the big claims that Acer makes with the Timeline is all day computing from a single charge. Acer figures that the Acer ASPIRE Timeline 4810T Battery is good for a full eight hours of use per charge. If you read the benchmark section you know that with Battery Eater Pro and the Timeline set to 50% brightness and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off I was able to squeeze over four and a half hours from the battery. That is almost half the runtime that Acer promises, but as I said before, Battery Eater Pro is harder on batteries than most people will be in the real world. The battery life of the little machine is very impressive.
To get that impressive battery life you do have to give up some performance, though; the Intel Core 2 Solo processor sips power, but is slower performing than other machines. You do make a tradeoff when you go with a thin machine like the Timeline, but the trade off for the portability and style is one that many notebook users will be more than willing to make.
The machine has a decent onboard sound system that offers enough volume to hear the audio in your music or video from across the room. I was also impressed that the thin machine still offers an optical drive, which is something that you don't find on netbooks that weigh almost as much.
You'll find a full complement of features included, including a neatly integrated DVD rewriter. It can be opened by a button on the top of the chassis, which is another nice touch. Ports comprise three USB ports for adding peripherals, and an HDMI port for high-definition displays. You'll also find an analogue VGA port for older screens and projectors.
If you"re in the market for a semi-portable business machine, then the Timeline 4810T is definitely worth a look. It may be more functional than desirable, but the amazing Aspire Timeline 4810 battery life and good all-round usability make it a solid choice for corporate users.
Acer's Timeline series comprises of four different notebook sizes: 13.3, 14, and 15.6 inches were the standard versions launched earlier this year, and most recently a smaller 11.6" version was also introduced during the Windows 7 launch week. Most specifications are shared among the group with a few variants like CPU speed, hard drive capacity and the optical drive option. What we'd like to establish here is that many of our impressions throughout this review will apply to other Timeline models, despite the obvious size implications.
The Timeline 4810T that we are testing today falls in the middle of the pack with its widescreen 14-inch LED backlit display that sports a 1366x768 resolution. The 4810T is powered by an Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor operating at 1.4GHz, 4GB of DDR3 memory (expandable to 8GB), a 320GB hard drive, Intel GS45 chipset with 4500MHD integrated graphics and Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100 that support Draft-N connectivity.
Acer will try to pull the 8+ hour claim using a 6-cell battery on the 4810T. Other standard features for this 14-inch laptop include a 8x SuperMulti optical drive, built-in webcam and multi-card reader.
