Sandra Prior

Acer Aspire 8920

The Aspire 8920 is the Gisele Bundchen of entertainment notebooks.

As you slowly flip the 18.4" widescreen open, you'll be hard-pressed not to let a little ‘oooh’ or ‘wow’ escape as you are struck by the shiny ‘CineDash sensitive media console’.

After accidentally brushing the media console with our pinkie a few times while typing out this review - which immediately launches you into the Acer Arcade media centre; whatever else you were working on be damned - you'll quickly learn to disable it, unless you're actually watching a DVD.

With great apprehension we popped a copy of I Am Legend into the Blu-Ray drive. The Aspire 8920 is one of the few notebooks on the market with Full HD 1920*1080 resolution, and also features multi-speaker 5.1 surround sound. The ‘Acer Tuba CineBass’ subwoofer is the best we have ever encountered on a laptop - though battery life is chomped up rapidly when you've got everything going at full tilt; but not as bad as expected. You get an 80% charge in one hour.

Gaming is a joy when you're sporting an Intel Core 2 Duo, a GeForce 9650 and 4GB of RAM. Still, you are somewhat caged in by a 8ms response time. Did we mention Vista Ultimate? It's quite a package. And a heavy package at that; just over 4kgs. The Aspire 8920 also features a webcam biometric protection - one swipe of your fingertip and you are in. You can also use your fingerprint to log into your various online accounts. If you're not afraid that some clown is going to cut off your index finger and break into your secret Hotmail account that you direct your online dating emails to.

Honestly, the only real competition for the Aspire 8920 in this round-up is the XPS - which is butt-ugly in comparison to the slick piano-finish and sexy backlighting of the Gemstone blue range. It scored over a thousand points higher in 3D Mark 06, and it's nipping at the MlSSO's heels in SuperPi.

It's a no-brainer, really. When you cough up $2000k for the pleasure of burning a proverbial hole through the kitchen counter while you are Googling yourself, then you expect some bang for your buck. Start saving now.

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